In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. As a result, teacher preparation programs faced an immediate shift from face-to-face instruction and field experiences to virtual learning with little lead time. This chapter presents a trauma-informed community of inquiry (CoI) framework with a specific focus on teacher preparation. It offers insights for course revision, pedagogy and instruction, and interactions with students during these unprecedented times through examining implementation and collaboration efforts within two programs.
TopIntroduction
In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, a worldwide pandemic. Preventive measures to combat the spread of the virus in the United States (U.S.) included statewide shutdowns of school buildings and institutes of higher education. A noted challenge of COVID-19 related shutdowns for teacher preparation programs was the immediate, emergency shift from face to face instruction and field-based experiences to extended periods of remote and/or virtual learning. With little lead time and preparation, faculty were asked to do the best they could to ensure they provided students with high-quality synchronous and/or asynchronous learning experiences. For many institutes of higher education, faculty and course instructors are again faced with the task of preservice teacher preparation in an almost entirely digital space as the new academic school year has begun. This time, though, we are equipped with the lessons learned from previous semesters.
Even under typical circumstances, teaching and learning in online or virtual spaces is inherently complex (Akyol et al., 2009). Designing sound online instruction is a process that takes months, if not years, to do well (Gardner, 2020). Even without the affordance of time, decades of research on online learning (e.g., Lee, 2018; Liu 2012; Lloyd & Cochrane 2006; Wood 2007) provide important guidance for the transition to remote, virtual learning taking place across many institutes of higher education in terms of effective practice in the digital space.
One of the most well-known and frequently used interdisciplinary frameworks for effective online teaching is the Community of Inquiry (CoI; Garrison et al., 1999). The CoI framework (see Figure 1) is a collaboratively-based and constructivist-driven model aimed to create a learning environment that includes social, cognitive, and teaching presence characteristics (Garrison et al., 1999). Collaboration is the foundation for a shared inquiry in which higher order thinking is expected and fostered in a CoI, such as this framework.
Figure 1. The Community of Inquiry framework
The CoI framework is designed to respond to the unique barriers embedded within the online learning experience. Richardson and Lowenthal (2017) cautioned that students in online courses continue to be more susceptible to feelings of isolation and detachment from peers and faculty. Therefore, the authors emphasize teacher social presence (i.e., the quality, type, and frequency of instructor-student interactions; Richardson & Lowenthal, 2017) as one critical component of CoI to address these concerns. Despite courses shifting to an online space, elements of rigor remain, thus contributing to the growing recognition for the importance of teaching presence in promoting CoI (Garrison et al., 1999). That is, there is a need to critically examine the design, facilitation, and direct instruction within a course (Garrison, 2007). Remote, virtual teaching under the backdrop of COVID-19 may exacerbate these challenges for students and instructors, and thus, this context yields additional considerations related to trauma not yet fully captured by the CoI framework alone.
We believe that teaming CoI and trauma-informed educational practices (Harris & Fallot, 2005) is a necessary step for teacher educators conducting remote instruction with teacher candidates in these troubling times. Therefore, the purpose of this proposed chapter is two-fold. First, we make the case for a trauma-informed CoI framework with a specific focus on teacher preparation programs. In doing so, we draw parallels across the concepts to offer new insights to guide course revision/development, pedagogy and instruction, and interactions with students during unprecedented times. Second, we share how cross-program collaboration was used to plan virtual, remote instruction in our respective courses guided by this framework. We provide specific examples of how application of a trauma-informed community of inquiry framework (re)shaped an undergraduate elementary education course on teaching methods and undergraduate early childhood education internship and practicum seminars.
TopThe Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines trauma as: