Trauma Informed Pedagogy

What is Trauma-Informed Pedagogy?

Trauma-informed pedagogy is a strategy to prepare course content and responses to students with a mindful lens about how the content, expectations, and communications could impact that student. Kathleen Arban, clinical associate professor in the Social Work department has presented on how faculty "need to understand that some students, due to their social identities, are more likely to be traumatized" and therefore "need to be aware of how course content can impact students" (March, 2023). Reminding ourselves that we are educating the whole student, trauma-informed pedagogy realizes that students bring trauma into the classroom with them and in response, faculty curate potentially traumatic content to be presented in the least traumatic way possible and/or with alterative engagement strategies.