Co-Creating a District-Wide Professional Development Program and Implementation Model for Trauma-Informed Schools

Research practice partnerships (RPP) between schools and researchers present a promising approach to co-creating scalable professional development for trauma-informed schools. This study used an RPP to develop an implementation model for a trauma-informed professional development program across 15 schools in a major urban school district. The primary study goal was to describe the RPP’s co-design processes used to develop and mount a large-scale professional development program with accompanying implementation supports. A secondary goal was to provide representative case examples of feedback loops for real-time improvements to the implementation strategies. A rapid mixed methods approach drawing on the principles of developmental evaluation was used to collect implementation process data including RPP team meeting notes and documents, informal discussions, training and survey completion reports, attendance, and implementation workshop exit tickets. These data were triangulated to conduct preliminary analyses which were then presented to RPP team members for collaborative review. Results highlighted seven co-designed elements of the TISE implementation support system—engaging and supporting school leadership, implementation teams, live and asynchronous training, ongoing consultation, delivering practical resources, relationship building, and continuous improvement. Exemplar feedback loops highlighted immediate improvements to implementation resources via exit tickets and enhanced strategies for building long-term school-level team effectiveness and engagement via attendance tracking.