Citizen Leader Lab recently brought together Dr Leandi Erasmus and Tracy Winde for a conversation on trauma-informed education and what it means for learners, teachers and school leaders. Erasmus is a researcher and practitioner whose work explores childhood adversity, neurodevelopment and adaptation. Winde is the founder of HeartShine, a non-profit supporting children affected by trauma, and works at the intersection of trauma-informed and somatic approaches to wellbeing.
As we observe World Trauma Day on 17 October, one question from that conversation feels particularly relevant: What can trauma-informed education teach us about learning and leading?
It pushes us to look differently at what happens in schools. Like most institutions, schools tend to organise themselves around what can be seen. A learner may be withdrawn, disruptive or unable to concentrate, while the adults around them are trying to keep the school functioning. In that moment, the visible behaviour becomes the starting point for the solution.
But what manifests as inappropriate behaviour often has a history.
Speaking to school leaders, teachers, parents and others working across the education system, Dr Erasmus invited participants to be wary of reducing a child to their behaviour and to consider the experiences that may have influenced it. She pointed to poverty, neglect, parental absence, separation and the absence of secure attachment, all of which can alter how a child experiences and responds to the world around them.
Drawing on her research, Dr Erasmus explained that children adapt to the environments they inhabit, and what may seem like an abnormal response in one setting can make sense when we understand the environment in which it developed.
She explained that these adaptations can be interpreted differently in a classroom. Vigilance, for example, may be mistaken for distraction, quick reactions for aggression, and emotional distance for disengagement. What once helped a child cope may, in another environment, be seen as behaviour that needs to change.
The same principle applies to the adults. Winde described teachers and principals as constantly ‘’managing the collective nervous system of their communities.’’ This is an important consideration because the people responsible for creating supportive learning environments are also affected by the pressures within them. They face immense workloads and uncertainty, with expectations and pressures of their own, while being asked to provide stability and safety for others.
This is where the conversation becomes a leadership one. If a learner’s behaviour can be understood in relation to their circumstances, then it follows that we should also consider what influences how teachers teach and how leaders lead.
For Citizen Leader Lab, these insights reinforce the importance of transformational leadership development in schools. Leaders influence not only how decisions are made, but also the environments in which learners and educators work, learn and grow.
Leadership is not only decision-making or problem solving. It is about the culture leaders cultivate. That means paying attention to the quality of relationships, whether people feel heard, whether trust can develop and whether mistakes can become opportunities for learning. It also means resisting the urge to locate the problem in the person before considering the environment around them.
All of this brings us back to an important question: Before asking someone to change, have we considered the environment in which they are learning, working or leading?
In schools, this question applies to learners, teachers, school leaders, parents and communities alike.
A trauma-informed approach to education asks us to look beyond individual behaviour and consider the circumstances and environments that shape it.
www.citizenleaderlab.org
