Creating Trauma-Informed Classrooms and Testaments That Trauma-Exposed Students Can Learn

Abstract Book of the 10th World Conference on Future of Education

Year: 2026

[PDF]

Creating Trauma-Informed Classrooms and Testaments That Trauma-Exposed Students Can Learn

Brianna Kramer Mills, Brianna Elizabeth Mills

ABSTRACT:

This essay addresses the controversy regarding the need for public education reform that consists of revolution, or transformation, rather than evolution, or development. Recognizing a need for trauma-informed classrooms that support students’ socioemotional development and thus learning, this essay advocates for revolutionizing education. To convince readers that socioemotional support and an education revolution is needed, this essay begins by explaining how students learn. Students learn by: actively processing information, actively storing information, or constructing their memory through sustained attention and encoding processes, and interacting and collaborating with others. Furthermore, environmental factors, especially the microsystem, play a huge role in students’ learning and development. After unpacking how students learn, this essay moves on to explaining how trauma affects student learning, defining trauma, traumatic events, and traumatic experiences, and ultimately arguing that trauma affects students’ microsystems and relational skills as well as students’ attention and memory, and consequently, students’ learning. To help students exposed to trauma to learn, this essay proposes implementing a trauma-informed classroom that supports students’ socioemotional development. The last section of this essay focuses on four ways to create a trauma-informed classroom: increasing teachers’ awareness and training on trauma; promoting a safe, supportive, and caring classroom environment; building students’ socioemotional skills, or resilience, self-regulation, and relational capacities; and finally, reforming the education models we are using and revolutionizing education.

Keywords: Student Learning; Students Exposed to Trauma; Revolutionizing Education; Socioemotional Development; Trauma-Informed Classroom