“It feels like trying to be emotionally available inside a pressure cooker” Exploring secondary school staff experiences of trauma-informed practice in England and Wales

Collinson, Eleanor 2025. “It feels like trying to be emotionally available inside a pressure cooker” Exploring secondary school staff experiences of trauma-informed practice in England and Wales. DEdPsy Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Aim This thesis explores how secondary school staff in England and Wales perceive and experience the implementation of trauma-informed practice (TIP). The study responds to calls to better understand educator experiences of TIP, particularly the lack of UK-based research focused on secondary schools and the need to understand how social, political, and ideological factors influence educators' interpretations of TIP. Two research questions guide the inquiry: (1) What are the perceptions and experiences of secondary school staff in England and Wales who implement a trauma-informed approach in their practice? (2) How might these experiences be influenced by wider contextual factors such as social and political ideologies? Method Adopting a critical realist ontology and a social constructionist epistemology, the research employed a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with ten secondary school staff from a range of roles and school types across England and Wales. Participants were purposively sampled based on their completion of formal trauma-informed training through Trauma-informed Schools UK (TISUK). Ethical approval was secured, and all data were collected and managed in accordance with university policy. Analysis Data were analysed using a combined approach of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) and Critical Thematic Analysis (CTA). Braun and Clarke’s (2022) six-step framework was employed, with additional emphasis on identifying discursive patterns of power and ideology as suggested by Lawless and Chen (2019). Open and closed coding strategies were used to generate themes that reflected both participant meaning-making and the sociopolitical conditions shaping their practice. Conclusions Findings revealed a deep commitment to relational and compassionate pedagogy among participants, alongside tensions with performative accountability systems, rigid behaviour policies, and inconsistent leadership support. Participants often experienced internal conflict between trauma-informed values and institutional pressures or expectations. The influence of broader ideologies such as neoliberalism and adultism was evident in how staff described their work and its challenges. The study contributes original insights into the contextual complexities of implementing trauma-informed approaches in secondary schools and offers implications for educational psychology, whole-school reform, and staff wellbeing. A practitioner-facing framework: the Relational Regulation Framework (RRF)- is proposed to help bridge trauma-informed theory with trauma-informed practice in schools.

Item Type:	Thesis (DEdPsy)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 August 2025
Last Modified:	06 Aug 2025 09:22
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/180274

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