Understanding and Supporting

Developmental Growth in Child

and Youth Care Practitioners.

Excellence in Residential Interventions

June 27, 2016

Heather Modlin

Overview

• Basic expectations of CYC practitioners in residential care

• The reality

• Factors commonly attributed to the practice problems

• A new way to conceptualize: Robert Kegan’s constructive-developmental theory

• The mental demands of child and youth care

• The role of the holding environment

• Ramifications for teaching and supervision

Basic Expectations of Residential CYC’s

• Set limits and establish clear personal boundaries.

• Respond safely and effectively to challenging and aggressive behaviour without personalizing the behaviour or depersonalizing the young person.

• Deal effectively with conflict.

Basic Expectations of Residential CYC’s

(Cont.)

• Engage in reflective practice.

• Conscious use of “self” in interactions and interventions with young people.

The Reality

• Volatile and punitive environments

• Out-of-control behaviours of young people

• Difficulty with limit setting

• Controlling, coercive practice

• Over-identification with the young people

• Boundary violations

• Secondary trauma/compassion fatigue

• Staff turnover and burnout

Factors Commonly attributed to the

Practice Problems• Age

• Experience

• Personal attributes

• Education and training

• Professional development

• Systemic barriers (eg. Funding, policy)

Child and Youth Care Worker

Development

• The ability of practitioners to effectively respond to the complexities of the job is partly determined by their developmental capacity.

• A mismatch between the developmental capacity of the worker and the demands of the environment can result in practitioners being underutilized or “in over their heads.”

Meaning-Making

• According to Robert Kegan’s (1982) constructive-developmental theory, development is a lifelong process that occurs through ongoing interaction between an individual and the psychosocial environment.

• Integrates emotional, cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of development.

Meaning Making

• Movement from one meaning-making system to the next is a gradual, transformative process that results in a more complex way of seeing, experiencing and understanding oneself and the world.

• How do I know? Who am I? How do I relate to others?

Kegan’s Systems of Mental Complexity

• Instrumental

• Socialized

• Self-authoring

• Self-transforming

The Instrumental Mind

• Individuals are embedded in or subject to, their needs, wishes and interests.

• Sense of self is organized and understood by concrete attributes and events, and observable actions and behaviours.

• Subject to rules and authority.

(Kegan, 1982, 1994)

The Socialized Mind

• Able to engage in abstract thinking.

• Internalize, and identify with, the values and beliefs of significant others.

• Need a clear sense of what is expected of them by others and feel a strong obligation to meet those expectations.

• Have little tolerance for ambiguity.

Challenges of the Socialized Mind

• Individuals at this stage don’t just have relationships, they are their relationships.

• Experience others as responsible for their feelings, and assume responsibility for the feelings of others

• Experience criticism as destructive to the self

• Uncomfortable with conflict.

Helen

“…it’s just like being on a roller coaster.”

Stephen

“I can’t believe he humiliated me like that after all I’ve done for him.”

Mike

“I can’t sleep, I’ve lost weight…..I never know what kind of day I’m going to have….”

Vanessa

“Not knowing what co-workers want or expect from me, that has caused me a lot of anxiety”

The Self-authoring Mind

• Are able to determine their own sense of self through their own internal authority.

• Able to separate self from other, do not view behaviours of others as a reflection of themselves or their abilities.

The Self-authoring Mind (cont.)

• Able to release others from the responsibility of being their co-constructor of reality and have developed the capacity to not assume responsibility for others’ responsibilities.

• Differences of opinion are considered a given and are used as opportunities for growth.

The Self-authoring Mind (cont.)

• Able to accept feedback and engage in self-reflection.

• Criticism and feedback are evaluated and used according to individual’s own internally generated standards and values

• Experience conflict as an inevitable and necessary part of the learning process, not something to be avoided.

Jamie

“I feel so ineffective.”

Sandra

“The hardest thing would be ……the compromise and the sacrifice of some values and beliefs that I have surrounding how to be with people.”

Self-Authorship

• External Formulas

• Crossroads

• Self-Authoring

(Baxter-Magolda, 2009)

Crossroads

“I'm very influenced by other people's opinion so... I'm tired.”

The Self-Transforming Mind

• Can reflect on the limits of their own ideology

• Can see that any one system of self-system is incomplete

• Can see across differences to identify similarities

• Make space for the modification or expansion of their own agenda or internal guiding principles

“The developmental journey is the continual process of finding those parts of ourselves that we cannot see (eg. family expectations), pulling them out to reflect on them, and deciding what to make of them” (Baxter-Magolda, 2009, p. 3).

The Mental Demands of Child and

Youth Care

• To cope with the emotional demands of the job, child and youth care workers must have the ability to identify their emotional response to the young person as separate from the young person.

• CYC’s must also be in control of their own issues, rather than have their issues control them.

The Mental Demands of Child and

Youth Care (cont.)

• Must have the capacity to feel aggrieved by something the other individual has done and not hold the other person responsible for these feelings.

• Essentially, the Self must exist apart from the organization of the relationship.

(Kegan, 1994)

What does this mean?

Key Experiences that Support

Development of Self-Authorship

• Pain

• Perspective

• Partnerships

The Holding Environment

• Development occurs as an interactive process between the individual and the environment.

• The three main functions of the holding environment are supporting, challenging, and “sticking around.”

• An individual’s way of knowing can become more complex when he or she is provided with supports and challenges that are developmentally appropriate.

• As supervisors and educators, we must provide “developmentally appropriate” holding for students and practitioners in order to support them where they are and promote developmental growth.

Support

• Respecting individuals thoughts and feelings and affirming the value of their voices,

• Helping individuals to view their experiences as opportunities for learning and growth, and

• Collaborating with individuals to analyze their own problems and engage in mutual learning.

(Baxter-Magolda, 2009)

Challenge

• Drawing individuals’ attention to the complexity of their work decisions and discouraging simplistic solutions,

• Encouraging individuals to develop their own personal authority by listening to their own voices,

• Encouraging individuals to share authority and expertise, and work interdependently with others to solve mutual problems.

(Baxter-Magolda, 2009)

Practical Strategies for Supervisors and

Educators

• Balance structure/guidance with autonomy

• Actively engage students and practitioners in exploring ideas, considering multiple perspectives, and reflecting on their own ideas

• Offer expertise as part of the exploration process rather telling people what to do

Practical Strategies (cont.)

• Ask individuals to offer evidence for their perspectives and explore the benefits and limitations of various viewpoints

• Provide honest feedback

Immunity to Change

• Identify self-improvement goal.

• What you are doing/not doing instead?

• Imagine yourself doing the opposite of those behaviors. What are the biggest worries or fears that arise for you?

• What are you actively doing to make sure those worries or fears don’t come true?

• What are the assumptions that keep you at the mercy of your hidden goals?

“The challenge to change and improve is often misunderstood as a need to better “deal with” or “cope with” the greater complexity of the world. Coping and dealing involve adding new skills or widening our repertoire of responses. We are the same person we were before we learned to cope; we have simply added some new resources. We have learned, but we have not necessarily developed”

(Kegan and Lahey, 2009, p.12)

Discussion

References

Baxter-Magolda, M. (2009). Authoring your Life: Developing an Internal Voice to Navigate Life’s Challenges. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Berger, J. G. (2005). Living postmodern: The complex balance of worldview and developmental capacity. ReVision, 27(4), 20-27.

Kegan, R. (1982). The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kegan, R. (1994). In Over our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kegan, R. & Lahey, L. (2009). Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and your Organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

ReferencesLahey, L., Souvaine, E., Kegan, R., Goodman, R. & Felix, S. (1988) A Guide to the

Subject-Object Interview: Its Administration and Interpretation. Cambridge: The Subject-Object Research Group, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Popp, N. & Portnow, E. (2001). Chapter three: Our developmental perspective on adulthood. In R. Kegan, M. Broderick, E. Drago-Severson, D. Helsing, N. Popp, & K. Portnow, (Eds.) Towards a New Pluralism in ABE/ESLClassrooms: Teaching to Multiple “Cultures of Mind.” Cambridge, MA: National Centre for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.