Shark Attack... the aftermath of the bite!
I've written about this before, my love of horror movies. But I wanted to write down my thoughts after recently going to the cinema to watch a sequel production. I think what got me was how this movie was little more than a retelling of the original story but with a minor twist. I was largely a bit bored half way through. The name of the movie itself doesn't matter, I think what got me was the "sameyness" of it.
It got me thinking about one of my favourite characters from a famous shark movie. She was the wife of Martin Brodie who began as a supporting character backing up the stereotypical male hero figure, staying at home while he goes off to sea to kill the monster shark. But by the time the the fourth movie came along, Ellen was quite a different character taking to sea herself on a mission to finish it and put an end to the whole watery saga.
Apologies if this is something of a tenuous metaphor, but I think what I've realised that stuff like this changes you. Trauma changes you as a person. So, with that in mind, I found myself wondering how I've changed as a person and as a professional. The education sector has changed hugely after the impact of the covid-19 pandemic. Or has it?
Reading about the action research conducted by the College Development Network (2022) I was particularly struck by the line, "the research points to a
risk of the sector unwittingly, sliding back to preMarch 2020 design and delivery models, thus losing
much of the momentum for change." Why would anyone want to go back to the way things were? Have we not been changed by the trauma of the pandemic? Or maybe the pandemic itself wasn't the problem?
These past few weeks have been lovely being back on campus and seeing the place full of students and full of life and learning again. But with regard to my own teaching commitment, only 1 hour and 50 minutes is spent delivering what I consider to be a hybrid class whereby I have some students physically in the room with me and some students who are joining us from home. All of my other classes are face-to-face traditional teaching supplemented by some technology enhanced learning activity.
That's less than 8% of my timetable committed to hybrid teaching. I recognise this is a crude measure, but, does that mean that 92% of the risk identified by the CDN has already manifested? I think this is quite fascinating though somewhat tragic at the same time. In professional discussion with a colleague earlier this week, it's almost as if we're trying to deny that the pandemic ever happened. It's like those just like those sequel movies that simply re-tell the story of the original. Serves to do little more than get bums back on empty cinema seats.
My reading about trauma informed practice might shed some light though. What if Tinto (1993) was right? What if colleges are more than just academic institutes? If we view them as social communities then perhaps this massive swing back to face to face learning could be framed as a moral choice, prioritising the physical and mental wellbeing of staff and students over the traditional key performance indicators (KPIs). After all, evidence (Kerka, 1996; Besser and Donahue, 1996; Twigg, 1997 as cited by Rovai, 2002) points to physical distancing giving rise to feelings of disconnectedness, isolation, distraction and isolation that could cause learners to drop out of education.
But that doesn't fit because there is also evidence to suggest that learners who experience hybrid learning experience a greater sense of community than either those in face to face or purely online settings.
So what is going on? Reading recently about polyvagal theory (Porges, 2011 as cited by Ryland et al., 2021) I begin to understand that some of the problem may be framed in terms of a personal protective response.
Ryland et al. (2021) make the effort to point out that we, as human beings are hard wired to look for connection and safety. And (although I'm no expert) I understand that these basic survival responses reside within the limbic part of our brain. Often we gain that sense of connection and safety from the ability to interpret social cues and signals which we often send and receive subconsciously. But when we're unable to access those social cues owing to the physical distance involved in distance learning, then we could easily enter a state of hypervigilance, looking for cues, looking for connection, looking for safety and finding none. So, from this protective stance, this desire to physically present with other people is entirely comprehensible and, even morally justifiable. I'm quite sure, that after the sharks teeth bite, one might stop and question whether it is safe to go back in the water. Indeed a life on dry land might be quite understandable under these circumstances.
Critics of polyvagal theory point to the fact that it is only a theory, but I do think that even as a metaphor it has some value in the context of learning and teaching. Especially now as we all dip our toe (or indeed dive head first) back into the waters of face to face learning and teaching.
So perhaps the CDN's framing is wrong - is there a risk of returning to preMarch 2020 currriculum design? Or is there a need to return to preMarch 2020 curriculum design? That's a question for people much higher up the leadership ladder than me. I wonder how the return to face to face delivery would persist if confronted with evidence of improved KPIs via hybrid delivery?
But there's still something else that doesn't sit right with me. In the rush to get back to normal, what about the people who can't? Those people for whom normal didn't work in the first place? I can't help thinking about all the students who said they benefited from hybrid learning/working because they could balance their working life around their home commitments. Then there's the students who enjoyed not having the distraction around them of other students misbehaving. Or the students with children issues who simply can't afford the fees of a paid childminder. Or those who have to make a choice between heating their homes or paying travel costs to and from a physical campus building... all very pertinent considerations with a cost of living crisis looming. And all of that's before I get to all the other issues of equality, diversity and inclusion that this protective knee jerk protective reaction seems to have inspired. Are we presenting this as a sink or swim situation? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
I'm sure there are some tough choices ahead. And I would love to say that I had some inspiring words to sum up this article, but I think that the point I am trying to make was more than adequately expressed recently by the title of an article published recently by Bali, Station and Zamora (2022):
"Online does not mean isolated, and in person may not mean connected."
References
Bali, M., Station, G. and Zamora, M. (2022) Online Does Not Mean Isolated [Online]. Available at: [Building community in online conferences, events (opinion) (insidehighered.com)](https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/08/24/building-community-online-conferences-events-opinion) (Accessed 26th August 2022).
College Development Network (2022) Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design [Online]. Available at: https://www.cdn.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Instituitional-Approaches-to-Curriculum-Design.pdf (Accessed 2nd August 2022).
Rovai, A. P. (2002) Development of an instrument to measure classroom community [Online]. Available at: http://debdavis.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/91768740/Rovai-2002-classroom%20community.pdf (Accessed 30th March 2021)
Ryland, S., Johnson, L. N. and Bernards, J. C. (2021) Honoring Protective Responses: Reframing Resistance in Therapy Using Polyvagal Theory, Contemprary Family Therapy, vol. 44, pp 267 - 275, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09584-8
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