Karen L. Gordes, PT, DScPT, PhD received a $10,000 innovation grant for Faculty Educational Training Program - Fostering inclusion through a trauma informed pedagogical framework. The contributing faculty and staff include Courtney Jones-Carney, DPA, MBA; Mary Jo Bondy, DHEd, MHS, PA-C; Shani Fleming, MSHS, MPS, PA-C; Shannan Delany Dixon, MS, CGC; and Mary Lynn McPherson, PharmD, MA, MDE, BCPS, CPE.
Many health profession educators are not formally prepared to provide a trauma informed approach to their teaching despite a significant population of their learners experiencing traumatic and adverse events prior to and during their educational experience. Given the negative impact trauma has on learning, there is a need for educators to understand how to recognize and effectively respond to these issues in the learning environment. A trauma-informed educational approach aims to support learners by recognizing the impact of trauma, avoiding re-traumatization and building resilience in learners. We must recognize that marginalization is a fundamental trauma and re-traumatization in higher education is often related to marginalized identity status. Exclusion, minimization, and shaming based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and more generate trauma in the individuals experiencing these directed behaviors. Further, the confluence of historical, societal and systemic trauma before, during, and after higher education is a critical problem in the health professions. The features, practices, and policies of environments and institutions that generate and maintain trauma create a loss of sufficiency and diversity in the healthcare workforce. A trauma informed pedagogical framework focuses on systems and individuals and provides consideration for how our teaching and learning policies and practices can either challenge or facilitate success in learners who have experienced trauma. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has outlined six equity-centered trauma informed principles congruent with inclusive pedagogy to foster a supportive environment for all learners. The six key principles include safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration-mutuality, empowerment-voice-choice, and cultural-historic-gender issues. A trauma informed approach recognizes the intersection of trauma and adversity and outlines instructional practices (such as representation, engaging intersectionality, mitigating bias, and pedagogical partnerships) to support authentic belonging, equity and inclusion in the classroom. The trauma informed lens is grounded in the concept that effective teaching depends on deep and caring relationships fostered through a community of support and respect where individuals can share their authentic self. Through the formalized training sessions on trauma informed practice, we will be building a cadre of faculty knowledgeable of the principles of an equity centered trauma informed approach and prepared to create course content, course policies, and make systemic reform grounded in an inclusive and belonging framework. Faculty participants will garner skills in justice-oriented teaching that foster learning spaces that support learners who have experienced trauma, adversity, crisis, and inequality as well as how to employ strategies for reforming policies, practices, and culture within their academic programs to a trauma resilient perspective.
