106 - Mindfulness and the Fidelity of the Stories We Tell as Evaluators

Abstract Information: This skill-building workshop will introduce three mindfulness approaches that can improve evaluators’ self-care practices and, through self-reflection, contribute to overall effectiveness. Kabat-Zinn (2013) described mindfulness as the present-moment awareness of experience in a non-judgmental manner. Mindfulness can be used to enhance practitioners’ work by impacting: 1. Awareness of internal emotional states; 2. Attention to the task at hand; 3. Identification of evaluation anxiety in clients; 4. Noticing cognitive biases that can influence evaluations; 5. Surfacing and integrating insights and intuitions. This workshop will apply the work of evaluators who have promoted the use of mindfulness in evaluation (e.g., Pann et al. (2022); Coghlan & McDavid (2023) by teaching evidence-based mindfulness techniques, including: 1. Three-Minute Breathing Space (Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2013); 2. Practical breathing techniques such as Weil’s (2019) 4-7-8 breathing; 3. Mindfulness meditation; 4. Informal mindfulness practices; 5. Use of reflective questions. Next steps and resources for developing mindfulness skills will also be provided.

Relevance Statement: As evaluators, we construct stories to make sense of the data we collect, communicate our findings, and influence change. Stories also play a role in our own practices. Our own backgrounds, relationships, and experiences shape the narratives we construct from our data. In this skill-building workshop, we explore the power of mindfulness in enhancing the roles and uses of stories in evaluation. We introduce tools that support reflecting on how our own experiences (knowledge, values, beliefs) shape the stories we construct about our data and ourselves. We can use mindfulness to be more aware of our own assumptions and biases. Bishop et al. (2004, p. 232) described mindfulness as: 1. “Self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment. 2. Adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.” Mindfulness research has grown exponentially over the last twenty years (Baminiwatta & Solangaarachchi, 2021). Mindfulness-based interventions have been supported through extensive empirical study and incorporated into the training programs of many high-stress professions, including medicine, healthcare, and law. Mindfulness and self-reflection have been linked to building practical wisdom, as an important component of competent evaluation practice (Coghlan & McDavid, 2023). We review and teach specific mindfulness approaches that can be incorporated into participants’ personal and evaluation practices. The incorporation of mindfulness into the practices of evaluators can assist in increasing their authenticity and effectiveness as well as practice that is aligned with AEA Guiding Principles (AEA, 2018). Evaluators can improve their awareness of what is actually happening in a particular moment or interaction, reducing their biases through non-judgmentally observing, instead of being caught up in emotions that can distort our goal of seeing things as they are. Drawing on the work of Pann et al. (2022), Coghlan and McDavid (2023), and Russon and Russon (2009), we teach specific mindfulness techniques that can be incorporated into our evaluation practice to improve our awareness of our internal emotional states and cognitive biases and to attend fully to the task at hand. These empirically supported mindfulness practices support: 1. Enhancing awareness of internal emotional states and their effects on evaluators’ self-care and work on projects; 2. Noticing cognitive biases that can impact how evaluations are designed, how data are gathered, and how findings are interpreted; 3. Observing insights and intuitions as they present themselves; 4. Being fully present in interactions with people and situations we encounter in our work; 5. Bringing together how one should practice evaluation, ethically, with how one actually practices it. We also provide resources for further developing mindfulness skills and incorporating them into evaluation practices. By attending to the power of story in evaluation through the lens of mindfulness, we can move the narrative of evaluation forward and improve the impact of our work.