Abstract:
This paper explores the role of a positive education paradigm in trauma-informed classrooms for students who have experienced complex trauma resulting from neglect, abuse, violence or being witness to violence, or disrupted attachment. Existing trauma-informed education focuses on repairing regulatory abilities and repairing disrupted attachment in students. However, a dual-continua model of mental health suggests that repairing illness is only part of the education response needed to create wellbeing in trauma-affected students. Thus, this paper develops the Trauma-Informed Positive Education (TIPE) approach that seeks to increase psychological resources in strengths-based domains with the potential to promote posttraumatic growth from trauma and adversity. The TIPE model proposes three domains of learning needed to foster student outcomes: repairing regulatory abilities, repairing disrupted attachment, and increasing psychological resources. We hypothesize that these three domains support each other in interactive, synergistic ways to create effects that are greater than simply adding the three domains together. The TIPE model will make a contribution to research in positive education, positive psychology, and traumatology; with the applied context of assisting classroom teachers and school-based practitioners to meet the complex behavioural, cognitive, and relational needs of young people struggling in schools.