What is the invitation about?
As a student of UWS, we would like to invite to you take part in a focus group about learning using trauma-informed pedagogical approaches that aim to support mental health and wellbeing. This is an information sheet to give you more information about how you can help.
What is trauma-informed pedagogy?
Trauma-informed pedagogy recognises the role of trauma in the lives of students and staff when creating and delivering the curriculum. In this context, trauma can be small everyday experiences or single events that overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope.
It is important because we have all experienced trauma to varying extents. Trauma plays an important role in how we interact, perceive, behave and learn. Therefore, it is important that our teaching and learning approach is sensitive to potential trauma in order to promote health and wellbeing and support you to thrive at UWS.
Why is the research being carried out?
We know that students often report mental health-related difficulties to the staff at university. It is important that we understand from your perspective the factors that help minimise stress within a learning context.
I don’t have a mental health issue, so I’m unsure how I can help?
Your contribution is important to us whether you have or have not experienced mental health difficulties and/or stress at university. By understanding your perspective, we will be able to develop a resource that is usable and useful for all students.
We would like you to come along to a focus group on MSTeams. You will be asked to participate in a session where you will be encouraged to participate in a Nominal Group Technique (NGT) which is essentially a consensus approach that will allow us to identify the relative importance of factors related to supporting student mental health and wellbeing. Figure 1 details the process of NGT for your information.
Why are you using this approach?
We have identified the NGT as the most appropriate approach for the project aims with close alignment to the six trauma-informed principles. NGT encourages everyone the opportunity to be heard and contribute to the process equally without judgement. The structure of this method supports the coproduction of knowledge, ownership over ideas, and evidence within the literature suggests it generates more unique and high-quality ideas over alternative methods.
It will take around one and a half hours maximum.
Do I need to participate?
Your participation is voluntary and you can withdraw at any time. Please be assured the information you provide is confidential and anonymous. We will ensure no personal identifiers are used. This means the information you offer during these sessions will never be attributed to you.
What will you do with the information you collect?
We will use the data in several ways. We will record the session and carryout a simple content analysis; this is to ensure data is captured correctly and reflective of the findings. The data will also be used to inform the TIPA online resource. Data will also be published in the project reports and future publications.
Can you tell me the question we will be discussing in advance?
Yes, here is the question related to your focus group:
We aim to provide learning experiences that support student mental health and well-being by minimising the stress within learning. What would help us to do this for students studying at UWS?
How do I consent to participate?
We will ask you to consent using an online consent form and on the day of the focus group verbally.
If I have a query after I have participated or would like to find out more, who do I contact?
Please email Dr Eileen Harkess-Murphy on eileen.harkess-murphy@uws.ac.uk
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