Trauma Informed Thinking with Dewey

 

I was in class today and I was reading the work of John Dewey (1997) while my students were doing an assessment.  Now I don't want to get caught up in the theory of his work.  But one line I read had immediate significance:

"A separation of the active doing phase from the passive undergoing phase destroys the meaning of an experience.  Thinking is the accurate and deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its consequences."

Strangely, I couldn't help comparing what I was reading with what was unfolding in front of me.  I made a few observations:

• the passive disengagement of students who, rather than taking part in the assessment process, began scrolling through their phones.  If I followed Dewey's thinking, I had to what they were undergoing? What were they experiencing that made them disengage from actively participating in the task that was in front of them?  Or was this disengagement perhaps less passive than it looks?  Are they actively choosing not to engage because of the way that they were feeling?  
• the active engagement of a few students who were fully on task, doing something not knowing whether they were getting it right, trying their best in the knowledge that what came afterwards would be a direct consequence of what was happening now.  But they were a minority and I couldn't help but wonder why?
• the frozen reaction of students who simply didn't know what to do.   

("John Dewey, 'Father of American Education', 1859 -1952" by Tony Fischer Photography is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

The realisation that this disengagement from the activity in front of them could be related to the embodied experience of stress and anxiety, panic, hormones and adrenaline rushing through the blood stream...  If you use a trauma informed lens, then perhaps you could argue that this was a flight/fight reaction?  Resist the conditions or, at least on some metaphorical level, run away from the scary assessment task.  Similarly, the students who were actively engaged in trying to deliver their best work could also be considered a fight reaction.  Fighting against the challenge that this assessment presents, fighting against the system maybe.  Even the students who just froze and didn't do anything...  a totally understandable reaction when we look at it through a trauma informed lens.  

I've said it before that the book by Brunzel and Norrish (2020) on trauma informed pedagogy is amazing and I learned so much from this book about the effects of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system, top-down and bottom-up strategies that can help teachers to manage the effects of trauma related behaviour in the classroom.  But I realised today that there's a link here between trauma informed pedagogy and Dewey's theory.  Trauma driven behaviour prevents rational thought.  When all of our behaviours are driven by parts of the brain that support our basic survival instincts then it prevents the level of rational thought that enables us to extract value from an experience.   

What I was seeing was a range of perfectly normal and human reactions to the experience of sitting traditional assessments.  But I couldn't help thinking that if we accept these behaviours as the result of a trauma reaction, and we don't challenge them by providing learners with the right coping strategies or or provide models that demonstrate healthy adult levels of emotional regulation, then these fight/flight/freeze reactions are going to remain a consistent part of learners educational experiences.  It can even follow them into their life, into the workplace potentially jeopardising their social and  economic prospects well into their later life.

Ultimately if students don't have the capacity to think and make connections between their actions and the consequences (even if their behaviours are the result of a trauma reaction), then we have a responsibility to help them to make those connections.  

("deep thoughts in math class" by woodleywonderworks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

But does that mean we have to change the way we assess students?  After all, these students were sitting in front of me doing an assessment task.  It was a sobering thought to realise that what I was asking them to do might be provoking trauma responses.  Moreover, I began to realise that the choices we make in order to facilitate assessment of learning (often guided by quality assurance policies which are increasingly influenced by the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies) have the potential to directly trigger trauma responses in students.  Which leads me to another question - do our policies with regard to assessment practice and quality assurance need to be examined through the lens of trauma informed practice?

Now I don't have all of the answers here.  As a maths teacher, all of my own training was based on traditional exam style assessments and I would guess that most maths tests that are conducted in classrooms are of a similar set up.  Complete a list of questions of increasing difficulty, in class, under observed conditions all while the clock in the corner ticks away.  So I find myself conflicted because a big part of my own training as a mathematician wasn't about the ability to sit exams.  It was about demonstrating the ability to analyse a problem and solve it under pressure.

The ability to analyse a problem and come up with a solution is a huge skill for so many jobs.  So I find it difficult to believe that any employer wouldn't value the skills that a qualification in mathematics represents.  But, beyond the world of work, problem solving and coping under pressure is a huge life skill.  So I don't think that we should be devaluing the experience of sitting traditional assessments.

There's more to consider.

Brunzel and Norrish's book talks about bucket and dipper theory.  It's a simple way of explaining the concept of conservation of resources, the idea that we each have a bucket of sand.  That sand is the fuel that helps us get through the day.  But if people keep dipping into our bucket and taking our sand away, what's left for ourselves.  And what happens when we simply run out?  Sometimes, when people ask for our help, for our time, for our co-operation, it's ok to say, "No, I'm sorry but I'm really struggling today."

Then there's window of tolerance theory, the idea that we will never be able to tolerate pressure if we're never exposed to it.  And that by being increasingly exposed to just a little more pressure we step outside or comfort zone and, if we cope then that's OK because our comfort zone has grown just a little bit bigger.  And if not then we can always try stepping outside our comfort zone again some other time when we're more ready.  

Personally, I think that's what's missing sometimes is the recognition that some people simply aren't ready to be put into exam conditions.  Their window of tolerance is still too narrow.  They need more time to develop the skills required to be able to cope with the pressure of exam conditions.  Similarly, there's also very little space in the system to recognise that some people just haven't got the resources they need to function on the day of the exam.  They're simply out of sand in their bucket.  But when you're constrained by a system of deadlines, performance indicators, restrictive funding models... well it can add up to a picture that doesn't really make much room for trauma informed practice.

References

Brunzell, T. and Norrish, J. (2020)  Creating Trauma-Informed, Strengths Based ClassroomsL  Teacher Strategies for Nurturing Students Healing, Growth and Learning [ebook reader].  London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.   

Dewey, J. (1997) Democracy and education. Champaign, Ill: Project Gutenberg. Available at: https://search-ebscohost-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1085236&site=ehost-live&scope=site (Accessed: 5 February 2025).