Creating positive attitudes about trauma-informed schools
Description
The current study examined the impact of a professional development training in trauma-informed approaches on teacher attitudes. The current study had two main purposes: first, to determine whether two components of attitudes, perception of the problem and self-efficacy, became more trauma-informed among teachers following a professional development training; and second, to investigate whether that change in attitudes was linked to initial levels of familiarity with trauma-informed approaches and/or years of experience. Teachers from 6 schools that are part of the New Orleans Trauma-Informed Schools Learning Collaborative participated in the study (N = 163; 68.7% female, 58.9% White). Teachers filled out demographic information and completed the ARTIC scale (Baker, Brown, Wilcox, Overstreet & Arora, 2015) both before and after training. A paired-samples t-test revealed that perception of a problem and self-efficacy among teachers did become significantly more aligned with trauma-informed approaches following the training. However, contrary to the hypothesis, familiarity and years of experience did not moderate perception of a problem or self-efficacy. Regardless, these results have important implications for the trauma-informed schools movement as they show that PD trainings can positively impact teacher attitudes, potentially increasing teacher motivation to carry out trauma-informed practices in the classroom.