Assessing Teacher Attitudes Toward Trauma-Informed Care in Schools: An Exploratory Study

Background and Purpose

Trauma-informed practices in schools have proliferated as a focus for school reform in the last decade. Models for developing such practices often focus on efforts to increase positive teacher attitudes toward trauma-informed care, although limited data documenting attitudes in general populations of teachers exists. This study used the ARTIC-10 ED (Attitudes Toward Trauma-Informed Care, School Version), a validated scale intended to measure attitudes toward trauma-informed care in schools, to assess teacher attitudes in one school district absent systematic efforts to develop trauma-informed practices. Findings raise questions about the necessity and potential limitations of efforts to build trauma-informed practices in schools via the promotion of positive teacher attitudes.

Methods

An online survey was distributed to approximately 1500 teachers in a mid-sized pre-k-12 school district in the Southwest United States. While respondents had not received any systematic training relating to trauma-informed practices, some had participated in trauma-informed professional development as individuals. 240 teachers completed the 10-item ARTIC-ED which uses a 7-point bi-polar Likert scale where higher scores reflect more positive attitudes toward trauma-informed care. Mean total scores and mean scores for each item were calculated for the entire sample. Respondents who reported some training in trauma-informed practices (n=151) were also compared to those who indicated that they had not (n=89) using the Mann-Whitney U test.

Results

The mean overall ARTIC score for the entire sample was 5.43. The median score was 5.4, with scores ranging from 3.2 to 7. For respondents who reported trauma-related professional development, the mean was 5.47 compared to 5.34 for those who reported no training. Comparison using the Mann-Whitney U test was not significant with one-tailed p value= .1867, reflecting no significant difference in overall ARTIC scores for teachers who reported some training in trauma-informed practices versus those who had none. Entire sample means for each item on the ARTIC-10 yielded scores above 5 for all items except one which still had a mean of 4.93.

Conclusions and Implications

Findings from this study suggest that even absent systematic efforts to provide professional development around trauma-informed practices, teachers in this district reflected positive attitudes toward trauma-informed care in schools as demonstrated by mean overall ARTIC scores and mean scores on individual items. Importantly, teachers who reported having some professional development or training relating to trauma-informed practices did not have significantly higher scores on the ARTIC than those who did not. While these results are exploratory, they do call into question the potential value of professional development focused on increasing positive attitudes toward trauma-informed care in schools. If attitudes are already positive, how much value added do such efforts yield? These data reinforce the importance of focusing trauma-informed school reforms on the development of supportive systems, structures, and policies, going beyond efforts to help educators “realize” and “recognize” the impact of trauma, and allowing them to appropriately “respond” to these impacts and “resist retraumatization” (SAMHSA, 2014).