On Pedagogical Anxiety and Psychological Safety

As most folk who go to conferences know, it is really hard to sort of transition back to non-conference space and time after doing a few of them this time of year. It is always nice to connect with folk that I have not seen in a long time, either virtually, or in-person with my mask. These conference moments are great opportunities to reflect on all the great ideas peers are putting forward, and the work they are doing- too often work that is not recognized in their own spaces so they have to come to conferences and say it out loud to others.

But is also a reminder of who could not be there in those conference spaces. A reminder of how the systems exclude much more than they include. And for those who were there, how much there is a draining battery icon attached to every interaction, every day, that is not really taken into account when planning or even talking about conferencing. I came back from Montreal sick even with my mask mainly because the train I took to get there was a poor air disaster (worse than planes I have taken recently). I needed a few days to recover and I know I was lucky it wasn't worse than it was because I did mask (and tested frequently to make sure), but it also created a sense of anxiety for the next conference which I knew would be much bigger with more folk. 

Anxiety was a theme that could be weaved throughout all the conferences I have attended over the last month and half. Anxiety about the future. Anxiety about the scope, goals, and next pedagogical steps of GenerativeAI. Anxiety about the lack of mental health supports for learners and staff and how we can't keep up. Anxiety about the scarcity model in general in higher education, and funding cuts, more precarity, more doing more with less. One thing is for sure about anxiety, which is that pedagogically it definitely has a trickle down effect. The more anxious instructors, staff, teaching assistants, and graduate students are about what we are seeing around us, the more that anxiety weaves into classroom conversations, informing what is or isn't discussed in eduspace (even though some things really really really need to be discussed and aren't).

Connected to this are folk who actively want to not address or acknowledge that general feeling of anxiety. Folk who think people should just focus on the positives of a space, the positives of a meeting, the positives of education. This is often why we get such differing summaries of conferences or webinars from folk. Some choose to only focus on whatever they could see as the positives, others choose to look at things in a more realistic way, acknowledging lived experiences, barriers, things that are contextually done well yes, but also things that definitely need to be done better.

And the difference between the folk who can or choose to only see positive, and those who see and experience those barriers to connecting, engaging, or even sharing in spaces like conferences or classrooms or meetings, is psychological safety. We are hearing more and more about the need for psychological safety in higher education, and how for the most part it is very lacking. 

We like to use phrases like "this is a safe space" when we in fact can never guarantee this. That we like to talk big games around trauma-informed pedagogical practices, but when it comes to those actual practices in the systems that we are in, and the conferences we attend, there is no praxis. No building of trust, no real attendance choice models, no masks (or talking about masks), no opportunity for empowered change, and built around the idea that bringing people to the same geographical location will in essence create community, when those of us who have done community work or worked in community for long time can tell you community building is so much more than that.

We cannot address the clear pedagogical anxiety, the worry about making poor contextual choices, the precarity and scarcity that rests at the heart of every decision made by administrations and government agencies, if we do not stop and reflect deeply on how we have made eduspace psychologically unsafe and continue to do so. We talk about this in relation to culturally-informed pedagogical practices, but holistically, we have so much work to do to make these trusting spaces of real community and inclusive knowledge exchange. 

I spent this week reflecting on the conferences I attended, framing out next steps in work I want to move forward and the shrugs shoulders emojis and deep meh reactions I often get. At the same time I have had great video and phone calls and emails with friends and colleagues in Canada, Australia, the UK, and the US, that again reminded me how lucky I am to have met the people I did. How incredible the reading group folk are that I see every two weeks, and how it is these kinds of deeply meaningful interactions that I have with folk that lead to the not one, not two, but three asks for collaborating on writing articles that I received this week. And these are articles that speak to my soul, things that I care about discussing and researching deeply, ideas that need to be out there to show the real holistic picture, and not just the positive shiny lets ignore what is really going on in the world. 

If we say we want to support educators, and thus support learners, to address things like anxiety in institutions, the worry around pedagogical choices, and being supported in those choices, then we have to get really real about how trust and psychological safety needs to be a priority. Building trust is consistently showing up for folk in ways they need and are meaningful to them; it is deep listening and trying to put those supports in place which is often about resources, knowledge sharing, desiloing processes, and bringing more voices to the table -it is not gaslighting. And just to emphasize that most of the things in that last sentence that would actually build trust cost exactly zero dollars to put into place, before the bean counters come with their budget line red ink. We have to "live our teaching" to quote a great Maya Angelou video I saw the other day on Instagram, and right now it is performance and empty words. We have to stop with the empty praxis, because honestly, GenerativeAI is showing us what empty praxis actually gets us, and I worry every day about the future we are leaving in eduspace for those who come after because we refuse to pedagogically live the values we say we believe in.