From burden to adaptation: Evolving constructions of trauma in the early childhood education and care literature

Early childhood trauma is widely experienced and can lead to diverse outcomes. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) educators are expected to implement trauma-informed approaches as a strategy to reduce potential negative outcomes of trauma experiences. This requirement, however, assumes that there is agreement on meanings of trauma and that educators can implement trauma-informed approaches. As the first step to exploring this assumption, this article aims to identify how trauma is constructed in the international ECEC literature. The article reports findings from a scoping literature review that yielded 63 relevant sources. With analyses of the literature conducted thematically from a constructivist paradigm, constructions of trauma were found to be predominantly shaped by prevailing Western discourses from fields including medicine and child protection, with limited perspectives from early childhood education. Furthermore, trauma was constructed in five different ways across a spectrum of deficit- and strengths-based positionings: trauma as burden, trauma as risk, trauma as conditional, trauma as injustice and trauma as adaptation. The findings highlight under-recognised contestations in how trauma is conceptualised and provide insights into how constructions of trauma might align with trauma-informed education.