Supporting The Teaching of Action Research (STAR) ARNA-STAR-C - November 2022 Newsletter

EDITORS: TERI MARCOS, LINDA PURRINGTON, & CLOTILDE LOMELI AGRUEL

This is the Fall 2022 newsletter of one of the Action Research Communities (ARCs) of the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA). Our ARC is Supporting the Teaching of Action Research (STAR-c). A group of professors who teach action research have met between ARNA conferences over the last few years to think about strategies, issues, and resources to support the teaching of action research. We created a website (star-arna-arc.org) as a forum for our Learning Circle discussions (onlinelearningcircles.org) around our own teaching of action research. The website provides resources to help support the teaching of action research including supportive topics, syllabi, examples of how action research fits in different programs, and both teacher and student resources.

While we enjoyed seeing many of you at the ARNA Conference in Provo, Utah, we want to extend the discussion and invite all of you to join the STAR community. We invite your contributions to the ARNA-STAR Newsletter. Please submit short essays on any issue in the teaching of action research, your feedback on what you would like to see in the newsletter, or books, conferences, or resources you would like us to add. Please send your submissions to the STAR-ARC website at star-arna-arc.org and an editor will be in touch. We have also launched a blog to encourage more discussion around topics. Please join us at: https://actionresearchteaching.home.blog/

STAR-c members meet monthly via a virtual gathering and have discussed some of the challenges we encountered as both action researchers ourselves during the COVID-19 season (2019-2022) while fully supporting our action research students to gather and report data during COVID closures. We extend our key-learnings and particularly ongoing conversations here to our readers in terms of the strategies we are finding most helpful as related to teaching action research in a post-pandemic world, and specifically related to trauma within this issue. This edition features two articles whose authors investigated the current literature that supports meeting the needs of our action researchers from a faculty perspective of trauma informed teaching and learning. You will find Ron Morgan's article of interest as he reports on The Ongoing Effects of Trauma Exposure on Youth. And Teri Marcos provides an article related to Our Human Capacity to Anticipate and Predict While Mitigating Trauma Through Ways of Doing Work.

The Ongoing Effects of Trauma Exposure on Youth

By Ron Morgan, Ed.D

Exposure to different types of traumatic events isn’t new for school age children and adolescents, but the number of them being exposed has increased significantly over the past decade. Whether that be from traumatic exposures at school or home, or even in day-to-day activities, the increase has been extensive. Many current studies show that early traumatic events and later psychological and physical difficulties often occurs in students. Findings from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study highlighted the role of early psychological trauma in physical and mental difficulties throughout a person’s lifespan. This investigation found that early adverse experiences tend to be interrelated, and the association between the number of different types of traumas such as maltreatment/family dysfunction that were experienced in childhood and adolescence, created an astonishing array of subsequent mental health and medical conditions (Butler, L., Critelli, F., & Rinfrette, E., 2011). Because of this risk of mental health issues for students exposed to trauma it is imperative that the development of a trauma-informed care (TIC) perspective be integrated into schools.

Berliner & Kolko (2016) explain how TIC has become more common among educators due to the increased number of students exposed to trauma. They further stated that there is an increased “awareness of the prevalence and implications of childhood trauma in clinical contexts (mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice) as well as the general population.” This increased awareness can be linked to the widespread dissemination of the results of the adverse childhood experiences study on trauma conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Berliner & Kolko, 2016).

Additionally, childhood and adolescent trauma exposure can adversely impact academic performance, classroom behavior, and student relationships. Recent research has explored integrated approaches to care for traumatized students in schools. Increasingly, research findings have pointed to implementation of multi-tiered programs to trauma-informed care for traumatized students in schools. However, evaluations of these programs are limited, and very little systematic review of the existing evidence has been conducted. Hence, it is essential there to be further research, guided by empirical evidence of the effectiveness of multi-tiered and trauma-sensitive approaches in schools. Furthermore, due to the limited research on multi-tiered programs for traumatized students, additional research needs to be conducted on what often occurs to a traumatized student soon after a traumatic event.

Since students who have been exposed to trauma are coming to classrooms in greater numbers than ever before, trauma-informed teaching requires changing educators’ narratives, or the stories about how students learn and why they exhibit behaviors that are often challenging. Opening a dialogue on the perspectives for other possible explanations for these types of behaviors that might be caused by trauma, is what helps classroom teachers work more effectively with traumatized students (Berliner & Kolko, 2016).

The inconsistency in behaviors and the ability to regulate emotions and perform academically that results when the trauma response or self-protective mechanisms are activated can be confusing to parents and teachers alike. This confusion often leads to erroneous beliefs that a student or child is doing a negative behavior on purpose to irritate those around them. However, the opposite is often true, where most behaviors are a result of triggers that activate past experiences and responses ingrained in students for the purposes of survival. For educators and parents, Berliner & Kolko (2016) state it is important to remember that when demands exceed skill level, due either to the characteristics of a particular developmental stage or the impact of trauma, disengagement, quitting, and challenging behaviors may arise. In many instances, students cannot simply “leave it at the door,” as some teachers or parents may expect.

One of the questions that often arises with teachers working with traumatized students, is when are interventions the most effective? Is it immediately after a student is exposed to a traumatic event or is it days, weeks or even months after the event? Some of the current research suggests that after students are exposed to a traumatic event, they will reach a “lull” where the event becomes less impactful on their lives. However, this doesn’t mean they are necessarily coping well with the trauma. It might rather mean that they are trying to avoid or push the event out of their mind, rather than effectively coping with it.

Shevrin Venet (2021) reports that trauma-informed initiatives tend to focus on the challenging behaviors of students and ascribe them to circumstances that students are facing outside of school. This approach ignores the reality that inequity itself causes trauma, and that schools often heighten inequities when implementing trauma-informed practices that are not based in educational equity. Additionally, Shevrin Venet (2021) wants educators to be aware that trauma is a “lens not a label.” The importance of looking at trauma through a lens versus using trauma as a label is only too clear when educators or those working with children understand the harm caused by stereotypes that come from labels placed on children and adolescents. When implementing trauma-informed practices there must be a change in the lens through which educators view students who have been exposed to trauma. This lens approach will help alter trauma-informed practices and help with the understanding of how teaching and learning process are intertwined. And, once an educator’s narrative starts to change, a belief system will move towards inclusive education practices for all students.

In conclusion, today’s educators need to first and foremost be aware of the ongoing impact exposure to trauma is having on youth, regardless of where the trauma took place. From that awareness comes the understanding for the implementation of trauma-informed practices such as TIC or other effective programs. Helping educators view traumatized students through a lens, rather than a stereotypical label is essential in understanding the behavior often exhibited by these students. Through this understanding, effective approaches to help change these types of negative behaviors can begin to occur.

References

Berliner, L. & Kolko, D. (2016). Trauma Informed Care: A Commentary and Critique. Child Maltreatment vol 21(2), 168-172.

Butler, L.D., Critelli, F.M., & Rinfrette, E.S., (2011). Trauma-Informed Care and Mental Health. Directions in Psychiatry, 31,197-210.

Shevrin Venet, A. (2021). Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education. W.W. Norton, 5-8.

Our Human Capacity to Anticipate and Predict: Mitigating Trauma Through Ways of Doing Work

By Teri Marcos

Where Anticipation Lives

What we know as The Great American Pastime (or professional baseball) ended its Fall Classic (the World Series) the first weekend of November. Major League Baseball (MLB) at every level, and more specifically, its organizational layers of owners, managers, players, and fans, knows much about its overall statistical capacity to predict and anticipate the key performance indicators (KPI) of every player. MLB keeps remarkable data on each player's at bats, earned runs, errors, speed, and a plethora of additional measures that collectively, and individually, determine his success. Pitchers are provided additional statistics on strikeouts, hit pitches, and earned run averages as well as the speed with which they can hurl a fastball or the effectiveness of their slider. Major league baseball is a statistical machine that beckons the international attention of every little league coach and player to dream BIG of becoming as great as the pros.

It is traumatic to strikeout, although far more common than getting a hit. If batting .300 merits hero status (and it does) these professionals who earn millions fail seventy-percent of the time. An effective hitter builds through his thousands of 'At Bats' the remarkable human capacity to predict what is immediately coming as the pitcher winds up to throw a curveball, fastball, off-speed, knuckleball, or slider. The batter uniquely pursues an even more exhaustively honed drilldown skill as he anticipates what part of the plate the pitch might cross, inside, outside, or down the middle. The hitter then projects his amazing human cognitive capacity to anticipate the speed with which the pitch may be thrown as he skillfully aligns the timing of his bat to his prediction of the trajectory of the anticipated pitch. Tens of thousands of fans in the stands watchfully predict, anticipate, and observe both what comes out of the pitcher’s hand and the response of the batter’s timing to connect the bat to the ball. This is one of the most difficult skillsets to accurately perform with consistency on the planet. Everyone (managers, owners, players, and fans) knows the statistics on this particular hitter's capacity to predict, anticipate, and time the pitch to align perfectly to the bat. And, good pitching beats good hitting every single time. The ways of doing work exercised by MLB are based solely on KPI, as the never-ending rotation of Big Leaguers in and out of ball clubs since 1902 reveals year after year. NIH Working Life Expectancy of MLB

And, the visuals are telling. Graphs of Baseball Career Performances

Does MLB Hitting Correlate to Mitigating the Effects of Trauma?

Yes, and perhaps most adeptly through a conversation around the ways we do our work as related to the world in which we do it. We learned in our undergraduate biology and physiology courses that our human capacity to anticipate and predict is both an executive and survival brain function. We make decisions on what we know, and react to what may not be as clear through the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism of the amygdala. While, our ‘Old Brain’ equips we humans with the capacity to escape immediate danger, under longterm exposure to danger or feeling unsafe it may become suppressed as we make conscious decisions to become more comfortable with ambiguity toward our own survival. Psychology Today 1; Psychology Today 2

And, what about the children?

Comfort with ambiguity takes time to develop and our kids are showing it at school. Their lack of capacity to anticipate, predict, and time what is to come next in their lives is based on their recent experiences with COVID-19. Their emergency preparedness through COVID-19 does not suffice as a singular event in their coming to understand ambiguity particularly given the absence of their psychological capacity to anticipate, predict, and time as foundational to learning. PEW

Inasmuch as fear gripped the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic (at this writing 6.7 million deaths over a two-year span from 2020-2022 are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) a residual effect of COVID on our human psyches during our re-emergence from organizational closures appears to present itself as the trauma humans continue to encounter based on our incapacity to both predict or anticipate what may come next in our world. This may be particularly true of our children. Much literature that is specific to the effects of COVID-19 on children continues to proliferate. eric.ed.gov

As the above professional baseball hitter’s illustration of his capacity to predict, anticipate, and time a pitch to make contact with his bat is related to the vast developmental experiences he endured over years of practice, our children may feel (but may not necessarily be able to communicate) that there are no assurances, no absolutes, and no guarantees as related to their fears initiated by COVID-19. Our students simply do not share the depth of experiences and practices in life that these MLB professionals do. While, seemingly a stretch to conceive, it is possible that the notion extends to all levels and all categories of experiences as we consider our children's youthful existence as compared to the adults inhabiting the two, three, and four generations above them. We are seeing within our schools and industries COVID Kids are real and our schools are rife with teachers and administrators attempting to predict, anticipate, and time how to respond to their very specific, yet broad spectrum of needs. COVID-19 and Children's Health and Well-Being

The current struggles and challenges of COVID Kids are not at all isolated as university’s continue to encounter the same across their adult students NIH. Faculty, administration, and Offices of Student Services are attempting their very best to host brown bag lunches and Learning Circles to engage their best trauma informed thinking and strategies toward purposive social emotional responses to the teaching and learning needs of their adult students. Our consideration of the careful yet innovative ways we do work can be helpful to both the children and the adults who are preparing to be a part of the same systems.

One University’s Ways of Doing Work

To predict, anticipate, and time can be learned (even if we are not MLB players) Psycnet as one very large California university recently demonstrated through its merger with another very large university prweb.com Both are celebrating the timing of the consolidation of many programs and faculty as they innovatively ideate and strategize remarkable ways of doing work together across their industry of teaching and learning. As high-level leaders' conversations around this merger materialized during the height of the pandemic these intentionally purposive articulations were facilitated horizontally and vertically at every level of the two organizations for over a year. Key-learnings produced compellingly positive results as everyone, at every level of these now united enterprises (libraries, staff, faculty, administration, instructional designers, deans and associate deans, student success centers, admissions, and all service operations) shared their stories. Stories that were not at all unalike, but deeply enculturated and rooted while adapted over time through the prediction, anticipation, and responsive timing necessary to meet the needs of the humans across each institution. What ways of work comprised each of the two cultures? How did each of the two cultures serve their humans best?

And, what about conducting (or teaching) action research?

How can the above two very different yet very similar illustrations of MLB and the merger of two very large universities affect our capacity to predict, anticipate, and time our responsiveness as action research faculty? Not at all unlike the Big Leaguer who desires to do well on the KPI he is measured against on behalf of everyone watching, celebrating, and learning over the duration of the game, or season. It is about the ways we do our work to ensure others can predict, anticipate, and time what is to come. This is a primary hallmark of fearless organizations who champion psychological safety in the workplace.

The following five ways of doing work emerged from the vertical and horizontal university faculty, staff, and administrative conversations noted above. They were recently shared by the university president and deans to students, staff, faculty, administration, community partners, and the Board. These ways of doing work provide humans across the now merged organizations the remarkable capacity to predict, anticipate, and time self, as individuals while providing a phenomenal place of well-being and thriving to which we might aspire away from the more challenging ambiguities so closely related to the ongoing emergence of our organizations and industries across our world:

1. Championing Student Success - As our newly united institution champions student success we are committed to doing great work in a great way. It is nearly impossible to do great work in an ungreat way, or to achieve greatness through only being good. As author, Jim Collins, noted, "Good is the enemy of Great." (2017)

2. Building Trust - University leaders encourage all to aspire as a team, interact positively, be cooperative, helpful, and on time, lead without expecting others to. They encourage that our work champions our word to deed and deed to word (say what you will do and do what you say you will do). They encourage teams to create small aggregate wins, to call people in (not out) and they note that this is how communities work. Communities don't blame. They also encourage the creation of a culture of wonder "I wonder if we do this... if this will happen."

3. Advancing Inclusion - Assist humans through social-emotional learning. Be in a good place as we work together. Help each other through hard places. Create the environment you want to work in and live in... continual realm of relationships to make them better. When we look back a dozen years from now we will remember these relationships and the work we've done together. It is very inspirational. Understand the power we have with each other, to reach one another. There is a huge level of accountability in that. Growth is not a goal... helping others be successful is a goal. Be able to look to see if this is happening or not.

4. Embracing Accountability - Transparency and visibility for accountability... having hard conversations around what's working and what's not working. Shed the armor, the self-protection around us. When we're bound up and afraid we can't step into a space of curiosity. What is working, how do we shift and change this into a way that isn't as frightening is powerful and important. Build a cohort prototype and then get the feedback. We don't correct people about their perceptions, no, this is how they are feeling about it. The places where data are responded to violently merit a culture of blame. That just kills all the momentum and incredibly intelligent people can make an argument around it.

5. Making Things Better - Enjoy the strengths of each other, maturely, take off our armor. How do we improve? Acknowledge what's in place, owning the mistakes, making things better. We'll get the ability to look at what has worked in the past. It is transformative to ask, what is working? What is not working, and can we figure out a crawl, walk, run strategy? Use interpersonal skills for great work, in a great way. Build systems and processes that help the most people. Be 'We' centered, how do WE make it better, stronger, meaningful learning, while establishing that feeling that people walk away in 10 years and they say we had a great experience together. Establish that bond with individuals. People component is the most important aspect. Deeply personal, it's not what we do but a part of who we are. People can do their best work, lean in, and shine based on their strengths. This is hopeful work together. Incredible people to have the honor and be able to work with. It is a gift and an honor. Be thrilled with partnerships along the way. Embrace the story of everyone. How do we show up with innovation AND grace? What skills can we use toward inclusion... a learning tour in every interaction. We're not calling people out, we’re calling people in. From idea to impact. What is our role to make great work in a great way?

Our Human Capacity as Key-Performance Indicators Through Ways of Work

Our role to do great work in a great way directly aligns to those ways of work that manifest in our human capacity to predict, anticipate, and time what is yet to come. This will perhaps become our individual key-performance indicator. Comfort with ambiguity may very well become our victory as we endure those seasons within which everything about everything changed, or continues to change. Comfort with ambiguity may become more deeply relevant as the new normal. An overused cliche, The New Normal, for us is the old normal for every Big Leaguer who ever stood at the plate. There is a skillset professional baseball players rely on, and it can be learned, as noted above.

Our ability to predict, anticipate, and time our responsiveness to stimuli is super food to our human psyches. As we learn to ideate and generate new strategies related to our ways of work as faculty, administrators, staff, and students, we will continue to flourish and thrive within our post-COVID world. Every administrator, teacher, and school counselor can assist their students to learn these skills.

No industry is immune from KPI including professional sports. KPI establish first the objectives for the end-product desired (such as the statistical goals for overall team performance) but more, a drill down positional analysis of individuals' performance in real time. It is safe to anticipate, predict, and time stimuli while asking ourselves how the practice of each translates to performance in the moment. It matters. Where does anticipation live? It lives in all of us.

Our ways of doing work, from PreK-12 children, their teachers, counselors, administrators and communities, to the very universities who prepare them for service, is a very good place to start.

Teri Marcos, Ed.D