Student and Teacher Well-Being: Prospects for Sustainability

• In Event: Facing the Sustainability Challenge: Making Lasting, School-Wide Changes Through Professional Development

Abstract

Purpose
After years in which educational reforms prioritized accountability for achievement results, students’ wellbeing is now receiving increased attention around the world (OECD, 2017; Adler & Seligman, 2016). This presentation investigates how wellbeing is and is not being advanced in a sustainable way by focusing on school districts in Ontario, Canada – a high ranking and widely emulated educational system that is a “reference society” (Bendix, 1978, p. 292) for other school systems.

Theoretical Framework
Sustainability should not be equated with maintainability (Hargreaves & Goodson, 2004; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006). It should align with four aspects of environmental sustainability: depth of purpose, long term benefit, positive rather than negative impact on other people and priorities, and collective responsibility for improvement in a diverse environment.

Methods & Data Sources
This paper draws upon interviews and focus groups conducted in 2016 with over 160 educators across a representative sample of 10 of Ontario’s 72 school boards. The research team developed a semi-structured interview protocol to ask educators how they were understanding and enacting the Ministry’s provincial goals that included wellbeing as one of four priorities. The methodological design was developed collaboratively with representatives from each of the 10 school boards. The team analyzed interviews by topic areas while completing case studies and thematic analyses using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and member checking (Creswell & Miller, 2000). After initial coding the team conducted a cross case analysis to examine patterns, similarities, and differences across cases, participants, and policy initiatives. Wellbeing was one of the ten key themes that emerged from this analysis.

Results
From the perspective of the four intersecting dimensions of sustainability, this paper analyzes 3 different wellbeing initiatives:
     (i) emotional self-regulation programs for students enhanced states of calmness in
ways that supported achievement but were not always culturally neutral as forms of achievement,
    (ii) mindfulness initiatives for teachers could be empowering and enabling for
individuals in a high stress profession, but also be indicative of systemic
problems when hundreds of teachers registered for such programs in the same district,
     (iii) inclusive curricula focused on real-world problems provided students with tools
for transforming their schools and society and integrated academic achievement
with wholesome lives of meaning and purpose.
     
The research also examines the impact of persisting assessment and accountability practices that hinder the achievement of student and teacher wellbeing due to anxiety about academic performance, and distraction from attending to the development and learning of the whole child.
 
Significance
Wellbeing initiatives can deepen learning, enhance and exemplify achievement, and help students and teachers together take collective responsibility for educational success in ways that provide long term benefits. At the same time, what counts as wellbeing may sometimes promote culturally particular forms of calmness and compliance. The residual persistence of mid stakes testing can also threaten sustainability through the collateral damage it exerts on wellbeing in terms of increased anxiety and distraction from deeper purposes.

Authors

• Andy Hargreaves, Boston College

• Dennis Lynn Shirley, Boston College

• Shanee A Wangia, Boston College