Postsecondary learners represent a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and life experiences. Many postsecondary students are navigating past, ongoing, or new trauma that impacts their learning. With the right support—often called trauma-informed practices—learners can persist and succeed in postsecondary education regardless of their exposure to trauma. Learning environments informed by consideration of trauma benefit all students—those with a known history of trauma, those whose trauma is unidentified, and those who may be impacted by relating to classmates who have experienced trauma.

To help postsecondary educators, student services professionals, and administrators create positive learning environments, we updated a guide first developed in 2017. The updated version, Trauma- and Resilience-Informed Practices for Postsecondary Education, adds information about how basic needs intersect with trauma. It also includes discussion questions to help teams apply its content to their own context. Finally, the updated guide adds more focus on resilience, a strengths-based approach that reflects the evolution of the field since the original was published.

A Holistic Approach

It's important for everyone in a postsecondary context to know how trauma can affect students, so they can work together to create positive environments. Trauma-informed practices work best when people in different campus roles collaborate in a holistic approach. Whether they’re directly providing student services, making decisions at an administrative level, or even designing campus facilities, everyone working in postsecondary education can contribute to these positive and supportive learning environments.

Faculty members and instructors

For faculty members and instructors, the guide can help develop syllabi and instructional approaches that reflect the core principles of trauma-informed practices. It can also help educators understand how students engage in academic environments and learn to recognize and respond to vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and re-traumatization.

Student services professionals

The guide can help student services professionals design wellness, basic needs, and other services to reflect these same core principles. It can also help with the important task of normalizing the access and use of such services and build staff capacity to recognized and respond to trauma cues.

Trauma-informed practices work best when people in different campus roles collaborate in a holistic approach.

Administrators

Finally, administrators can find strategies in the guide to assess policies and their impacts, ensure that student voice and choice are centered, and plan facilities that reflect the core principles of trauma-informed practices.

The 4 Rs—Key Assumptions in a Trauma-Informed Approach

Trauma- and Resilience-Informed Practices for Postsecondary Education: A Guide is organized around four key assumptions identified by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA): realize, recognize, respond, and resist re-traumatization.

Realize

The guide provides critical context on trauma and resilience, how they show up in society, and how they affect learning. This includes the understanding that people are more than what has happened to them and that ideas about trauma have changed over time.

Recognize

With that context in hand, users of the guide will learn about trauma in the context of postsecondary education. The diversity of postsecondary student experiences is key here—learners may have experienced trauma in different ways and at different times in their lives.

Respond

This part of the guide addresses how educators, administrators, and service providers can create trauma-informed postsecondary learning environments. It includes strategies aligned to SAMHSA’s six core principles of trauma-informed practice:

• Safety
• Trustworthiness and transparency
• Peer support and mutual self-help
• Collaboration and mutuality
• Empowerment, voice, and choice
• Culture, gender, and historical issues

Resist Re-traumatization

The fourth part of the guide offers information on managing vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue, which can affect educators and others as they work to create and sustain positive learning environments.

Putting Ideas into Practice

Trauma- and Resilience-Informed Practices for Postsecondary Education: A Guide offers a wealth of information for postsecondary educators, service providers, and administrators. Above all, it includes strategies and discussion questions to help people in each of these roles put the ideas into practice. By implementing evidence-based, trauma- and resilience-informed practices, postsecondary institutions can create the learning environments all learners need to successfully pursue their education and career goals.

Shannon Davidson is a leader at Education Northwest and a former classroom educator. She is passionate about helping schools and other learning environments support students’ sense of belonging and provide the resources they need to learn and grow. She is also dedicated to supporting partners in translating evidence into systems-level change.