A presentation at California Institute of Integral Studies Doctoral Dissertation Defense in in Pasco, WA 99301, USA by Jacob Campbell
TRAUMA TRAUMA Trauma Informed Care RESILIANCE DISSERTATION DEFENSE A PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY FOR DEVELOPING TRAUMA-INFORMED PRACTICES USING PARTICIPATORY ACTION METHODS Transforming School Culture for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities Jacob Campbell, LICSW CIIS - Transformative Studies Department Friday, March 3rd, 2023
Michael, you really have been my magnifying glass, as you have helped me to focus my work and the development of this research process Kerubo, you have really been an open book for me, supporting me as I learn and grow my skills and ability at engaging in participatory action research Doug, you have been my map as you have encouraged me to consider some of the why and deeper ideas how we can support our students.
Introduce each of them… talk about work, research, etc. See slide as well
Committee members introductions Oral defense
I want to start with talking briefly about the basis of my research, that trauma is frequent in schools and has a significant impact on students.
Over the years I have worked with kids with all manner of difficulties and challenges. I’ve worked with students attempting to leave gang life. I’ve worked with survivors of verbal, physical, and sexual assault. I’ve worked with youth and adults who are refugees. I’ve seen the aftermath of the genocide that took place in Rwanda…
With the global pandemic, increasing mass violent crimes, and a higher level of interconnectedness and sharing of traumatic events, there are many ways we can see another trauma as impacting all of us…
The Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative (2014) defines trauma as:
Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. (p. 7, bold in original)
I want to briefly mention the great deal of intersectionality that often occurs for these students.
This leads us to the argument for the need for trauma-informed care practices. What is trauma informed-informed practices and why do we need it? The SAMSA’s Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative (2014) again defines Trauma-informed as:
A program, organization, or system that is trauma-informed realizes the widespread impact of trauma and understands potential paths for recovery; recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system; and responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices, and seeks to actively resist re-traumatization (p. 9, bold included in the original text).
The need to implement trauma-informed care includes the following principles outlined by Cavanaugh (2016):
My research focuses on a specific group of school staff, those who work with some of the most severe and behaviorally challenging students. These students are ones who often qualify for special education services under the categories of emotional behavioral disabilities (EBD), or who have special health care needs. These students experience an increase in concerns related to ACEs. Kan et al. (2020) describe that they have disproportionately higher rates of ACEs compared to their non-disabled peers. Some of the categories that are more likely to impact these students include: living with someone with mental illness, witnessing domestic violence, and witnessing or being a victim of neighborhood violence
We also know that students with disabilities and students of color experience marginalization based on access to quality instruction, school disciplinary practices, and special education placement practices (Scherr & Mayer, 2019). And minority students are disproportionately identified with EBD by schools (Bridget et al., 2016; Tefera & Fischman, 2020).
In classrooms that serve these students, there seems to be a higher level of compassion fatigue and burnout.
Ziaian-Ghafari and Berg (2019) used compassion fatigue as a lens to understand the psychological distress that teachers experience working within special education.
Hoffman et al. (2007) connect the concept of compassion fatigue to understand burnout among special education teachers.
Bettini et al (2019) showcases how schools experience difficulty retaining special educators to serve students with EBD
All of these problems are concerns that need to be addressed in our schools.
One of the ways that schools have been working through processes of school reform include the use of Professional Learning Communites (PLCs). Hord in 1997 describes some of the characteristics of a PLC. These include:
PLC’s have been broadly adopted of to enhance schools. But they are almost always focused on academic and curriculum needs. There are limited examples of them being used for increasing learning for topics such as social-emotional learning strategies.
The majority of training and professional development around social-emotional learning is implemented through more traditional methods of professional development. These are most often through workshop-style training. These can be productive, and I would still argue are needed. My research seeks to find an avenue for professional learning and school reform that can be democratized for learning about trauma-informed care. I think there is a space where topics such as social-emotional learning or trauma-informed care practices can be a part of the staff’s cycles of inquiry used within PLC. There are some related examples of this:
There has been a lack of examples of the PLC being used to support the development and implementation of a trauma-informed classroom or school setting
This gap in the research is where I have situated my study.
In explaining my research, defining the theoretical framework I was focused on is helpful. First, I grounded my research through a process of systems thinking. Stroh (2015) describes that systems theory helps us to change the things that matter the most. When I describe the clear and worthwhile change, this critical thinking helps to determine it through:
A significant purpose of the dialogs we will be participating in is to engage in transformation. The transformative paradigm has PAR fit within it, as one of its primary intentions is to be transformative (Mertens, 2009)
My co-researchers and I sought ways to transform ourselves, our classrooms, and our schools… and talk about how we can share trauma-informed care beyond our group. This required leadership development and processes to implement.
Along with considering how to support our students best, I wanted to develop the staff engaging in developing them through a Montuori and Donnelly (2017) describe transformative leadership as a framework that lets us understand that leadership can be acquired through emergent processes. It also views it as paradoxical and allows for plurality in how it is embodied.
That leads us to what the my actual research question is:
This inquiry seeks to determine whether a PLC focused on trauma-informed care practices can create clear and worthwhile change for teachers serving students with EBD and subsequently impacting their classrooms and schools through a participatory action research methodology
We will go through each of these subquestions as I discuss my results, but connected to my primary research questions and the themes reviewed through the groups were the following questions:
Before diving into the set up of this study, I also want to clarify what is participatory action research, or PAR. Creswell et al. (2017) describes that PAR is a qualitative methodology that includes collaboration at all levels of the research process and an intention to address a social problem that affects an underserved community.
It really has three parts to it…
(McIntyre, 2008)
This slide shows all of the parts of this study, the Trauma-Informed PLC. Sometimes you will also hear me refer to it as my PLC. We will be going through each of the these parts in turn to explain what I did before we discuss the results.
The recruitment phase was the first stage of my research process. I used purposive sampling focused on staff that work with students with eBD in a self-contained special education classroom settings.
Specifically, in my local area, Tri-Cities Washington, there are three school district that are all very close. Each district has a program focused on supporting this group of students. Richland has the BESST Program, Kennewick has their Tier II Behavior Program, and my District Pasco has the Bridges Program.
I used my professional connections and each school district’s websites pages where they list staff names and emails to gather potential participants. I sent an email to district and building admin for each school that have one of these programs K-12. I also sent emails to any school staff that I could find working in these classrooms (e.g., special-education teachers, social workers, and para educators).
The number of actual possible participants was comparatively low. Of the about 85 schools across the three districts, there are only these programs at about 10 elementary buildings and 5 secondary buildings.
I also opportunistically was able to make an announcement at a behavior focused conference that I attended before my orientation meeting.
The focus of my recruitment was to invite staff to attend an orientation session that was held via Zoom.
During the Orientation, I discussed what PAR is, it’s values, tenets, principles, and practices. We also discussed the study and reviewed the informed consent.
In total, after the orientation, we ended up with six total co-researchers (of which I am one). These were three school social workers, two behavior interventionist teachers (special education teachers), and a para educator.
Before we talk about each co-researcher, I want to define what a co-researcher is, as it is a fairly unique aspect of PAR.
In their encyclopedia entry for participants as co-researchers, Boylorn (2012) defines it as follows:
Participants as co-researchers refers to a participatory method of research that situates participants as joint contributors and investigators to the findings of a research project. This qualitative research approach validates and privileges the experiences of participants, making them experts and therefore co-researchers and collaborators in the process of gathering and interpreting data. (p. 600)
In this view of co-researchers, I am one of them. I will also refer to myself as the primary researcher as I have taken a leadership role in coordinating and facilitating the group using democratic methods. Data collection, analysis, and dissemniation were also completed by me.
Positionality is an important aspect of PAR and insider action research.
I connect and identify with having traumatic experiences. My father committed a triple homicide before I was born and was later executed by the state of Washington is one aspect that made a impact on my life and had an influence on my decision to become a social worker. Much of my high school career, I could have potentially been placed in a classroom like these serving students with EBD due to my behavior. I ended up going from a comprehensive high school to an alternative school to a private boarding school where I graduated and made changes in my life.
It was these experiences that made me want to go into social work and eventually work in a classroom serving students with EBD. I have 8 years working in a school based setting serving students with EBD and five years prior to working in community mental health. Like my other two social workers, I have my master’s in social work. I am also a licensed independent clinical social worker in WA. I work in a high school behavior program and am placed full time in that classroom. I support the therapeutic milieu of my classroom, as well as work individually in groups with my students in my program. I previously supported my program K-12 and also spent some time working in a special school run by a counseling agency focused on this same population of students. I am also an adjunct faculty for a university teaching social work classes.
My positionality also puts me as an insider researcher. Coghlan and Shani (2008) describe, “insider action research offers a unique perspective on systems, precisely because it is from the inside” (p. 644).
I asked each of my co-researchers to choose their own pseudonym for this study. The following are my co-researchers.
First I had two other social workers, Luna and Shaniqua. They respectively have 3 and 4 years of experience working in their programs. Luna works for a high school program that has two classrooms connected to it. Shaniqua works in an elementary setting that also has two classrooms with it. They are both in and out of their classrooms frequently and will do group and individual services with their students. When asked to talk about their roles and positions at their school Shaniqua said “I love spending time with my students each day” and talked about the 1:1 work she does with them. Luna explained that she tries “to meet students where they are at.”
Second, there were two special education teachers, Angelica and Emily. Both of them have their special education teaching credentials and are certificated teachers. Emily came from another district where she had 7 years of experience teaching students in a self-contained life-skills classroom (e.g., that program was focused more on students with more cognitive disabilities). This was her first year working in a program focused on students with behavioral disabilities. She described “I just love working with the kids that need the most support. I somethings think of it as a puzzle.” Angelica was the other teacher who participated in the group. She described “people always tell me I should go work in resource because of my age” as she explained that she waited until her kids were grown and out of the house to start her teaching program. She had six years of teaching in a behavior program and she was a para-educator for 14 years in similar programs. Both of the teachers work in elementary settings.
Finally, Marie told us that “I love the work I do at this job.” She was a para-educator in an elementary program and has been doing that for the last two years. She has a BA degree and is a current student working on her masters in social work.
Power dynamics is an important topic when it comes to any part of PAR and study. This is especially true when the primary researcher has prior experience and connection with co-researchers. I have worked collaboratively with Angelica in the past and had shared students. In my role as an adjunct at the university I was one of Shaniqua and Luna’s teachers as they worked on their BA in social work before going on to their MSW program.
Grant et al (2008) have a chapter in a handbook for participatory research about relationships and power in PAR. I will use a few of their strategies to explain how I managed challenges related to power imbalances.
One strategy they describe is to “view research project as learning opportunity for all.” I was an active participant in the discussion, and took responsibility for creating the agenda and helping facilitate the discussion, I learned a lot as we went through the process. I will be sharing some examples of the new and novel ideas that were generated. The co-researchers all were vulnerable in sharing and growing their practice during the sessions. This emergent nature of this study is further evidence of this viewpoint.
Another strategy is to demystify the research process. The orientation session was focused almost exclusively on this.
A third strategy that is encouraged is to encourage involvement in all stages of the project, with increasing control. The individual entry interviews were how I developed all of the agendas of each meeting. Members would often bring up ideas and directions they wanted the conversation to go.
For example, during one of the sessions, Shaniqua made the comment “maybe we can talk about how do we tap out?” while we were talking about managing when we get frustrated working with a student or being triggered ourselves.
Before starting the actual group sessions, I conducted an entry interview with each of the co-researchers. During these sessions we talked about each of the themes we would talk about and brainstormed how we could learn about those topics.
During these entry interviews we also talked about what book we would plan to read together and potential self-care ideas to do during group.
Each session of the Trauma-Informed PLC had it’s own theme we focused on, but there were a few aspects that went across all of the dialogues. This included
Group Book Study Self-Care Activity Exploration, Reflection, and Action (Van der Kolk, 2015) I would prompt my co-research to share what stood out in the readings, things that inspired more in-depth consideration, or other thoughts and comments about the book. fi EMBEDDED IN DIALOGUES the
The braided process of exploration, reflection and action was embedded in each of the sessions McIntyre (2008) describes that this process includes a braided process of exploration, reflection, and action. This means it starts with
One powerful example of this happened when Angelica was sharing about her work with a young student she described as addicted to porn, and issues related to trauma, reporting to CPS, and communicating with families where there is secrecy.
The bulk of the study took place in six co-designed sessions. I took the notes and ideas from my entry interviews and developed agenda’s each week for how we would talk about each of the following six themes:
We will got through and talk about some of the work we did in each of these sessions.
During the entry interviews, there were many great ideas that came up. Many were included in the agenda for the session.
Not all of the ideas made it onto the agenda. I was pulling from each of the co-researchers ideas and compiling them. I knew that time would be limited for our sessions, and used my experience to pick out what seemed to be the best content to discuss each week.
Sometimes during the session, we would not make it through all of the material I had put on the agenda. For the purpose of our work together, it seemed best to follow the conversation where it went as led by the co-researchers. This meant that sometimes we came back to ideas the following week or we did not cover it. This attempt to draw out and seek emergent ideas seems to require to some degree that the agenda becomes the guideline and the co-researchers become the learning tool together.
Each of the themes for the sessions are incredibly deep. For the purpose of this study, we limited the number of sessions to six. I could imagine spending multiple sessions talking through each of the themes and there still be new learning and ideas to generate regarding that content.
Agendas, notes that were taken during the session (both handwritten/typed), information from collaborative tools (e.g., Google Docs and Chat on Zoom), my reflections after the session, and information added after the session through the process of refining and processing the session notes for completeness
Processing notes and calling out themes and organizational structures as I found them. I added highlights and comments to organize information. Added information to a mind map to see it visually and assist in finding connections.
There were two foundation aspects that appeared through the sessions and seem important and different than most PLCs. These included:
The literature around PLCs rarely focuses on the mutual aid aspects of a PLC. In examples when they do discuss it, it might be focused on resources and supplies.
Group members shared that they felt like our group was a support group in a more therapeutic sense. Shaniqua went right out and stated “it’s like a support group.” Angelica described feeling like “I don’t have a place that I feel comfortable” but how she felt comfortable with us in our group. Emily added that this group has been a positive outlet to address things and be around people with the “same mindset.”
When we took the ProQOL most all of the members scored a medium on either burnout or secondary traumatic stress (or both). The medium score mean that it is effecting you and your work to some extent and consistent with other staff in behavioral programs we have elevated levels of compassion fatigue.
Being a support group seems necessary. Some of the roles and functions we used in this support group included those described by Kurtz (2017)
Interdisciplinary PLCs is another area that I was unable to find any research or implementaiton. There are many interdisciplinary teams in schools (IEP, Multitiered systems of support, my behavior team, etc) but not as a PLC. It seems to always be siloed
Having our group be made up of teachers, social workers and a para seemed very useful and helpful. There would be comments in the group such as:
“As a social worker, I…” or “As a teacher I…”
As well: Emily described, “I like hearing other people’s perspectives on things, just to hear what others do in the same field.” Later in talking about the social workers in the group, she explained it has been really “eye-opening” to hear the social worker side, “it’s just been fascinating learning more about trauma and those types of things.”
Choi and Pak (2006) provide a definition of interdisciplinary that I appreciate and aligns with my ideas.
“Interdisciplinary brings about the reciprocal interaction between (hence “inter”) disciplines, necessitating a blurring of disciplinary boundaries, in order to generate new common methodologies, perspectives, knowledge, or even new disciplines”
One of the takeaways that I came up with from the Trauma-Informed PLC was that finding opportunities to develop connections and be vulnerable was important. This often came out as we spent time making meaning of topics and practices.
There were many times that the group was vulnerable with each other and shared examples. During the second session, Angelica told us what we later referred to as the Backpack story. During a later session, Emily would comment that her telling the story made it so everybody could feel safe to share.
These sharing practical examples of practice was important to the learning and growth that happened and something that consistently happened..
Another learning strategy that we frequently used as a part of PLC was idea generation and brainstorming.
One of the things that we used during several of the sessions used the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (2014) (see Trauma-informed care in behavioral health services) and the material they developed focused on social service agencies and implementing a trauma-informed care system in that setting. For example, in week 3, we reviewed 7 strategies they suggest for increasing resilience by counselors and we were able to translate those ideas into things that relate to kids and a K-12 school system.
Developing a list of ideas for implementation. We often just brainstormed ideas. One example is when we developed our definition of trauma. We developed a concise definition, but also came up with a string of related ideas that connect to trauma. We did this with a number of activities.
This brainstorming also allowed us to discover new and novel ideas. There was a lot we learned and ideas we heard that aren’t traditional talking points in training. For example, we had one member share about their “Bad Day Shirt” It became a whole different conversation, but it was an idea originally for self-care. Sometimes there were ideas that might also be considered too unprofessional, but could also be helpful for people. For example, Angelica described a mantra she has, when she feels like staff are being toxic towards her. She will tell herself “thank you for caring, fuck you for sharing”
Another learning strategy that we used was sharing and reviewing protocols and processes.
We found a way to develop and socialize to our professional identity as social-emotional teachers.
Angelica described the population of her classroom, including students with both recent trauma and others with previous experience of trauma. She went on to express that all of her students “have got to learn their alphabet but to think that their brain is probably not capable to meet my expectations. It makes me feel like crap a lot of times when I think about that. I need to be focused on that as well as the academic piece.” Emily clarified, “we are social-emotional teachers. That’s my role. It is academics too, but that’s not the most important part of my job.”
Examples of each area: Skills: (transitions) Values: (safe learning environment) Professional identities: Teacher Couselor Attitudes: downplaying comments
To clarify how we made clear and worthwhile change, I want to review each of the research questions we asked:
The explicit focus on trauma and its impact was the theme for the first session, but it carried through all of the other sessions. As we processed our practices and work with students, we contextualized these discussions using the student’s experiences and stories.
the second research question was ^^
The selected themes of the second and third sessions were limiting re-traumatization and increasing resiliency.
The third research question was ^^
Reducing secondary trauma and centering on self-care practices was the theme of the fourth dialog.
The fourth research question was ^^
The specific theme for session five was focused on ideas that could promote change within our classrooms and schools We followed the model for participatory action research, which included …
The fifth and final research question was ^^
Session six was structured to examine if the format of a Trauma-Informed Care PLC should be shared as a way of learning about trauma-informed care practices.
We also need to consider the limitations of the study.
During one of the sessions, Shaniqua was talking about how we are always called in to “fix” students. First, this isn’t the perspective any of our group take, and second she described feeling “it is like my wand is broken.”
The co-researchers felt their work during the dialogs was beneficial. They generally seemed to be encouraged about the process. Luna said, “I got a little bit of my, we are going to change the world back”
This work is hard, and a support group like this seems really needed. Marie described how she felt before “I think I’m just burnt out from life. I think that it is bleeding into work.”
Angelica summed it up “I mean, and I know that I could, I could call one of you guys and say, Hey, this is happening. I need to talk about this. I mean, I would feel like I could do that at this point and say, What do you guys think?”
This type of system can be beneficial for staff working with students with EBD to learn how to manage with a broken wand.
The following graphic describes all of these components that I have gone through and reviewed. They include the foundations of:
The themes of
And the learning strategies of
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This presentation is the slides used during my doctoral defense at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in the Transformative Studies Department. My finalized and published dissertation can be found published under open access. See if on ProQuest.
Title: A Professional Learning Community for Developing Trauma-Informed Practices Using Participatory Action Methods: Transforming School Culture for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities
Abstract: Students with emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD) endure adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and other traumatic experiences at higher rates than their non-disabled peers. Staff who work with these students can experience compassion fatigue, contributing to staff attrition and burnout. Trauma-informed care practices show promise in supporting staff and students. The primary method generally used for teaching about these practices is workshop-style training. The professional learning community (PLC) presents a learning model directed by its team but is currently centered around teachers and academic curriculum discourse.
This study uses participatory action research (PAR) methods for a small PLC to explore trauma-informed care practices. This included examining the content and reviewing practice skills. The study co-researchers included six participants working in self-contained special education classrooms that specialize in working with EBD students. The group was comprised of three social workers, two special education teachers, and a paraeducator. The research process included a recruitment phase, orientation, entry interviews, and six dialogues conducted via online video conferencing software. Data collection was the dialogue and activities included in each of these phases. The data included notes from the session, online chat functions, and collaboratively created online documents.
This study was exploratory as it investigated a different way of learning about trauma-informed care. There were a few aspects that are not generally implemented in PLCs. The group followed practices implemented in support groups that use a mutual aid model. The PLC was also interdisciplinary in its functioning and makeup and engaged in professional socialization to improve trauma-informed care practices. Storytelling and idea generation was used to develop an understanding of concepts. Self-care practices were identified and practiced during the group. The members also engaged in a book study to help frame the dialogues.