Chapter 8: Engaging Vulnerable Children in Education: The Role of Professional Learning to Support Leaders and Teachers

Many schools and educators are working in communities that are contending with educational inequity with aims to support students identified as trauma-affected. Students are presenting at school with significant unmet learning and social-emotional needs. This trend has only been exacerbated during COVID-19 with socio-economic inequalities being further entrenched in communities experiencing disadvantage. One of the critical conversations in teacher education is teacher retention and the role of professional learning in schools to assist leaders and teachers to manage and thrive in these changing and complex contexts. This chapter will explore professional learning for teachers and school personnel in trauma-informed positive education (TIPE) delivered in a low socio-economic school over a period of five years. Through the provision of professional learning and subsequent implementation of TIPE processes and practices, leaders, teachers, and support staff worked with students to enable them to be ready to learn. We will draw on evidence from interviews with school personnel to outline the professional learning process based on an action research approach and the impact this professional learning had on their pedagogical practices. In addition, evidence from interviews with students as well as existing school data will show the positive change in wellbeing and learning environments for these vulnerable children. Research into these programmes and schools identifies that, with support from targeted professional learning, schools can support their most vulnerable students to be ready to learn and engaged in school.