The paradox of using trauma informed practices in mainstream schools: a psycho-social exploration of educators’ experiences

This thesis presents an exploratory study grounded in psycho-social ontology and epistemology, utilising qualitative methodology to investigate the unconscious and systemic influences on educators’ experience and use of trauma-informed practices in mainstream schools. Employing Organisation in the Mind (OiM) drawings and Free Association Narrative Interviews (FANI) for data collection and Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) for data analysis, the research identifies five interconnected themes. These are Emotional labour in being trauma-informed, Integral role of relational practice, Personal and professional identity, Having sufficient knowledge, and Internal systems and surrounding contexts. Through the application of a psychodynamic lens, the study discusses various defence mechanisms: splitting, projection, transference, countertransference, and projective identification. Additionally, systemic and systems-psychodynamic concepts including positioning, circular causality, social defences and basic assumption behaviours are explored. The implications for practice highlight the importance of re-emphasising the relational aspect of trauma-informed practices to mitigate unconscious anxieties among educators. Findings also suggest implications for Educational Psychologists (EPs) in designing and facilitating training programmes focused on trauma and associated practices, aiming to enhance educators' understanding and awareness of unconscious and systemic processes when using trauma-informed pedagogies. The study also highlights a number of paradoxes whereby educators, when engaging in trauma-informed practices, experience heightened emotions and relational disruption and do so within a system that is not designed to hold the emotional and relational complexities present within it. This creates more complexity within the system and perpetuates the paradoxes. To address this, a systemic shift within education is proposed, advocating for the widespread implementation of containing spaces to help alleviate the paradoxes and support educators in their use of relational, trauma-informed practice.