Critical Consciousness - Doris Chang

In this episode, Wendy Hasenkamp speaks with clinical psychologist Doris Chang on social identity as they shape psychological experience and mental health treatment. They discuss:

- Critical Consciousness as the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality, and the commitment to take action against these systems;
- that race is a social construct, not a biological fact;
- the role of contemplative practice in becoming aware of systems of oppression;
- and other topics.

Transcript

Over time,

I began to really see that we have to think beyond the individual mind and brain.

We think about mental illness,

Especially when we're talking about diverse,

Often marginalized populations whose lives are shaped so much by larger structural forces.

So the critical consciousness framework refers to this process of beginning to see those systems of oppression and privilege and how they create structures that affect life chances for people in our community and how we are kind of complicit in upholding those structures of oppression without necessarily knowing that we are.

Welcome to Mind and Life.

I'm Wendy Hasenkamp.

My guest today is clinical psychologist Doris Chang.

Doris is an associate professor at the New York University Silver School of Social Work,

Where she studies race,

Ethnicity,

Culture,

And other dimensions of social identity,

Focusing on how they shape psychological experience and mental health treatment.

Doris has spent her career developing inclusive,

Culturally grounded interventions for clinical and educational contexts,

And most recently has worked to integrate mindfulness and other contemplative approaches into these interventions.

Our interview was recorded at the 2019 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute,

Where Doris was on the faculty,

And she shared about an intervention she's developed for her clinical trainees called critical consciousness training.

In our conversation,

She describes how critical consciousness is the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and the commitment to take action against these systems.

We discuss how she brings critical consciousness into the classroom and how it unfolds for different student populations.

She describes how race is a social construct,

Not a biological fact,

And outlines the impact of race on a multitude of measures of well-being and health.

We also discuss the role of contemplative practice in becoming aware of systems of oppression and being able to hold the unique stress and challenges that come with that awareness.

We talk about her research on these training programs,

And she also shares her thoughts on where contemplative science needs to go next.

If you're an educator looking to bring these ideas into your classroom,

Or if you're just interested in understanding more about race,

Ethnicity,

And systems of inequality,

I think you'll find Doris's insights particularly informative.

It was a real pleasure to speak with Doris,

And I hope you enjoy the conversation as well.

I'm happy to share with you Doris Chang.

So Doris,

Thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you for having me.

I'd love to start just by hearing a little bit of your personal story and some of the factors that led you to where you are now in your research.

So I'm a clinical psychologist,

And I think I started,

You know,

Developing an interest in clinical psychology,

Mostly because I was an undergraduate student,

And I think like so many undergrads,

You know,

You're trying to understand yourself and the world.

And I remember taking a class,

And the first question I had was,

How does this pertain or help me understand my family and my community?

And I'm Chinese American,

My parents are immigrants,

And we never ever talked about mental health.

And I think it's a concept that a lot of Asian American communities sort of see is only affecting a very small percentage of the population.

So,

You know,

To come from that kind of understanding and then to be in a class,

You know,

About abnormal psychology,

And then just sort of wondering like,

But how does this square with my family's experience,

My community's experience,

Because these worlds just didn't seem to connect at all,

And all of the readings that we were doing had to do with mostly European American samples and populations.

And so I just became really interested in how culture and ethnicity sort of shapes experience of health and mental health,

And started looking for other ways to expand the field of psychology towards more inclusion of diverse perspectives.

And so that process of kind of thinking about how we can bridge worlds was part of my early educational thinking.

And then when I entered graduate school,

Again,

This idea of bridging social worlds was also really present because I'm a,

You know,

I'm a clinician,

Most of my patients I worked with at the beginning were not,

You know,

Chinese American.

So I had to think about what does it mean to be in the space as someone who's not white or someone who's not black.

And then I ended up doing a lot of work with Asian immigrant communities and did a year of my pre-doctoral training in an Asian specific clinic where all my clients were Asian immigrants.

And so that was a really interesting experience to have.

It's a really interesting experience to sort of basically be treating like people like my parents,

Like my,

You know,

My mother who had internalized these ideas that we don't have mental illness in our community.

Right.

That was going to be my question is then how was your experience of those people who were your patients versus maybe,

You know,

Your mother's views or what you had come to think culturally?

Well,

Some of the things I learned in school didn't work.

Right.

So what I realized is a lot of the patients I worked with were coming in wanting something really different than what I felt like I had to offer.

So my training in a pretty traditional clinical science program was,

You know,

Even though there were definitely people there that were studying and interested in issues of culture,

They weren't necessarily as involved in the clinical training side of things.

And so the tools that I had were kind of mainstream.

And so I would go into,

I went into the settings not quite equipped to adapt what I had learned to that population.

And so what some of the things I learned had to do with just how I needed to be willing to offer something different.

And so sometimes it was psychoeducation and just like,

Let me explain to you,

You know,

What it means to raise a child in the U.

S.

Context who is growing up with different ideas about independence,

For example.

Did your experience also as the daughter of immigrants help you relate to some of the struggles that they maybe were experiencing or their with their children?

I think it made me naturally feel a kinship to them.

I think that there is also,

You know,

Some positive transference to me that it's like,

Oh,

Like,

You're you look like us,

Right?

You're,

You're Mandarin isn't totally fluent.

But you can,

You can communicate and,

You know,

You remind me of someone I,

I know and I care about.

And so I think that that,

You know,

Kind of already helped open some doors for me in terms of building the alliance.

And,

And I think it did give me a real,

Like,

Empathic understanding of the challenges of being an immigrant,

Right,

And navigating a very strange place.

And so now you teach and train clinicians as part of your work with a program you refer to as critical consciousness.

Can you describe that?

Yeah,

So as you probably know,

Most clinicians have to take some sort of coursework in kind of diversity related areas.

I think it's a really good move that a lot of licensure boards are requiring coursework to prepare clinicians to more effectively work with diverse populations.

So I've been teaching that course in my program for many,

Many years.

Over time,

I began to really see that we have to think beyond the individual mind and brain and heart.

We think about mental illness,

Especially when we're talking about diverse,

Often marginalized populations,

Whose lives are shaped so much by larger structural forces as all of our lives are shaped.

But in terms of increasing vulnerability to stress and risks for mental health problems,

These groups really are more vulnerable.

And so the critical consciousness framework kind of refers to this process of beginning to see those systems of oppression and privilege and how they create structures that affect life chances for people in our community and how we are kind of complicit in upholding those structures of oppression without necessarily knowing that we are.

So it's this process of unmasking,

Uncovering,

Of seeing the world differently,

And also then mobilizing for action to be like a change agent in that system.

So it's not how we typically train clinicians at all.

We focus on the things we can control within the 15-minute hour.

But it just felt like we were asking our patients to do things and change things that were not necessarily within their control to change.

And then the risk is that they blame themselves for not being resilient enough or for making bad choices that these things keep happening to them,

Or they don't keep not getting that job and keep.

.

.

Right,

And that's like another layer to their distress.

Right.

And I think clinicians were also feeling frustrated that the tools they had also weren't necessarily meeting the needs of those communities.

So it felt like a shift in how I felt like we needed to train our students to look at these systems,

To be comfortable even talking to patients about these systems so they can properly locate the causes of some of their problems.

Yeah,

And so how does it look,

This training,

Is it unfold in kind of a standard classroom setting?

Is there dialogues between races or.

.

.

?

Hmm.

So it happens in a classroom setting.

I think I'd pull on a mix of like experiential learning and weaving in contemplative pedagogy as a way to help students process what they're experiencing.

So it is kind of experience heavy,

I would say,

Because it's difficult to connect your experience to abstract theory.

So I do try to create assignments,

Exercises,

In-class simulations to try to get people close to experiencing what it feels like.

Because it's like you have to have an emotional awakening before you really become motivated to do that.

And so I try to make it emotional.

And so I'll start off my classes by telling people it's going to be really uncomfortable.

Just like be prepared and to think about,

Is this a good semester for you to engage deeply in this work?

Yeah.

So kind of a trigger warning,

Kind of like,

Okay,

If you're going to be here together with me,

This is what we're going to ask of you.

Did you say that courses are required?

Yeah.

Well,

One of them is required.

So some students will say like,

Not this time,

You know,

Maybe next year.

So I think that's one thing.

I do try to give students space to find a personal project that deepened,

Allows them to deepen learning in an area that they personally feel like they need it.

So I think that's also part of like a contemplative pedagogy approach,

Which is like centering the individual learner and helping them to like deeply engage in a very personal way with the material.

And so for some students,

They might find that they need to work on some bias against a group that is getting in the way of them being open and effective with clients from that background.

And so they might define for themselves a learning project that that maps out how they might dig into that work.

Do you have any examples that come to mind?

Yeah.

I mean,

I think that oftentimes over the years,

One group that has prompted this kind of self-work for a lot of students is very,

Very religious people.

And that also speaks to in our,

In the field of clinical work,

How we don't deal with spirituality and we don't deal with religion.

Right.

So we don't invite in to the work.

We don't train students how to ask about spiritual beliefs or religious identity.

We don't know what to do if they say they're really religious.

We don't know how to integrate those perspectives about health and healing and wellbeing into what we have to offer.

And so I think we kind of avoid the subject altogether.

And then it perpetuates this kind of bias that like what we have to offer is better than what religion has to offer.

So a number of students have tried to take this on around like,

I feel myself questioning,

You know,

These beliefs that some patients have,

Especially very evangelical,

Charismatic,

Pentecostal,

Sometimes even Orthodox communities and just feeling like we don't get it.

I don't get it.

I don't get the appeal.

And in fact,

It seems harmful.

So then they might define for themselves a project that really digs into unpacking that.

Yeah.

Wow.

So one of the things that you teach or you educate in these classes is the various ways that race shapes our lives.

Could you give some examples of the impact of social determinants of mental health and success?

Yeah.

So even though we know that race isn't real,

It's not a biological fact,

It has incredible impact on our lives.

Let's just unpack that for one minute in case that's kind of a new idea for some people is what you mean that race is a construct.

Yeah.

So any two people from two different ethnic groups may have more in common genetically than two people from the same phenotype,

That look phenotypically similar.

And so it doesn't stand up as a scientific construct,

Concept or fact.

So,

And yet we know that we look at each other and we sort each other and we impose racial categories on each other.

And the whole point of race as a construct is to oppress groups.

That's the function it serves in society and it has always served in society.

So on that basis,

It is real in the world.

Certainly.

That's something that shapes our lives and it shapes every aspect of life,

Every aspect of life.

So it affects more maternal and infant mortality rates.

It affects the safety and funding of your schools.

It shapes the likelihood that you'll graduate from high school,

Get into college,

Be on a pathway to have upward mobility,

Get good jobs.

Quite a lot of research has shown that if your name is readily associated with a racial category,

Some of this work is focused on black and white job applicants that applicants with a white sounding name are more likely to be interviewed and called in for a job interview than people who have black sounding names.

So it's hard to know how conscious it is all the time,

But it is present.

It's present in every aspect of our lives and obviously likelihood of being stopped and frisked and pulled over and given a harsh jail sentence and all of those outcomes to looking at the causes of death.

So African Americans,

I think,

Have the highest rate of risk for eight to 10 of the leading causes of death.

So it affects your ability to be a healthy functioning person in the world.

So what are some of the lessons that you've learned and taken away from all your work in teaching this?

So the first thing I think I mentioned is I prepared students that it's going to be a rocky ride.

It's not going to be easy.

It's not going to be holding hands and singing Bob Marley songs.

It's going to be really,

Really painful and it can't be done.

It's going to be just a it's going to be really,

Really painful and it can't not be painful.

I've actually wondered,

Is it possible to not make it painful because it's distressing for me to witness too,

You know?

It's like if I could figure out a way to help people really,

Really understand the effect of racism and other forms of oppression on all of us without the grief that comes with that seeing,

I wish I could figure out how to do that,

But I don't think it's possible.

It seems necessary.

It also raises questions about like,

Why haven't I suffered?

Right?

You're telling me all of these people have suffered.

How is it that I'm where I am and they're where they are?

I don't want to see it.

And so it's really painful that I'm in a position to be asking students to open to suffering as a way of living in reality.

Yeah.

Can you describe in a little more detail what it might be like and what some of the common experiences that come up for white people versus people of color and like kind of the different ways that this information hits them?

Yeah.

It's very,

It's different and it's the same,

Right?

So I'll start with the students of color.

So students of color,

In my experience in the classes,

Find it incredibly painful to be reminded of the role that race plays in their lives.

And partially that's because I think for a lot of students of color,

When they enter the academy,

When they're in an educational institution,

We essentially ask them to be white.

So we reward that,

We reward assimilation.

And so they come into the class and they're trying to hide those parts of themselves because we ask them to,

Right?

Oftentimes we implicitly ask them to in institutions of higher education.

And it's become a survival strategy.

If they can downplay it,

They often will.

And yet I'm bombarding them with messages about their community that remind them of their risk factors and of their race and then bombard them with those messages of trauma,

You know,

In the interest of learning.

So that's,

That can be so,

So painful.

And also I'm getting students who are often undergraduates or graduate students.

And so they're at the early or mid stage of really unpacking their own racial and ethnic identity and what it means to them.

So it's a really active process of figuring it out.

And it's hard to do that in a interracially mixed classroom when let's say half of the students are white or more and they're for the first time beginning to awaken to the reality of racism.

So I think that's really,

Really challenging for those students.

And then for the,

For the white students,

I see a lot of guilt and shame,

Especially if this is new material for them.

And then rage at parents,

At educational institutions,

At,

You know,

Other people in their lives who somehow let them believe something that isn't true about what it means to be white in this country.

So there,

There's a lot of like denial,

Like,

How could I be 21 and not know about this?

And then a lot of,

Often a lot of shame about that.

And then just kind of a little bit of a falling apart,

You know,

Some of it's developmental.

Yeah.

And some of it is,

Is,

Is,

Is just,

You know,

Meeting this content for the first time.

And this is a very natural arising of sadness in,

In response to something very,

Very sad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How do you handle that as a teacher every semester holding this,

All of the students?

It is really tough.

Yeah.

It's gotten easier.

At the very beginning of my teaching career,

Students would say things that were actually personally hurtful to me as a person of color,

Not intending to,

But,

You know,

Out of thoughtlessness,

Out of not necessarily seeing me as a person of color or intentionally wanting to harm me because I was forcing them to feel things that they didn't want.

And I was insecure about how well I was doing in teaching this difficult material.

And then it just,

It got easier and easier.

I think I became more comfortable in understanding how to facilitate the process better.

I think I became more part of a community of people who were doing this work and,

And just the support of,

Of that was incredibly helpful and nurturing.

Yeah.

And then I think I just became like sort of on a mission about it,

You know,

Like it,

It felt very important.

And,

And so having your value,

You know,

Engaging in,

In this is my clinician side and value can grow in action.

You know,

I was doing something that I really believed in,

Even if it was hard,

It was okay.

Cause I really believed in what I was doing and that helped.

I can imagine one of the complexities is that it's also not each individual person changing,

But then there's the community in the classroom that's interacting.

How does that play out?

Yeah.

So that's the second thing that I,

I learned.

Like,

You know,

The,

The researcher side of me wants this to be a nice,

Neat,

Linear process in the way that we want to think about psychotherapy processes being this linear journey.

And so to think about each individual learner and their individual path is one way to think about learning.

But the reality is that it,

It's so messy with this material and probably in all classrooms,

But especially with this material,

Because like,

Let's say,

You know,

I'm a student of color processing my own experience of race and grieving the experience of my community and then sitting with,

You know,

What does that mean for me as a clinician in training?

And I'm speaking about that experience,

You know,

What happens when another student directly challenges my experience?

And in fact,

With some aggression argues that my experience actually is causing harm to them.

Right.

So it's a dyadic and also group process that your,

Your own capacity to learn and grow kind of depends on the whole group nurturing that process.

And what happens when some people are not facilitating that process?

What do you do with that?

It's really,

It's really complicated.

Yeah.

And that's the reality of being in a multicultural society.

Right.

So I think the best thing I've thought to do with it is to allow that process to play out within some constraints that try to minimize harm.

And so we'll have agreements about how we want to communicate with one another and the kind of culture we want to create in the classroom,

So that we're monitoring impact.

Yeah,

It can't just be a free for all.

It can't be,

You know,

You could say whatever you want,

Even though it's your truth,

Like it,

We have to be invested in everybody's collective learning.

And so creating that norm gives us a little bit of something to fall back on.

But then there's so much to be learned in unpacking whatever it is that happens,

Right?

Because it's not going to be the first and only time something like that happens for any of the people in the room.

And so the opportunity is for us to be able to come and understand and analyze what happened in a way that allows us to be more prepared for the next time it happens,

And for us to be more skillful in how we negotiate that.

Yeah,

I'm just curious,

What are some of those agreements that you have or what the students have with each other about how they're going to treat each other?

So again,

With a contemplative stance,

One,

One thing is to create an environment that is open and curious and kind with each other and with ourselves.

Because I know that since come in and feel a lot of worry and,

And anxiety about the class and worry about harming others,

You know,

We're inherently kind people.

And we don't want to harm other people.

But the reality is that sometimes we will unintentionally harm each other.

And so to,

To try to assume good intention to take responsibility for the harm we might cause despite that,

And to try to not participate in shame,

Shaming each other or like holding shame in ourselves.

So one is like that just holding that that mindful attitude.

We will also try to monitor like traditional power dynamics that get enacted all the time where we see white students talking more than students of color,

We see male students talking more than women,

And people kind of claiming authority to speak.

And so,

You know,

We do try to,

To name that and make that conscious in the agreements about monitoring your participation.

Yeah,

Like we want people to bring their selves,

Their full selves to the table and to create space and make space for everybody else to do that.

Also,

One that a student added this year was no tone policing.

So don't judge the way that I'm communicating about my experience,

Even if it was even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Right.

So if someone feels that you're communicating an anger,

Angry tone,

Or Yeah,

It's like,

They're angry.

Yeah.

And also,

It's good training.

I mean,

We're clinicians in training,

Right?

So it's like,

If you can't tolerate somebody's authentic anger about something that's affecting them,

You might be in the wrong for your career.

Right.

So how did contemplative practice and mindfulness come into this space for you?

It came into this space probably about five years ago,

Maybe six,

Maybe Yeah,

About five years ago,

I was doing a training at the Nalanda Institute in contemplative psychotherapy,

And gravitated to it because I was feeling like I was needing more tools to,

To show up,

You know,

With more resources for this work.

And I was getting really depleted,

You know,

As we've talked about,

It's pretty stressful.

And there was more and more being published about the potential benefits of contemplative practice for emotional regulation,

And for centering and grounding and coping and all of those things.

And so I actually first came to it for me,

To support me in doing this work.

And then as I learned more about it,

I really started to open to the potential that it could actually,

It could be a support to my students as well.

And so I just started experimenting with,

With weaving it in in different ways,

And increasingly have made it more and more explicit and more integral to my approach to teaching.

Cool.

So do you do meditations in class to the students have to agree to meditate outside of class?

We do do meditations in class,

I do ask them,

And it's in the syllabus that they're required to try a formal meditation practice.

If they don't do it,

They don't do it.

But it is the expectation that that they try it.

And I explained to them the science behind sort of the current state of knowledge about meditation,

And its its effects,

And how it's been studied in a variety of different ways and try to make the case for why I think it could be helpful to them personally,

Separately from its ability to help them maybe sit with the difficult emotions they might experience in class.

So I give them some resources,

There's some structured apps that I suggest for them.

And and then we check in about it throughout the course.

And then various times in the course,

We will do formal set.

So especially at the very beginning of the course,

We do,

We meditate almost every class period for at least some period of time.

And I want to expose them to different kinds of meditation,

Because I'm hoping that there will be something that resonates for them.

And I also have been trying to increasingly expose them to different teachers.

So playing guided meditations for them.

So they see,

Like,

Especially exposure to teachers of color,

Dharma teachers of color,

Or teachers who are just sort of modifying how it is that they're working to make it a better fit for communities of color.

I also try to support and troubleshoot them as they're developing the practice because I feel like as a first time meditator,

It was a lot that comes out of question.

Yeah,

It's really hard.

Yeah.

You know,

You,

You feel like you're doing everything wrong,

You know,

And so I'm not formally trained in as a meditation teacher.

So,

You know,

I can only go so far in terms of how much I can support that process.

But I but we do spend time discussing barriers to practice.

So you were recently awarded a peace grant from Mind and Life to study the effect of including this this kind of mindfulness or contemplative component in the training that you do.

Can you describe a little bit about your study and what you're hoping to look at?

Sure.

So this is a collaboration with several wonderful colleagues at NYU Steinhardt in the School of Ed.

So Fabian Doucet and Natalie Zwirker.

So she and her team have been rolling out a critical consciousness curriculum for I think K through 12 teachers actually for a few years now.

And it's really grown.

And it's been transformative for the teachers who do it.

And so they have this packaged curriculum that they've adapted to,

To be as long or short in some ways as schools can accommodate.

And so I'm partnering with them to see if we can boost the effects of that curriculum by infusing mindfulness and other contemplative components into that work.

Because in conversations with with Natalie,

It's clear that the dynamics and processes that I see in the work I do shows up in the trainings that she does as well.

And the goal with any of these critical consciousness programs,

I think is to help teachers in her case,

She's focusing on teachers to help them think differently to be able to be culturally responsive in the classroom and to help them dismantle these deeply embedded structures of oppression that show up in those classrooms,

Too.

So it's a way of seeing its way of being in the classroom,

And then it should that consciousness should trickle into their pedagogy and into their curriculum.

So we're trying to test this infused mindfulness based critical consciousness curriculum against two different control groups.

So one is just the pure critical consciousness program,

The thing that they do.

And then a standalone mindfulness intervention for teachers.

And that comes from a sort of basic question that other researchers are starting to look at,

Which have been looking at,

Which is can cultivating mindful awareness,

Or compassion,

Can that in itself,

Reduce implicit bias and increase compassion and prosociality?

Right?

So is there a way that even without explicit training and teaching and critical consciousness,

Without having those frameworks?

Do we still see some positive effects just of mindfulness training alone?

Right,

Which some research is starting to show in other groups,

Right?

Right.

So some research is starting to show that even with very brief mindfulness inductions,

We can see some temporary decreases in implicit bias.

So the question for me is,

Is kind of like,

You know,

For people who,

Let's say do not want to take a critical consciousness class is,

Is having them take a mindfulness class,

Paired with good intention,

Like what happens with paired with good intentions?

Does mindfulness training lead to similar prosocial outcomes in terms of the teachers being able to relate with less bias to,

Say,

Students of color in their classes,

Even without the pedagogical kind of frameworks that that we're trying to infuse into the other curriculum?

What are the ways in which doing standalone critical consciousness training elicits so much dysregulation and distress in teachers that they can't even,

It cannot translate into action?

Could be inhibiting their ability to manifest that awareness and knowledge in behavior.

And then seeing if those two groups differ from this sort of hybrid curriculum to where we're hopefully can,

We can hopefully draw on the benefits of both of those practices in a single standalone intervention.

And so how will you measure the outcomes?

What are you hoping to be able to observe?

We're starting with self-report and also implicit measures of racial bias.

So self-report of things like multicultural teaching competency,

Mindfulness and teaching.

There's a new relational mindfulness measure that's looking at teacher practice.

We're looking at attitudinal barriers,

Such as we have some measures for the white teachers in particular.

Lisa Spanierman has a scale looking at the perceived costs of racism for whites,

How they deal with the reality of racism in terms of defenses and denial and how it affects their kind of engagement with people of color.

We also are looking at typical measures that are often studied in mindfulness studies like compassion,

Burnout,

Stress and things like that.

So that's where we're starting.

And if the data look good,

You know,

Our goal we would like to do is look at classroom behavior and classroom dynamics.

Yeah.

And how's it going so far?

So we finished our first year.

We ran our two control groups.

It was challenging.

Some of the challenges we encountered were retention.

So teachers are very,

Very busy.

And we were doing a 10-week training that met every week throughout the fall because we wanted to look at its effects over the course of the academic year.

So we had baseline measures.

They did the training.

They wrapped it up before winter break.

And then we tracked them.

Our time three data collection just is currently happening.

So the first problem was that we had difficulty retaining teachers in the study.

So we ended up with about a 40 percent dropout rate,

Which is not what we predicted.

But it turns out it's not that atypical.

It's a very busy,

Stressed population to work with.

And we were asking that they come to our campus to receive the training.

So people were coming from all over.

But one thing that was troubling that we need to figure out is we saw different rates of dropout by ethnicity for the two different groups.

So we saw better retention of white participants in the mindfulness group,

Much better retention.

It was something like 85 percent of the whites that started the mindfulness group stayed in the mindfulness group,

Whereas over 60 percent of the people of color who started in the mindfulness group dropped out.

Wow.

So then we saw the reverse pattern happen for the critical consciousness control group,

Where more than half of the white participants dropped out of the group.

And almost all of the participants of color stayed.

Wow.

Do you have initial thoughts about why that might be the case?

So one question I think has to do with how we recruit,

Sort of the messaging in recruitment.

And we did hear from some of the folks in the mindfulness group that they thought they were going to get pedagogy.

So we were recruiting teachers for a study on effectiveness in the classroom.

Effectiveness in diverse classroom spaces broadly defined because we did expect that mindful awareness would improve teaching.

And other studies have found that it has improved,

It improves teaching practice.

So it felt like we were accurately reporting on what we think and believe.

But I think what they were expecting is more strategies for engaging diverse learners in their classroom.

They wanted the other curriculum.

And so I feel like if we had given them a choice,

They would have chosen the critical consciousness.

Because they're randomized to the groups.

Yeah,

Exactly.

So they didn't get to choose.

We stratified assignment on the basis of race or race and ethnicity so that we could have equal numbers of white and people of color teachers in both groups.

But then it was randomized.

So,

You know,

I think that was a real challenge.

But it's interesting that even not getting what they wanted,

More of the white teachers stayed in the mindfulness group than the teachers of color.

And then for the other group,

I don't know why the white teachers didn't stay because they ended up getting what they sort of more expected,

Which is a regular kind of diversity training for teachers.

But they didn't.

We weren't,

We didn't retain them in the same,

At the same rate.

The other factor is the race and ethnicity of the trainer of that who was facilitating the group.

So the mindfulness group was facilitated by a white man,

An expert in mindfulness,

Very experienced teacher.

And the critical consciousness group was facilitated by a black woman.

That could be a major factor.

It could be a major factor.

And so we know from mental health studies that ethnic matching can sometimes improve retention in mental health treatment.

And oftentimes clients do have preferences.

They feel naturally more comfortable.

There's more credibility sometimes with a clinician that's of your same background.

I don't know how this might have played out in this situation.

I don't really know the research on that for this context,

But that might have also contributed to it.

Right.

And that's really tough.

It's hard to match either way.

And then,

Or it's almost like you want to co-teach them both with a person of color and a white person.

Yes.

Well,

For the hybrid curriculum,

We are actually going to have a co-teaching model because it felt like we needed to,

To really see what it would look like to have both of those components delivered with fidelity.

And right now we don't have anybody who can.

Right.

So we are going to have a co-teach model for the hybrid trial for the fall.

So from all of your experience doing this work,

Where do you think the field should go from here?

What are the kind of the most needed directions or changes?

One of the things I have liked about the studies I've read is that there is an elegance to their experimental designs.

That's,

That's,

You know,

Easy to draw causal,

You know,

Some causal interpretations from the data.

But given how I'm trying to pull from that science space,

The reality is that the work that I do is dyadic,

It's group-based.

And so I'd like to see more studies that are looking at like relational factors,

Relational mindfulness,

Relational outcomes,

How people with different levels of mindfulness or critical consciousness,

When they interact,

What happens.

If you sort of stratify these two different dimensions of critical consciousness and mindfulness across different groups of people,

You know,

What kinds of group-based outcomes do you see?

And how can we measure those processes,

The messiness of that network doing this work together?

I think another question is,

Is also looking at this question of who are our samples?

Yeah.

So just in my own study,

Seeing that the difficulty retaining people of color in a mindfulness group,

I wonder how much that is happening across the board in this field.

Yeah.

And is this knowledge base being built on mostly white undergraduates or white practitioners?

And what are the implications of that for our field?

I imagine it is so far,

Unfortunately,

For the most part.

One of the things we're trying to do with our grants programs is now require all of our grantees for their studies to include what's called constraints on generality statements.

So being very clear in your methods and even in your discussion,

You know,

What your sample population was and how this can or cannot be generalized to other populations.

And so that's something that,

You know,

You would think would be already automatic in all research protocols,

But it hasn't been,

You know,

In many fields.

So we're hoping to,

At least for our community,

You know,

Help people be aware of that and start to either recruit more diverse samples or at least just raise awareness about the people that they are studying.

Yeah,

That's really important.

So any other thoughts on issues for the field to be considering?

I mean,

I also think maybe I know the field is grappling with how we've secularized these traditional spiritual traditions.

And one of the things that struck me in reading the mindfulness literature is,

And especially the therapy literature,

Is how few of those studies looking at mindfulness-based clinical interventions have included Asian Americans,

You know,

That many of them are Buddhists,

Many of them come from these traditions.

I'm like,

Why haven't,

Why hasn't this taken off within the Asian immigrant community who you'd think would be the target population?

Yeah,

That's a very interesting question.

And my colleague,

Gordie Hall,

Has written about this question of why,

Where are the Asian Americans in mindfulness research?

Right.

And I think one of the points that he's written about and that I've written about is that I think it has to do with the focus on the individual,

An individual flourishing versus collective flourishing.

And sort of the Asian model of the self is more interdependent by culture,

You know?

Like our cultural socialization is more interdependent.

So I think the way that that modern mindfulness is being packaged,

Which is about a self flourishing,

Often,

Very individualized,

Doesn't really resonate very much with Asian communities often who do not reify the self in that way.

Or it's not a personal goal to be personally happy.

Right.

That's not as valuable.

Right.

And it's also interesting because now you hear of Asian cultures in Asia,

Taking back up these practices from the Western secularized versions back into the cultures in which they originated,

But now in this new form.

Yeah,

That's unrecognizable.

Right.

Which is a whole other question of what is attracting them to this and what the impacts will be.

And yeah.

Well,

Thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been great to talk to you.

It's been great to talk to you,

Andy.

This episode was edited and produced by me and Phil Walker.

Music on the show is from Blue Dot Sessions and Universal.

Mind and Life is a production of the Mind and Life Institute.

Reviews

Especially pertinent in today's America and around the world. Divisiveness kills. Color, religion, nationality。we see them all at work keeping us from understanding we interbe.

Excellent talk that everyone should hear thank you !