Trauma-informed Practice for Learning Design

A quick shout-out to Hanne Decat and Angela Page for leading a thoughtful discussion on trauma-informed learning design for Crack’n LnD Down Under in early November 2025. Their session sparked many of my reflections here.

No one is immune to trauma.

Dr Lou Cozolino

What is trauma?

When the brain’s usual coping mechanisms are overwhelmed by a perceived threat, the experience can leave emotional, psychological, and physiological effects — trauma.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after someone experiences or witnesses a traumatic event — such as an accident, assault, natural disaster, or violence.

It’s characterised by ongoing distress well after the event has passed. Common symptoms include:

• Intrusive memories or flashbacks of the event (often ‘triggered’ by being reminded of the event)
• Avoidance of reminders of the trauma (which may seem sensible, but can cause real difficulty in navigating day-to-day life, depending on the triggers)
• Negative changes in mood or thinking, such as guilt, fear, or emotional numbness
• Hyperarousal, including being easily startled, on edge, or having difficulty sleeping.

How common is PTSD?

According to the 2002 report of Te Rau Hinengaro: The New Zealand Mental Health Survey, the official twelve-month prevalence of PTSD is 3% of New Zealanders and 1.3% of Australians. New Zealand life-time prevalence of PTSD is given as 6%. Beyond Blue gives the current Australian rates as 12% for life-time and 6% for twelve-month prevalence.

It’s common. More common than red hair.

What types of trauma cause PTSD?

Whether an event is traumatic depends on many factors, like age, context, and available support. The same event may leave one person with PTSD but create no long-term problems for someone else.

The main causes of PTSD seem to be car accidents, assault (sexual or otherwise), war, natural disasters, and childbirth. Serious injuries carry about an 18% chance of PTSD, and childbirth somewhere in the range of 1.5–6%.

1. Acute or single-event trauma – such as an accident or assault.
   It has been estimated that about 75% of people experience at least one potentially traumatic event in their lifetime (AIHW).
2. Complex or repeated trauma – ongoing exposure, often to violence or abuse. The global rate for this is 6.2%, stemming mostly from clinical work, military experience, or abuse.
3. Intergenerational or collective trauma – shared trauma that affects generations or entire communities.

Different people respond differently to similar experiences, depending on their resilience and the support available to them.

Vicarious trauma is the emotional strain of being repeatedly exposed to others’ trauma. (Did you notice above that clinicians have high PTSD rates?)

How trauma can affect learning

Trauma affects how our brains process information.

Our amygdala (the part of the brain that detects danger) can remain overactive, and areas responsible for reasoning and memory may become less active. (This lack of activity is literal — the amygdala gets more blood flow, and the areas that do reasoning and memory get less.

We shift from rational thinking to instinctive responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. This is not a choice; if we perceive imminent danger, the blood flows in the brain shift automatically and rapidly.

This influences:

• Attention and concentration
• Comprehension and memory
• Problem-solving and abstract thinking
• Organisation and ability to follow instructions
• Willingness to learn and capacity to be present.

The window of tolerance

The window of tolerance refers to the range between hyperarousal and hypoarousal — the optimal zone for functioning and learning.

People with trauma histories often have a narrower window of tolerance, and triggers can push them into hyperarousal (fight or flight) or hypoarousal (freeze or fawn).

All of this obviously affects more than just learning, but as learning designers, we need to be aware of how trauma will be affecting some of the people we are trying to support.

When someone is triggered, they are not in a learning state. Their brain is focused on safety, not new information. So this isn’t just a wellbeing issue — it’s a core learning design issue. If our learners can’t engage, we aren’t being effective.

Why this matters for learning designers

It’s the same principle discussed in my previous post on the ethics of learning design: we are responsible for designing experiences that do no harm, protect learners’ dignity, and support genuine learning. Trauma-aware practice isn’t an optional extra; it’s a necessary part of learning design.

Grounding and presence-building techniques can help restore balance. If a learner ‘freezes’ or dissociates, stepping away may be the safest and most respectful option.

However, returning people to their window of tolerance takes time, and effort. And it may simply not be possible, especially within the constraints of workplace training. Far more effective is to avoid pushing people outside their window of tolerance in the first place.

And to do that, we need to be consciously thinking about how our learning activities might stress learners who differ from ourselves. Designing learning with a trauma-informed lens means actively seeking to empathise with our learners and to recognise that they are almost never coming to learning activities without their own baggage. It’s our job to help them learn, not to over-challenge or to use shock tactics to get people to pay attention.

What can we do?

Principles for trauma-aware practice

1. Provide information ahead of time.
2. Offer choice, and never shame someone for choosing not to engage.
3. Show empathy and respect.
4. Respond appropriately to disclosures, monitor for signs of distress, and follow up when appropriate.
5. Remember that we are designing for real people, not just ‘learners’.

Scenario choice and content warnings

Content warnings are not about avoiding difficult conversations — they’re about supporting people to approach them safely. When learners know what’s coming, they can prepare emotionally and decide how to engage. That preparation expands the window of tolerance, allowing more effective learning. The same goes for choosing emotionally safe scenarios for activities, especially in self-study, where there is no one to help if someone encounters triggering content.

A good example of these came up a few years back when I was designing health and safety training for search and rescue teams. Many of those learners had taken part in searches that didn’t end with lives saved, or where people were injured. We were aiming to help people learn about the importance of reporting near-misses, as well as actual incidents, as well as ensuring they knew what to do if one of their team needed support after a traumatic event. The learning activity was a self-study e-learning module.

We built clear content warnings into the module overview, and explained how to opt out or seek support if necessary. And for the near-miss activity, we chose a minor incident, where no one was permanently injured. It didn’t dilute the realism—it simply created safety for people to process and reflect, focusing on the learning point, not on managing emotional responses to the scenario.

Caring for the whole team — designers as well as learners

A few years back, I worked on a project where the subject matter was so distressing that our own design team began to feel its effects. We had to pause, debrief, and rework the content with more distance. That experience reminded me that trauma-aware practice applies to us as creators, too.

Trauma-aware design protects everyone in the learning ecosystem. Good content warnings, predictable structure, and empathy in design are what make learning both ethical and effective.

Summary

• Trauma-informed practice is not about treating trauma, but recognising that anyone may carry it.
• Designing to protect learners with trauma should be a standard part of ethical practice in learning design.
• Learning spaces can unintentionally cause harm, so ‘first do no harm’ applies here too.
• If learners are triggered, they aren’t learning — so trauma-aware design is both the right thing to do and essential for real learning outcomes.
• Facilitators and designers alike need care, reflection, and support to sustain trauma-aware practice.
• Approach every learning interaction with empathy, predictability, and choice.