Supporting Educators in Organizing for Compassionate Schools

• In Event: Conceptualizing Efforts to Bring About More Humanizing Educational Institutions: Perspectives From Research + Practice

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the opportunities educators see for applying compassion to forms of suffering encountered during the pandemic and ways they seek to embody compassion in their interactions in schools. We draw on data from assignments completed by educators in a four-part, graduate-level certificate in leadership focused on helping educators organize for more compassionate policies and practices in their schools. Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
We examine educators’ perceptions of opportunities to apply compassion and efforts to embody compassion through the lens of the compassion organizing framework (Dutton et al., 2006; Worline & Dutton, 2017). This analysis focuses on pain triggers (Dutton et al., 2006) that prompt compassion organizing. Pain triggers can activate empathic concern and action in people who notice them, leading them to mobilize personal and social resources to respond to suffering. To do so, though, requires attunement to suffering and discernment of what needs to change and how to alleviate suffering. In some cases, people are able to mobilize resources that draw collective, public attention to suffering and thereby initiate a cycle of compassion organizing to address socially acknowledged pain in the organization.
Mode of Inquiry
This study is part of a larger design-based implementation research study (Fishman et al., 2013) focused on the iterative improvement of the course through co-design and co-adaptation. Participants include 27 educators working in preK-12 schools in 8 districts in the U.S. Mountain West.
Sources of Evidence
The primary sources of evidence are course assignments and pre- and post-course interviews and surveys. Analysis focused on forms of suffering that educators noticed in their schools and on interactions they identified as contexts where they applied compassion. For both, we applied open coding to the educators’ assignments, and for the latter analysis, we identified three dimensions of the compassion organizing framework to guide it.
Results/Conclusions
Early in our course, educators attuned to the ways that suffering within the pandemic was experienced disproportionately by students of color and their families, as well as by students from lower socioeconomic status and in rural regions. In response, educators often activated a variety of resources and engaged in improvisation to address pain students experienced, sometimes on their own (on a small scale) and sometimes with others (on a larger scale). For instance, several educators shared that they and their schools increased their outreach to families, particularly Spanish-speaking families during the transitions to remote learning and then back to in-person school. Some drew on personal resources, such as their own fluency in Spanish, to make connections to families. Others communicated changes in schedules and safety measures and checked in with families personally. Improvising routines allowed educators to respond to students’ situations with compassion.
Scholarly Significance
These findings point to some possibilities of educators’ compassionate responses when faced with pain triggers within their schools. In addition, it illustrates how the compassion organizing framework can be used to characterize responses to sources of pain that are linked to inequity in schools.

Authors

• William R. Penuel, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Ashley Seidel Potvin, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Erica J. Van Steenis, Search Institute
  Non-Presenting Author