Burns, AmyHoworun, Nina2021-09-152021-09-152021-08Howorun, N. (2021). Pre-service teacher attitudes relevant to trauma-informed practice (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113875Childhood trauma is widely acknowledged to be a leading cause of a diverse range of physical, biological, psychological, and social-emotional impairments, and these factors undoubtedly have an impact on students’ abilities to thrive academically and socially. However, while pre-service teachers are an important stakeholder group as future teachers, there is limited research on their perceptions of students demonstrating symptoms of traumatic stress and related trauma-informed practices/care (TIP/TIC). This study focused on pre-service teacher familiarity and attitudes regarding childhood trauma and TIP, through two main research questions: 1) What are pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards TIP? and 2) Amongst the variables of age, gender, racial/ethnic identity, knowledge/familiarity with childhood trauma, knowledge/familiarity with TIP, and support for TIP, are there statistical group differences in ARTIC-35 mean scores? This study utilized the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) scale, an instrument developed to evaluate TIC-relevant attitudes of staff working in settings serving individuals with histories of trauma. Online survey data was gathered from (N = 70) participants recruited from the Bachelor of Education programs of four Alberta universities. Overall ARTIC-35 mean scores were calculated, and a series of one-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVAs), a Mann-Whitney U test, and independent samples t-tests were run using SPSS Version 26. Results showed that pre-service teachers demonstrated favourable attitudes towards TIC, 100% wanted to learn more about TIP, and there were statistically significant group differences between the variables of “familiarity with childhood trauma” and “familiarity with TIP” with overall ARTIC-35 mean scores. Additionally, four interconnected themes were developed using open-ended question data, including: 1) teachers should understand the underlying/root cause of students’ behaviours to improve their teaching practices; 2) knowledge of trauma and TIP could enhance empathic responses to problematic behaviour; 3) knowledge of trauma and TIP could contribute to teachers feeling better prepared to support students who exhibit symptoms of trauma; and 4) trauma in the classroom is inevitable, and teachers must have the knowledge and skills to address symptoms of trauma and create a safe learning environment. The study concludes with a discussion of ethical considerations, implications related to the findings, and directions for further research.University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Educational Psychologymaster thesis10.11575/PRISM/39201