Complexity Science and Adult Education: The Role of Trauma in Nurses' Embodied Learning
Open Access
- Author:
- Swartz, Ann Louise
- Graduate Program:
- Adult Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Education
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 08, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Elizabeth Jean Tisdell, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Elizabeth Jean Tisdell, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Edward W Taylor, Committee Member
Jo Tyler, Committee Member
Seth Wolpert, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Nursing Education
Neuroscience
Mindfulness
Healthcare
Fear Leaning
Embodiment
Embodied Cognitive Science
Complexity
Compassion Fatigue
CAS
Adult Education
Adult learning
Paradox
Self-Awareness
Somatic Learning
Storytelling
Systems
Trauma
Yoga - Abstract:
- Every day nurses work in environments that expose them to trauma and they move through their professional space as embodied creatures with their own histories of trauma. Because trauma changes our bodies in multiple ways, these diverse, changed and changing embodied selves are the people who come to class when nurses engage in higher education. From Adult Education emerging interests in several discourses are present to inform this picture: complexity science and education, embodied learning, neuroscience, and trauma. Although the discourses have intersecting theoretical underpinnings, they are not yet interconnecting in explicit ways. This mixed-methods, primarily qualitative research study grounded in a complexity science theoretical framework sought to understand how RN-BS clinical students learned through their bodies, how they formed new patterns of connection, and how these patterns related to trauma. It examined, retrospectively, the learning that occurred for a group of 16 RN-BS students who took two courses in health assessment and complex clinical problems, using a pedagogy that included experiential anatomy, yoga trance dance, mindfulness exercises, reflective journaling, and clinical storytelling that attended to body experiencing. Course content incorporated an ethological neurobiological model of human development and trauma and a complexity science informed perspective of nursing and healthcare. Outcomes were examined as new patterns of connection into the contexts of personal and professional lives. Findings revealed the ubiquitous presence of trauma in nurses’ clinical learning. The trauma arises from education and socialization processes and the paradoxes of hi-tech healthcare. Embodied connection with self emerged, branching into new patterns of connection as new personal / professional knowledge and actions.