Improving Evaluations of Trauma-Informed Professional Development in Early Care and Education Settings Through Observational Measures

Trauma-informed approaches are increasingly being integrated within early care and education (ECE) settings due to the plethora of research linking adversity and trauma in early childhood (e.g., maltreatment, violence, and racial discrimination) to children’s social-emotional, behavioral, and academic well-being. However, despite widespread use of observational measures to assess ECE classroom and instructional quality, there is no existing observational measure of trauma-informed teaching practices or guidance on integrating existing measures of observational practices into evaluations of trauma-informed ECE approaches. The current conceptual article describes the need for an observational measure of trauma-informed teaching practices and identifies several recommendations for incorporating existing observational measures into trauma-informed ECE research.