Examining Equity in Trauma-Informed Care: Associations Between Teacher Stress, Trauma-Informed Attitudes, and Child Expulsion Risk

• In Event: Trauma-Informed Practice as an Equitable Practice in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose: Early childhood trauma has been linked to increased risk for preschool behavioral problems, conflictual student-teacher relationships, and even expulsion. Trauma-informed (TI) school interventions developed for older children are linked to improved behaviors and reduced expulsion rates. It is not yet known through what mechanisms TI interventions influence school discipline nor whether TI approaches similarly benefit young children, particularly those disproportionately targeted by exclusionary discipline, such as Black, Latinx, and American Indian students.

Perspective: TI attitudes include an awareness of and confidence in responding to children’s trauma-related behaviors. TI attitudes may equip teachers to better understand and address challenging behaviors, potentially influencing their response to these behaviors and disrupting pathways to expulsion. It is unclear whether TI attitudes also disrupt implicit biases, which can negatively shape teachers’ attributions of student behavior based on race.

Methods: The current study examines the relationship between teachers’ TI attitudes, stress, and child expulsion risk using online survey data from 129 preschool teachers recruited from five Head Start programs in the Mountain West. TI attitudes were measured using the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care scale (ARTIC; Baker et al., 2016) and general stress was measured using the Single-Item Stress Question (SISQ; Elo et al., 2003). Three indicators of expulsion risk (classroom disruption, fear of accountability, and child-related stress) found to significantly predict actual expulsion were measured using the Preschool Expulsion Risk Measure (PERM; Gilliam & Reyes, 2018) for the student each teacher identified as having the most challenging behaviors in their classroom. Multivariate multiple regression and multigroup analyses were run in MPlus. Covariates in the overall model included child race/ethnicity and gender.

Results: In the whole group model, overall stress predicted higher classroom disruption (B = .38, p < .001) and fear of accountability (B = .33, p < .001), and higher TI attitudes predicted lower fear of accountability (B = -.25, p < .001) and child-related stress (B = -.47, p < .001). In the multigroup model, several pathways differed significantly using parameter testing. For children of color, overall stress predicted higher classroom disruption (B = .62, p < .001) and fear of accountability (B = .60, p < .001). For non-Hispanic white children stress was not significantly related to expulsion risk, and TI attitudes were significantly related to lower fear of accountability (B = -.36, p =- .001) and child-related stress (B = -.55, p < .001).
Significance: It is generally assumed that TI approaches are protective for all students, however these study findings suggest that TI attitudes may provide a buffer against indicators of expulsion risk for white students but not for students of color. Instead, in this study teacher stress was significantly related to higher expulsion risk for students of color. Teacher’s implicit biases may interfere with the protective nature of TI attitudes, and stress may exacerbate the influence of these biases. Given the increasing focus on TI practices within educational systems, it is important that TI approaches address bias and racism to disrupt racial disparities and positively benefit all students.

Author

• Alysse Loomis, University of Utah