As I embark on the second year of my masters degree I am faced with the prospect of beginning my culminating research project. Two weeks ago simply typing that sentence would have sent my brain into overdrive. A paralyzing bombardment of ideas would assault my consciousness, anxiety would ensue and I would quickly seek the respite of a distraction. Thankfully, after a series of events over the last few weeks, I am in a much healthier headspace. Let me tell you how I got there…
Rewind to the end of August, right before we began our formal training camp. All of our athletes had arrived in Edmonton and we were having an informal scrimmage that included some of our assistant coaches fresh off their playing careers. Things got heated between two individuals. Words were exchanged. There was some pushing and shoving. No big deal right? Except that one of the participants was a current athlete and the other was an assistant coach. Power imbalance. Immediately following the exchange the assistant coach in question came to myself and a colleague on the sideline complaining of the athlete. He suggested that he should be removed from the team while claiming that if someone had done that in ‘his day’ they would have been cut immediately.
What to do…
We ended up sending the athlete to the locker room to cool off then we welcomed him back into the scrimmage where he continued to participate until everyone went home.
Fast forward a month and I am sitting in a room with 90-ish other colleagues awaiting the start of a professional development session, thankful for a break from the chaos of my grade 3 classroom. The session was about trauma informed practice and how childhood trauma affects students behaviour. Its premise is best summed up by the following TED talk:
Known most popularly as the ACE (adverse childhood experiences) study, the research in question suggests that “adverse childhood experiences” can negatively affect the developing human brain leading to a host of consequences later in life. One such consequence is an overactive amygdala response to common situations. Basically the brain responds to non-life threatening events in the same way it would to an actual life-threatening event: fight, flight, freeze…(insert lightbulb moment here!).
Just last week I made the connection between my PD session and the scrimmage altercation. The athlete who got into a spat with an assistant coach was seeing red, his prefrontal cortex was completely shut off and his fight/flight/freeze response was fully engaged. He was “seeing red.” When the assistant coach came to me upset with the athletes behaviour he was perceiving a lack of discipline. In his mind all athletes should be held accountable to the exact same expectations. If those expectations are broken or otherwise not met there should be specific and predictable consequences regardless of circumstance. A popular belief in the world of sport, no question. Our trauma-informed practice PD preached exactly the opposite, supporting the idea that any negative behaviours should be viewed through a lens of trauma. Instead of punishing undesirable behaviours and labelling their perpetrator, authority figures should consider what trauma a particular student is experiencing that may be leading to outbursts. So what is the difference between an elementary school student and a university student-athlete…
NOTHING! (In my opinion)
For some reason coaches are celebrated for angry outbursts without consideration for context whereas teachers are celebrated for considering individual circumstance when deciding how to intervene with their students. Athletes, even elite athletes are human too. There is no reason to believe that adverse childhood experiences don’t affect them the same way they would a non-elite athlete with the same ramifications later in life.
The purpose of this blog post is to share “What am I interested in? What is my big question? Is there evidence that supports a particular theme?” In order:
– I am interested in how trauma-informed practice manifests among Canadian University athletics coaches.
– My big questions are threefold: (1) how would ACE scores of elite athletes compare to the ACE scores of general population, (2) to what extent are coaches aware of the adverse childhood experiences of their athletes and (3) to what extent does that knowledge inform their interactions and interventions with their athletes.
– Thematic evidence: current research suggests that 80% of people have at least 1 adverse childhood experience, 50% have more than 1 and 25% have 5 or more. Practically that means that 10 of our 12 roster players have at least 1 ACE, 6 have more than 1 ACE, and 3 have 5 or more ACEs.
If coaching effectiveness examines the relationship between athlete performance and coaching interventions, it behooves coaches to consider how trauma-informed practice and otherwise tailoring interventions to fit their knowledge of their athlete’s circumstances is crucial to success.
TL;DR: Trauma-informed practice is gaining popularity in the field of education. I think it can also be applied to elite athletics. I intend to use this idea to begin building my culminating research project for my masters degree.
JP
Jackson, great to hear about what you would like to do in your research. It will be good to look at the methods that you will apply in the study and I think it would be interesting to look at an investigation of the ACE prevalence in an athlete (basketball) sample and relation to different variables. This is where getting into the literature will help. What studies have been done using ACE and what validity and / or conclusions have been identified on other life factors. A quick view of google scholar seems to reveal that some relationship of ACE to addiction and depression. Due to the nature of the survey, research ethics will be scrutinized as the data collected likely will reveal some aspects of childhood that are sensitive to individuals being studied (hence it is probably important that the researcher is blinded to the individuals completing the survey). This may be a bit tricky when informing some of your research questions, like whether coaching interventions are adjusted in relation to “knowledge” of childhood trauma. My point here is that the data likely needs to be handles carefully, and could be used to examine impacts on other HP sport factors (eg. ability to focus, mental toughness, commitment to training). In this situation, you could look at whether the ACE score impact other variables that are related to athlete success or failure. Anyway, just a few thoughts. It would interesting to look some of the research and how other studies have been approached.
Hi David,
Looking back on this comment, it seems almost premonitory.
Ethics was ultimately what derailed this line of inquiry though I remain curious and wanting to pursue into the future.
Perhaps the makings of a Ph.D study assuming my successful completing of this program.
JP
Hi Jackson,
I like the reflection you have taken with the university athletes. I think this research project could be a step forward to increase the awareness of mental health at the university level.
The only difference between an elementary school student and a university student-athlete in my opinion, is time. Time can probably affects even more the university student if he hides the problem. As Dave stated, I think it will be challenging to found your research boundaries in therm of ethic while keeping it simple and meaningful. And could ACE creates opposite effects on the human development as it could promote more mentally tough athletes and more resilience? Thanks for sharing your ideas Jackson!
Hey Dom,
I couldn’t agree more. The neurosequential model suggests that harm caused by trauma at a young age is physiological in nature, affecting the structure of the brain, and won’t improve without deliberate intervention. A coach’s scope of practice prevents clinical interventions but trauma informed practice helps to guide helpful ways of interacting that support healing in the long term. I wonder if the athletes we often deem as ‘knuckleheads’ or ‘cancers’ are themselves victims of trauma whose behaviour needs to be treated as a symptom and not as wanton disrespect.
Thanks for your comment.
JP