ECED 142 - Trauma Informed Principles and Practices in Early Childhood Education

Credits: 3
An introductory course on trauma informed care for early learning professionals including teachers, home visitors, and others. Topics include defining trauma in early childhood, its implications on the developing brain and the effect it has on children’s learning and behavior. We will identify and explore individual, family and community trauma and their associated protective factors. We will explore the principles, strategies, and skills a trauma informed care provider can apply in early childhood programs.

Enrollment Requirement: Instructor permission. Recommended: Completion of ECED 141 with 2.0 or higher

Course Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

Define trauma as well as different types of trauma including, but not limited to, adverse childhood experiences.
Explain how trauma changes the brain and affects development, relationships, self-regulation, learning, and behavior.
Design environments that provide a sense of emotional safety, promote social emotional development, and build resilience and healing for all children.
Develop tools and strategies to better understand and connect with children who have experienced trauma and guide them on a path to healing.
Identify nurturing interaction attributes that promote healing and social emotional wellness.
Describe links between early toxic stress and trauma, learning, and lifelong health, and ways to respond to the needs of young children who have experienced trauma.

College-wide Outcomes

Critical Thinking - Critical thinking finds expression in all disciplines and everyday life. It is characterized by an ability to reflect upon thinking patterns, including the role of emotions on thoughts, and to rigorously assess the quality of thought through its work products. Critical thinkers routinely evaluate thinking processes and alter them, as necessary, to facilitate an improvement in their thinking and potentially foster certain dispositions or intellectual traits over time.
Responsibility - Responsibility encompasses those behaviors and dispositions necessary for students to be effective members of a community. This outcome is designed to help students recognize the value of a commitment to those responsibilities which will enable them to work successfully individually and with others.