Hannah Grossman

Trauma-informed instruction has expanded awareness of how safety, relationships, and emotional experience shape learning. However, despite growing recognition of these factors, instructional design frameworks offer limited guidance for defining, examining, or intentionally designing for them—particularly in learning environments that require complex, collaborative reasoning. This session explores learning climate as a critical extension of trauma-informed approaches in learning experience design.

Learning climate is conceptualized as a dynamic, designable system of relational and emotional conditions that shapes how learners coordinate perspectives, engage in shared problem-solving, and construct meaning together. Drawing on examples from professional learning contexts, the session examines how elements such as psychological safety, shared understandings, and structured interaction influence the cognitive and relational demands of collaborative reasoning.

Participants will reflect on how trauma-informed principles are currently enacted in their own settings and consider how these principles can be translated into more deliberate design choices. The session invites discussion of how learning climate can be intentionally shaped to support rigorous collaboration and complex learning across diverse contexts.