School Psychology, Trauma-Informed Practice and Sustainable Learning Environments

Background

Organized as part of the 7th International Conference on Educational Innovation and Psychological Insights (ICEIPI 2026), this symposium explores practical strategies to bridge trauma-informed practice and educator wellbeing for sustainable school environments. Across many education systems, school staff are experiencing rising levels of stress, burnout, and workforce attrition. Increasingly complex student needs, workload pressures, behavioural challenges, and high accountability demands have intensified the emotional and cognitive load placed on educators and school leaders. At the same time, schools are more widely recognising the impact of trauma on student learning, behaviour, and engagement, leading to a growing adoption of trauma informed approaches. Teaching staff are expected to meet complex needs often without sufficient time, training, or systemic support. This has created a critical tension: schools are being asked to become more responsive and relational, yet many educators are operating in environments where their own sense of safety, capacity, and wellbeing is compromised.

Goal/Rationale

The goal of the symposium is to help schools consider ideas to move from a state of strain and burnout to one of sustainability, safety, intentional practice and, balance. When staff are balanced, both adults and students can thrive within trauma informed environments. The aim is to bridge the gap between understanding and action by equipping schools with practical, sustainable strategies that support both staff wellbeing and trauma informed practices to reduce burnout. Ultimately, the summit aims to build capacity for sustainable change, ensuring that wellbeing and trauma-informed practices are not reactive responses but embedded, enduring features of school environments.

Scope

The theme “From Burnout to Balance” reflects a central theme of the recognition that staff wellbeing and student outcomes are deeply interconnected. Trauma informed schools cannot be achieved without first ensuring that educators themselves experience psychological safety, manageable workloads, and organisational support.

This summit therefore focuses on identifying practical, evidence based strategies that help schools to reduce burnout; build environments that feel safe and predictable for staff; and embed trauma informed practices in ways that are sustainable.

Themes that will be covered include:

• Psychological and Physical Safety in Schools including Post-Crisis responses for recovery
• Understanding Staff Burnout and Workforce Sustainability
• Trauma-Informed Educational Practices in the classroom
• Leadership and Positive Organisational Culture
• Systems, Policy, and Structural Factors
• Inclusion, Family and Student voice
• Measuring Impact and Implementation using data
• Future directions in trauma-informed schools

Publication

Accepted papers of the symposium will be published in Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media (Print ISSN 2753-7048), and will be submitted to Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI), Crossref, CNKI, Portico, Google Scholar and other databases for indexing. The situation may be affected by factors among databases like processing time, workflow, policy, etc.

* The papers will be exported to production and publication on a regular basis. Early-registered papers are expected to be published online earlier.

This symposium is organized by ICEIPI 2026 and it will independently proceed the submission and publication process.