WHY focus on well-being?

Why should we focus on wellbeing?

"The deep purpose of education: well-being and learning. Well-being (is a) critical pre-condition for learning. Learners will not learn when they are uncomfortable or contribute when they are self-conscious. As we know, 'Emotion is the gatekeeper of motivation, cognition and attention.' Therefore, establishing an environment that focuses on well-being and belonging for all is job one for teachers. In short, well-being and quality learning are intimately related. " (Michael Fullan & Joanne Quinn, Education Reimagined, Microsoft Education)

“To enhance happiness and well-being, school systems need to value learners’ unique strengths and talents, recognizing that there are ‘multiple intelligences’ and that each of these has equal importance (Gardner, 1993). Indeed, as stipulated in Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, education should ensure ‘the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential’ (United Nations General Assembly, 1949).”UNESCO: Happy Schools: a framework for learner wellbeing in the Asia Pacific (2016:2)

“When we feel good, we function well.” (Prof. Lea Waters)

This page provides you with six exhibits to explore. You could use them in a workshop with staff - each exhibit being explored by a group who then presents their findings back to the whole group - using the Jigsaw a document or book protocol

Exhibit #1: Global Happiness / Well-Being Reports

In recent years positive psychology and happiness research have entered political policy discourse as an important goal to be pursued. The concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) was first proposed in the 1970s by the Bhutanese king, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. It includes an index that measures the collective happiness and well-being of the population. The king said that "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product." In 2011 the UN General Assembly passed the resolution: "Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development" urging other countries to follow the example of Bhutan. The United Nations now produce the World Happiness Report which is a survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. Other examples include: UNESCOs report Learning: the treasure within which identifies four pillars of learning (to know | do | live together | be); references to well-being throughout the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); the Better Life Survey which is an index that allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life; and PISA which measured the link between well-being and learning outcomes (2018).

Access these global reports.

Identify key messages to feed back.

You could form a Quotes that speak to me wall from the selection of your quotes and invite other groups to explore what you have found.

Exhibit #2: What are schools for? An open letter to parents

In her blog, What Ed Said, Edna Sackson presents this open letter to parents. It goes to the heart of the well-being agenda.

Dear Parents

We know how much you love your children. Many of us are parents too and if we aren't, you can rest assured that we wouldn't be educators unless we cared deeply about children, so we know that many of the following things are important to you. Take a moment to consider which of these you most wish for...

  • My child succeeds without struggle
  • My child is above average at school
  • My child is admired by others
  • My child is well behaved and works hard to get good grades
  • My child excels in sporting competitions
  • My child produces impressive work at school
  • My child is extended by her teachers
  • My child’s class gets homework to help them do better at school
  • My child is popular with his peers
  • My child is always happy at school

Our teachers have been reading Contextual Wellbeing, by Helen Street, which is based on extensive research, and it turns out that the pressure induced by the items on this list, despite being instinctive desires of many parents, can actually undermine children's wellbeing.

Now consider the list below...

  • My child is valued as an individual
  • My child  feels a sense of belonging
  • My child’s strengths matter more than his weaknesses
  • My child is intrinsically motivated
  • My child forms meaningful relationships
  • My child experiences personal growth
  • My child contributes to the community
  • My child loves learning
  • My child has ownership of her decisions and accepts the consequences
  • My child is allowed to fail and learn from his mistakes

We asked parents who attended our informal session last week to sort all these aspirations into two groups. Once they got going, it quickly became clear which would put pressure on their children and which would support them in becoming well adjusted, valued and valuable members of society, content within themselves. We ask you to think about it too...

'Wellbeing is a state of health, happiness and positive engagement that arises from membership of an equitable, inclusive and cohesive environment’ (Helen Street 2016 )

Exhibit #3: Mental health is in crisis

According to a 2018 survey, many high school students don’t believe their schools have done enough to help them deal with stress (51 percent), understand their emotions (49 percent), and solve disagreements (46 percent), and fewer than half of graduates surveyed feel prepared for life after high school. (Respected, CASEL, 2018)

Mental illness is the greatest cause of disability for young people worldwide. (The World Health Organization, 2017)

Reflect: read the following text that describes some of the pressures on young people and provides a context for teaching wellbeing.

"Internal factors such as poor learning environments, educators’ insensitivity, obsolete curricula and an overemphasis on academic content impact negatively on learner well-being and can make schools unhappy places. In addition, learners and educators both face increased pressure due to high emphasis on grades and exams as well as implicit pressure to outperform their counterparts in neighbouring countries in international and regional assessments, which many countries use to benchmark educational performance against others. This pressure reflects the current emphasis on strictly academic outcomes. Increasing pressure to perform academically has resulted in alarming trends: growing mistrust among students, competition, bullying and school violence, as well as growing fears among learners of expressing their personalities and of making mistakes. These symptoms of ‘unhappiness’ reflect the need for education systems to reposition the school as being more than a means of providing educational instruction, but rather being an environment that allows for social and emotional growth and development.

Today, there is increasing recognition of the need for learning assessments to look beyond strictly academic outcomes and place importance on measuring the social and emotional domains of learning that are conducive to enhancing learner well-being. As argued by Layard and Hagell (2015, p. 118), ‘If you treasure it, measure it. If schools do not measure the well-being of their children but do measure their intellectual development, the latter will always take precedence’. Indeed, education systems, including schools, must move away from the focus on standardized teaching and testing and instead define and measure quality beyond the primary academic subject areas, so as to value and nurture a diversity of unique talents, skills and competencies in learners (Zhao, 2015)."UNESCO: Happy Schools: a framework for learner wellbeing in the Asia Pacific (2016:3)

Access the link: What are we doing to our children? and collect evidence from the film.

Watch the video by Simon Sinek

In this video Simon Sinek argues for the importance of social and emotional learning. “I do not buy into the whole thing that AI and robotics is going to replace everything. We like human interaction. The education system can play a much bigger role in preparing us to be human. We measure a students’ performance – how well they perform in a test – but we have no metrics in some for the whole person. We ignore their ability to lead, we ignore their ability to communicate. When we teach kids how to come together, how to organise, how to have opinions that is what our future will hold. They will do the things we teach them.”

Exhibit #4: Arguments from Positive Education

Read the article Positive education: learning and teaching for well-being and academic mastery, In it the authors Matthew White and Margaret L. Kern provide the following six reasons for focusing on wellbeing.

  • Philosophical: wellbeing and virtue ethics (the development of character) are at the heart of what it means to nurture people who are positive contributing members to society.
  • Psychological: high rates of mental illness young people has raised awareness that we need to better understand and support students' mental health. Mental illness is the greatest cause of disability in young people worldwide (World Health Organization, 2017)
  • Social: we all have a deep-seated need to relate well with others and feel a sense of belonging. Peers and friendships are pivotal to how the individual thinks and feels about him|herself. Social and emotional skills of how to handle emotions, develop positive relationships, and make responsible decisions have an impact on academic performance.
  • Cognitive: One of the biggest challenges schools face is how to engage students in their learning. We need to teach students how to be mindful, pay attention and show resilience.
  • Economic: The cost on national economies each year for mental illnesses is substantial. If we can prevent young people from mental illness and save lives it means substantial economic benefits in the future.
  • Cultural: School culture needs to be nurtured to empower students to develop a positive lens for experiencing the world.

Exhibit #5: Need to provide students with skills for life

Read and discuss using the Feeling Wheel as a stimulus.

“Our job is not to prepare our children for something, it is to give them the skills to be able to handle anything!” (Gavin McCormack)

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

"Humans are social beings, and it is imperative for them to possess social and emotional skills prior to acquiring other skills, to survive and thrive in their social settings. Social and emotional skills go hand-in-hand. Emotional skills talk about identifying, expressing and managing the emotions while social skills are about making connections, relating to others, being able to negotiate and build relationships with peers, adults and colleagues." (Importance of social emotional learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Garima Srivastava, IB teacher at Pathways School Noida in India , July 17 2020, IB Community Blog)

“The strongest signal from our study was the need for teachers, schools, and school leaders to help students develop stronger social-emotional skills. While not new in education, these skills are newly important and are taking center stage alongside cognitive skills and content knowledge in the classroom and in the workforce. Studies show social and emotional competencies can increase cognitive skills, measured by academic achievement tests, by up to 11 percent. In fact, student mindsets are twice as predictive of a student’s academic achievement than their home environment or demographic, according to a McKinsey analysis.” (The class of 2030 and the life-ready learning report, Microsoft and McKinsey & Company)

The Soft Skills: The world, life, love and the natural environment are filled with experiences that etch their way into your mind. They reside there like an old man on his favourite park bench. Once imprinted, they are almost impossible to erase. These experiences teach us as educators a valuable lesson of how our children learn. To allow our children to retain knowledge we must make the learning ‘an experience’ We must take the children on a journey, one that excites the senses, the smells, the sights, and the sounds need to be ignited, but more importantly, the heart needs to be engaged. Make them love the lesson, make them hate it, repulse them or sock them. Either way, get their heart engaged in what you’re delivering. “Allow your children to invest both academically and emotionally and true learning will take place.” (Gavin McCormack)

A meta-analysis of 213 school-based SEL programs involving over 270,000 students between Pre-K and high school not only linked these programs to boosts in attitudes and behavior but significant academic performance as well.

Exhibit #6: Well-being supports learning

The “Maslow before you Bloom” approach posits that students need to be in the right state of emotional readiness for successful cognition to begin to take place.

Social and emotional well-being underpins cognitive development. In The Brain Basis for Integrated Social, Emotional, and Academic Development How emotions and social relationships drive learning Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Linda Darling-Hammond, Christina Krone, The Aspen Institute, 2018, argue that brain development requires social relationships, emotional experiences, and cognitive opportunities.

For a summary of the impact of social and emotional learning click HERE.

Reference

The class of 2030 and life-ready learning: The technology imperative, Microsoft & McKinsey & Company, 2019, address the question: ‘how we can all help prepare the class of 2030 to thrive in work and in life?’

Key points:

  • Importance of SEL: Social-emotional skills are already in high demand, but short supply in the workplace. “Social-emotional skills provide students with the perspective and flexibility necessary to function at a high level even when faced with uncertainty, change, pressure, stress, and other work and life challenges. This is critical, because change and uncertainty are going to be increasingly pervasive for the class of 2030.”
  • Have an integrated whole-school approach: Teachers recognise that it is critical to integrate social-emotional skills into the learning programme, but many say they do not have time and support to do this.
  • Utilize technology: Technology can be utilized to help teachers reallocate time so they can focus more on student-centric activities and work more as a coach with children. Three emerging technologies were highlighted: (a) collaboration platforms; (b) AI (artificial intelligence) which provides new ways to understand how students are progressing and allows for highly customized, timely, and targeted curation of content; and (c) mixed reality to create immersive learning experiences for students that foster increased cognitive and social-emotional growth.
This piece of research looked at global data on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. It concluded that raising levels of social and emotional skills (e.g. perseverance, self-esteem, sociability) can have strong effects on being well and happy.
Well-being and success: Opposites that need to attract, Andy Hargreeaves & Dennis Shirley, November 2018. A helpful article that provides three reasons for promoting well-being agenda: (a) Improved well-being increases achievement; (b) academic achievement is crucial for well-being; (c) Well-being has its own value: it compliments academic achievement.

The IB have produced a succinct overview of the importance of well-being, specifically focused on the pandemic. The document is called: Why wellbeing matters during a time of crisis Wellbeing considerations for a successful post-Covid-19 educational transition and can be accessed either through the programme resource centre or HERE.  Excellent summaries of:

  • The challenges, opportunities, and wellbeing insights during transition (dealing with fear, anxiety, and stress | ‘Lost learning’ | Dealing with uncertainty
  • Moving towards an integrated wellbeing approach (Learn from the crisis | Become comfortable with uncertainty | Invest time in wellbeing routines | Redesign a wellbeing pedagogy | Dare to experiment, share and innovate.
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