Trauma-Deformed Pedagogy
California’s recently adopted, highly controversial math framework is a useful case study in how ideological assertions are laundered into the classroom as “evidence-based” best practices. In response, Stanford math professor Brian Conrad has drafted a 25-page document demonstrating how the claims made in the framework are either not supported or directly contradicted by research. Such slipshod pedagogical claims are common, however, in the work of the framework’s architect, Stanford education professor Jo Boaler, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education article. They’re also par for the course in education research and practice generally.
Consider, for example, the evidence that the framework cites in support of “Trauma-Informed Pedagogy.” The framework states:
Data related to issues can draw not only from a range of mathematical ideas and student curiosities but also from a range of feelings about relevant, complex issues. A focus on complex feelings aligns with trauma-informed pedagogy, which highlights the importance of allowing students to identify and express their feelings as part of mathematics sense-making, and to allow students to address what they learn about their world by suggesting recommendations and taking action (Kokka, 2019).
“Trauma-informed pedagogy” has gained so much momentum in recent years that it is even recommended by state education agencies in deep-red states like Kansas. There’s little wonder why. When you hear the term, you feel naturally inclined to support it. After all, trauma is bad. Being informed is good. And it stands to reason that research would back the idea that teachers being informed about bad things is desirable. But the California framework demonstrates that this is not at all what “trauma-informed pedagogy” necessarily means.
The framework cites a study titled “Healing-informed Social Justice Mathematics: Promoting Students’ Sociopolitical Consciousness and Well-being in Math Class.” The study can be summarized in one sentence: students can face serious trauma in their lives; to help them heal, we should leverage math class to promote a liberal agenda.
Authored by Kari Kokka, a mathematics education professor at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas, the study begins by explaining that students can experience the trauma of crime, violence, or abuse. She notes that studies demonstrate the effectiveness of school-based cognitive behavioral therapy, but none of these “centered cultural relevance.” One 11th-grade English teacher, however, “wrote about how critical healing praxis facilitated healing for her students and herself.” Critical healing praxis “confronts the disembodiment and privatization of healing in schools by centering the body and making pain an explicit tool for learning.” But Kokka notes that such trauma-informed pedagogy had never been studied in a math context.
Looking to change that, Kokka observed nine students being taught “Social Justice Mathematics.” After providing a “positionality statement” explaining that she was a “womxn of color,” Kokka describes the politicized math lessons. In one, the teacher adapted a number-line exercise to a map of a “food desert” and asked students to understand the distance a woman had to travel to get fresh ingredients for a recipe. Another problem read: “I have US$100. I owe 1/4 of my money to my mom, 2/5 to my grandmother, and 4/10 to my brother. Do I have enough money to pay everyone back? How much money should each person get?”
After students calculate that this woman owes more money than she has, they watch a video of a single mom struggling to make ends meet. They are then asked questions like, “What are some feelings that you are having when watching this video?” and “She works 40 hours a week and still struggles for food. What is your reaction around that?”
Interviewed after the lesson, one student “broke down in tears when discussing his living situation.” Another wrote, “The feelings I have are sad and worried. I’m mad.” Another wrote, “I think that was sad, but I also got mad because the government or someone else of her family should help her.” One student “suggested that free day care should be available for families so they can afford to work and pay their living expenses.” Several others expressed a commitment to political activism. “Students’ awareness of structural issues influenced their plans for taking action,” Kokka observed. “Taking critical action is part of radical healing and [Social Justice Mathematics] to gain a sense of agency and empowerment, a way of healing from trauma.”
How well did the students learn math? That question wasn’t examined, but we shouldn’t be concerned: “[a]lthough traditional achievement data (e.g., standardized test scores) were not gathered, all nine focus students passed the course and interview data indicate that all focus students enjoyed engaging with [Social Justice Mathematics] tasks.”
And that’s it – that’s the study. No evidence is offered suggesting that “trauma informed pedagogy” helps students learn math. The only evidence that it “heals” them is the assumption that a commitment to liberal activism is coterminous with “healing.”
That an education professor would publish a complete joke of a study isn’t notable in and of itself. But that such a study is cited as evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of a pedagogical practice, within a broader framework for how America’s largest state should teach mathematics, goes a long way to explaining the sorry state of American math achievement.
