By Benjamin Brock, MSW, PhD Student, Educational Psychology, College of Education, Temple University

Insights on Education

• From language acquisition to problem solving to social skills, questions about how we learn are central to understanding human development. Formal education has its share of critics — can psychology lead the way to true reform?
  
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• Charged with immense responsibility and tasked with countless duties, education policymakers are at the helm of the social-cultural experiment we call public education. Despite their influence - education policymakers steward approximately 51 million public school students nationwide (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016) - these vanguards of societal change are often overlooked and misunderstood by research and the public. How, in fact, do education policymakers make their decisions, and what might be the most fruitful means for educational psychologists to engage them? What follows is a brief history as to how I became interested in, and involved with, educational policymaking, and how I am pursuing research on education policymakers’ [decision-making]. Finally, I offer suggestions as to how educational psychologists may get involved in the policymaking process.

Decision-Making

• Chocolate or strawberry? Life or death? We make so many quick decisions unconsciously; others we agonize over. We choose actions and form opinions via mental processes which are influenced by biases, reason, emotions, and memories. Some question whether we really even have free will; others believe it is well within our power to make choices that will lead to our greater well-being. Here's a reading list to tackle while you're on that fence.

Education Policy is an Instrument for Social-Cultural Change

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• While working at Philadelphia’s largest family homeless shelter, I realized how the lives of the children at the shelter were bound by lack of educational opportunities. With each school I visited, non-profit organization I interacted with, and school district meeting I attended, it became clearer to me that the lives of “my kids” were embedded in a complex network of social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics, and that the best way I could advocate on behalf of these children was through policy; specifically, education policy.

• Reluctantly, I left my role at the shelter and began my academic study of policy. During my MSW program at Temple University I read Dr. Bruce Jansson’s (2008), The Reluctant Welfare State: Engaging History to Advance Social Work Practice in Contemporary Society, and nearly everything Dr. David Berliner produced; I believe I referenced Dr. Berliner’s (2006), Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform, in nearly all of my coursework. Their ideas regarding social policy, social welfare, and social justice convinced me to pursue work in the [government] sector.

The Psychology of Politics

• The world of politics reflects human nature in all its rational and irrational glory. And we have witnessed remarkable times in recent government. How we govern ourselves, make decisions, use and abuse power, all reflect our deepest fears at least as much as our aspirations and ideals. Many of the world's biggest problems are behavioral in nature. Therefore, policies, to be successful, must grapple with our innermost attitudes. Political psychology is a burgeoning field that examines behavior to better inform policy and leadership.

• While working for Philadelphia City Council as a policy director, I began to see the full system at play; from the laws that bind policies and thus, the actions of those within their respective domain, to the multilayered and complicated network of individuals who tirelessly strive to enact change, to the influence of external institutions on policymakers, and so on. I was baffled how, quite often, policymakers seemed to make decisions despite the advice of researchers, and despite what appeared to be in the public’s best interests. I began to wonder: How do education policymakers actually make their decisions? It was this question that led me to pursue doctoral work in educational psychology at Temple University, studying decision-making, policymaking, and education policymakers.

My Research: The Role-[Identity], [Motivation], and Action of Education Policymakers

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All About Identity

• "We contain multitudes," wrote Walt Whitman, referring not to the highly contested diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder but to the fact that we see ourselves radically differently in different contexts. Everyone struggles with that existential plum, "Who am I?" For people who are overly concerned with other people's impressions, or who feel a core aspect of themselves, such as gender or sexuality, is not being expressed, this struggle is acute.

How to Get Motivated

• Motivation is literally the desire to do things. It's the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day. It's the crucial element in setting and attaining goals—and research shows you can influence your own levels of motivation and self-control. So figure out what you want, power through the pain period, and start being who you want to be.

Motivation

• Motivation is literally the desire to do things. It's the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day. It's the crucial element in setting and attaining goals—and research shows you can influence your own levels of motivation and self-control. So figure out what you want, power through the pain period, and start being who you want to be.

• Life events and processes like learning, development, and the policy decisions framing students' formal educational opportunities and experiences are distinct, yet inseparable, and are, singularly and together, complex dynamic systems with many interacting heterogeneous elements stitched together by the “. . . fabric of events, actions, interactions, retroactions, determinations, and chance that constitute our phenomenal world” (Morin, 2014, p. 5). My research aims to understand the holistic, contextualized, personal, and yet cultural-political, processes by which education policymakers make decisions. Different from a common view of decision-making as a linear and rational process made up of distinct and stable variables, I conceptualize decision-making as a complex adaptive system that reflects the policymaker’s identity and motivation. I use The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (Kaplan & Garner, 2017) and employ a psychological-phenomenological methodology to capture education policymakers’ lived experiences, role-perceptions, deliberations, and decision-making actions. I hope that my findings will contribute to theory on educational policy decision-making, to understanding and appreciation of the way policymakers perceive their role and make decisions, and thus, perhaps, to actions by citizens, organizations, researchers (e.g., educational psychologists), and the policymakers themselves, who want to engage more effectively in educational policymaking to improve the lives of children (e.g., students) and adults (e.g., teachers) in the education system.

All About Empathy

• Empathy is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. Empathy is known to increase prosocial (helping) behaviors. While American culture might be socializing people into becoming more individualistic rather than empathic, research has uncovered the existence of "mirror neurons," which react to emotions expressed by others and then reproduce them.

Discourse is a Powerful Mechanism: Suggestions for Engaging Education Policymakers

I propose six suggestions that may be useful for educational psychologists to best engage with education policymakers to influence their decision-making processes:

• Get to know your policymakers. Policymakers care about the welfare of their constituents, they want to hear from you, and they want to engage with you. The more you know about them, their background, their interests, values, goals, previous actions, the better insight you will have about their worldview and initial stance on issues that matter to you.

• If you are unable to engage with policymakers directly, try writing and disseminating a policy-related position paper regarding your area of expertise. You could host a webinar or post your lectures online as well so that policymakers and their staff might more readily access your work.

Remember, decision-makers are just like you and me: they have emotions, they experience stress, and they have their own beliefs, values, and goals that shape their perceptions and actions. Try to place yourself in their role; how might your view fit into their complex reality in which they must balance countless wants and needs? Educational psychologists have much to offer policymakers, and will benefit from a deeper understanding of policymakers’ decision-making.

Stress

Stress generally refers to two things: the psychological perception of pressure, on the one hand, and the body's response to it, on the other, which involves multiple systems, from metabolism to muscles to memory. Through hormonal signaling, the perception of danger sets off an automatic response system, known as the fight-or-flight response, that prepares all animals to meet a challenge or flee from it. A stressful event —whether an external phenomenon like the sudden appearance of a snake on your path or an internal event like fear of losing your job when the boss yells at you—triggers a cascade of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, that surge through the body, speeding heartbeat and the circulation of blood, mobilizing fat and sugar for fast energy, focusing attention, preparing muscles for action, and more. It generally takes some time for the body to calm down after the stress response has been triggered.

Lifesaving as the stress response is, it was meant to solve short-term, life-threatening problems, not extended difficulties such as daily traffic jams or marital problems. Prolonged or repeated arousal of the stress response, a characteristic of modern life, can have harmful physical and psychological effects, including heart disease and depression.

Over the last few decades, a rising tide of studies has demonstrated the value of regularly engaging in activities that blunt the stress response, from meditation to yoga to strenuous physical activity. Since the stress response begins in the brain with the perception of stress, researchers are now looking into what may be a most basic, and effective, way to defuse stress—by changing perception of certain types of situations so that they are not seen as stressful in the first place. Studies show that helping people see certain experiences—such as final exams—as demanding rather than dire, protects them from the negative effects of stress while delivering its positive effects, especially focused attention and speedier information processing. Changing the stress mindset not only minimizes the effects of stress, studies show, it enhances performance and productivity.

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