Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Assessing Teacher Attitudes Related to Trauma-informed Care in Three Urban High Schools written by Erica Leigh Wendel and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increased awareness of the impact and prevalence of trauma among youth has fueled interest in trauma-informed service delivery in diverse settings, especially among schools and school-based mental health centers. Given the substantial mental health risks facing youth populations with high incidences of complex stress and trauma (Perfect et al., 2016), it is imperative to identify interventions that promote resilience, improve access to trauma-sensitive mental health services, and bolster academic outcomes. School personnel, including administrators, teachers, and staff, have frequent and regular contact with youth throughout the school year. The consistent relationship between school personnel and students in the school context makes for an ideal environment to engage in trauma-informed teaching and mental-health care modalities. Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) describes an approach to mental health service that integrates an understanding of the pervasive effects of trauma on youth, with an approach to intervention that addresses associated biopsychosocial factors. TIC programming in schools is a method of intervening with traumatized youth, incorporating multiple systems that impact their lives. While the foundational research on the effectiveness of trauma-informed programs applied to other settings is promising, the evidence-base for trauma-informed programming in schools is in need of further development. More specifically, existing research has defined a direction for future inquiry: the exploration of both system- and individual-level variables as potential mediators of change throughout the TIC program implementation process. Because teachers play a key role in school-based TIC programming, their level of engagement and degree of buy-in are critical to the implementation, efficacy, and sustainability of these programs. In order to better understand the process of implementation of TIC programs in schools, research on teacher beliefs and attitudes toward TIC is needed to inform future TIC programming and evaluation efforts. The purpose of the current study was to examine the attitudes of teachers toward TIC across three urban high schools that participate in a multi-tiered, trauma-informed mental health care intervention. Given the nascent literature base related to correlates and outcomes associated with TIC interventions, this study also aimed to assess the predictive value of teacher characteristics, including perceived self-efficacy and several demographic features, on their attitudes toward TIC. The Attitudes Related to Trauma Informed Care (ARTIC) scale was used to determine whether there are meaningful differences in teacher attitudes within schools across different phases of implementation and tiers of intervention participation in a TIC model of school-based mental health care delivery. Qualitative methods were used to investigate specific contributors to observed differences in attitudes toward TIC among teachers with the relative highest and lowest composite scores on the ARTIC. Results from a series of hierarchical regression models evidenced a significant effect of tier of participation in the intervention in predicting teacher attitudes related to TIC. Findings from the qualitative phase of this study showed that teachers with relatively more favorable attitudes differed from teachers with less favorable attitudes along several important characteristics related to trauma-informed care, including their conceptualizations of factors that influence student success at school, behavior management strategies, and approaches to the teacher-student relationship. Teachers also discussed their involvement with and perceptions of the TIC programming at their respective campuses. The findings presented in this study support the development of an emerging body of evidence that sheds light on the design, implementation, and sustainability of trauma sensitive, school-based mental health care and programs for school-aged youth. The findings also propose important considerations for educators, administrators, and educational policy makers with regard to the practical application of trauma-informed systems of care in schools.