This newsletter covers what happened in September and will give you a heads up on what to look for in October and the months following.

In this issue (please note the links below will only work when viewing this newsletter in a browser):

Summary of Recent Board meeting work:

The Board Meeting on Wednesday the 14th included some predictable business, highlighted some need for improvement and spurred some philosophical/procedural questions.

The majority of the meeting centered around the Treasurer’s and the Finance Committee Reports. We managed to bring slightly more money in than we spent on the conference. We spent a small but not insignificant percentage on PayPal fees.  A proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year compared the cost estimates of the next conference under different scenarios. Peter Smith added to the procedures manual and several suggestions were discussed for bringing in funds. Further discussion revolved around the practice of including membership dues in the conference registration fee.

That leads us into the conference planning upon which the budget scenarios are based. We are determined to do better for 2024 than we have in the past and are striving to not make the Winter meeting all about planning for the 2023 Conference. The question of conference planning this time around is causing some consternation and a need to step back and analyze a set of complex questions.

Several Academy members are helping Pacific Crest with the Summit on Breaking Academic Failure Syndrome (hereafter: “the Summit”) planned for summer 2023. The timing in the summer makes it difficult to contemplate having a standalone conference as well. Thus began the idea of merging the two efforts and, further, for the AoPE to become an official co-sponsor of the Summit.

Our President produced a proposal document to define what co-sponsorship might look like. The proposal document is a sketch that does not currently include details of the exchange of any goods and services.  The ideal vision according to discussions at the last two Board meetings would be that the Academy’s name is used to support Pacific Crest’s effort and that the Academy would not accept or donate money. This is a tricky proposition given one could equate donation of Academy members’ volunteer labor as donation of services from a non-profit to a for-profit and likewise, the use of Summit space or resources as a donation in the other direction. Patrick Barlow (President-elect) is taking the lead along with my help to produce and present a memorandum of understanding prior to consideration of co-sponsorship by the Board such that we may logically consider what co-sponsoring this event includes in more detail. We will also consider any legal ramifications of such to act in accordance with our non-profit status as thoughtfully reminded by Joann Horton at the Board meeting.

The conflict of interest policy approved at the November 11, 2020 Board meeting is not currently listed as a stand-alone document or appendix to the by-laws (a future Board agenda item). Denna Hintze (Webmaster), Joanne Horton (Past President) and Marie Baehr (Previous Secretary) kindly provided the policy along with a memorandum of understanding model. After the board meeting myself, Patrick Barlow and Ingrid Ulbrich examined the conflict of interest policy as it relates to the Academy President presenting information and leading discussions around co-sponsorship, given her non-profit Achieving Academic Success is also a co-sponsor of the Summit. As pointed out at the Board Meeting and discussed subsequently afterwards, Ingrid Ulbrich could not represent both the Academy (as President) and the non-profit she owns as co-sponsors of the Summit. We must consider now how to assign any duty that could be construed as a conflict to the President-elect and for a statement of potential conflict of interest to be filed by our President.

The general consensus is that the most effective use of Academy resources would be to hold the conference online and begin to plan so that we may be prepared regardless of whether or not the Summit collaboration goes as planned. We hope to closely examine any ethically problematic issues and attend to these complications in traditional AoPE style. After all, we have a long history of walking a careful line to protect the non-profit status of the Academy. We should keep in mind that the Academy would not be what it is today without Pacific Crest (and visa versa). We should not be daunted by the opportunity of working with another non-profit; we simply need to follow our own policy in doing so.

Recent Board Meetings

Remember, you can find out the Board’s current work by checking the Academy Board Meeting Agendas and Minutes posted on the Academy members’ page:

September 2022 minutes (not yet approved)

August 2022 minutes (approved)

The next board meeting is scheduled for
October 12 @ 1:30pm EST.

Future board meetings are @ 1:30pm EST on 11/9 and 12/14.

All Academy members are welcome to participate. You will be able to find the agenda for the meeting as well as the needed information to attend through Zoom on the Academy Member site, once both are posted.

The 2023 Winter Meeting will be online on January 3-5, 2023 with the major themes aligning with the strategic plan and hopefully wrapping up details of the AoPE Conference. Patrick Barlow and Grace Ndip agreed to help with the planning of the winter meeting.

We'll share more details in future newsletters!

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This 5-day Pacific Crest Institute will be held at the Double-Tree by Hilton Resort at Myrtle Beach. A overview of the agenda, thoughts by past participants, and an assortment of useful resources are available on the institute website. Visit to learn more.

www.selfgrowthinstitute.com

Academy Members receive a major discount!

This is a reminder that the new (as of 2019) version of the Classification of Learning Skills is available online in an interactive format. This web-based object was created as part of the article Classifying Learning Skills for Educational Enrichment, published in the June 2019 International Journal of Process Education.

The interactive CLS is hosted by the Academy of Process Educators and available at: www.processeducation.org/cls/

"What separates humans from animals is our ability to examine our world carefully, to think about our surroundings, and to think about our own thinking."

(Faculty Guidebook 3.4.4 Team Reflection)

The term mindfulness has been used in the west for centuries and largely means “attentiveness.” In the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness encompasses this meaning but is also something more: it is activity of mind accompanied by presence of mind. This is not just thinking then, but simultaneous awareness of the thinking that one is doing: metacognition. (Note that the terms which translate as mindfulness include a wide range of associated meanings and connotations; we are necessarily simplifying, while trying to carry forward the appreciation of meanings relating to awareness and mind.)

This historically eastern definition of mindfulness as activity of mind + awareness of mind is becoming increasingly accepted in the west, not only the field of psychology but in education as well. From a Process Education perspective, we see much that is very familiar in the idea of mindfulness. The more closely we examine mindfulness and the behaviors that tend to promote or increase mindfulness, the more similarities we see between it and pedagogical practices that encourage metacognition and active learning, where learners are actively engaged in thinking about and alert to the learning process. According to Faculty Guidebook 3.3.3 Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning,

Metacognition…includes self-management and self-regulation, reflection on learning, and assessment of one’s own performance. POGIL requires students to use metacognition to help them realize that they are in charge of their own learning and that they need to monitor it (self-management and self-regulation), that they need to reflect on what they have learned and what they don’t yet understand (reflection on learning), and that they need to think about their performance and how it can be improved (self-assessment).

Metacognition is not the only aspect of POGIL (which also relies upon cooperative learning and guided-inquiry) and POGIL is not the only pedagogical approach that encourages metacognition. Any learning approach that attempts to help learners become actively aware of the thinking and learning they’re doing (active learning) ultimately supports metacognition and thus increased mindfulness.

It is important to note that though we typically and historically separate thinking from feelings and interactions (the cognitive, affective, and social domains), this separation is only a construct which allows us to think and talk about different skills; it is not a literal map of the way the mind or self works. We must never make the mistake of taking the map for the terrain. A map is a helpful but imperfect representation used for the sole purpose of talking about something that is, itself, beyond or beneath language. The word metacognition would seem to mean thinking about activities only in the cognitive domain. What about thinking about emotions? Or thinking about interactions? Are these also examples of metacognition? They would have to be if metacognition also includes self-management and self-regulation, as noted above.

In the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness is not purely cognitive; it includes all aspects of self-awareness, both inner and outer contexts. Outer context is what is going on around the self at any given time—the perceptual awareness of the environment. Inner context tends to be a running commentary on outer context, and is full of judgment, prejudice, and assumptions, but can also be focused on the inner context itself—such as thinking about how certain thoughts make one unhappy. In the Buddhist tradition, there is a focus on mindfulness as a way to quiet the inner context and not allow perceptions of either outer or inner context to derail one’s thinking…

This is a fascinating line for inquiry and dialogue; we already share so much common ground in the notions of metacognition, active learning, reflective practice, self-regulation, and learning skills across the domains, among other things. What do you think about this? (And what do you think about your thinking about this?) Are you familiar with the concept of mindfulness? Are you perhaps aware of additional connections and shared ideas? Is this an uncomfortable comparison we’re drawing? Why or why not? Is it useful? Interesting? We'd love to hear from you and will share responses next month.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response; in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
—Victor E Frankl, author and philosopher

www.processeducation.org