Being Well, Getting Better: Toward Well-Being as an Emergent Culture of Global Education Reform

• In Event: Reimagining Well-Being in the Age of Accountability: Lessons From the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory

Abstract

Not since the World Health Organization’s definition of “health” to include physical, mental, and social wellbeing in 1948 has international attention been so devoted to wellbeing and its development among policymakers and education reformers (OECD, 2015). The internal and external threats to students’ wellbeing, including poverty and other out of school factors (Berliner, 2013; Rothstein, 2010), as well as the prevalence of mental health issues in children and adolescents (PHE, 2015; WHO, 2017), are fundamental issues for public education globally.
This conceptual paper situates wellbeing alongside three ways of thinking about public education reform traditions: dominant, emergent, and residual (Williams 1977), drawing on literature in the field and examples from three different policy systems (Ireland, Scotland, and Ontario). Wellbeing can be defined within and in opposition to each of these cultural traditions. This paper also addresses three forms (or three Cs) of wellbeing in relation to global trends: wellbeing as a constitutive achievement in its own right, as a complement to traditional achievement, and as a catalyst or support for achievement.
The current global focus on defining and measuring students’ wellbeing signals it has been incorporated into the dominant reform culture, which values global economic competencies and accountability systems oriented to high-stakes testing. At the same time, wellbeing can be understood as an emergent social and humanistic movement for better lives, communities and societies that has taken on new and greater meaning in response to the dominant paradigm of markets and accountability (Sahlberg, 2011). This counter-cultural reading of accountability is a key component of the vision of the ten member systems of the Atlantic Rim Collboratory (ARC) that is the focus of this symposium (www.atrico.org). Wellbeing has also been undermined by the residual persistence of traditional forms of emotional and behavioral regulation that support classroom calmness and compliance.
The same issues of diverse interpretation apply to teacher wellbeing. Teacher wellbeing has been operationalized as job satisfaction, self-efficacy, trust, and professional autonomy (Aelterman et al., 2007), positive views of teachers’ own practice (Kamil, 2014), and positive understandings and healthy participation in a professional environment (Van Horn, Taris, Schaufeli & Schreurs, 2004). Teacher wellbeing initiatives can be interpreted either as emergent alternatives to the deprofessionalization that has accompanied accountability movements (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012) or in line with political critics of the “happiness industry” (Cederstrom & Spicer, 2015; Davies, 2015) as a way of emotionally enhancing professional compliance with those movements by reducing teacher stress and burnout. (e.g., Pakarinen et al., 2010).
Using policy documents and initiatives from three member systems of the ARC, this conceptual paper situates wellbeing within policy contexts. More broadly, it employs the lenses of dominant, emergent, and residual traditions to make sense of wellbeing as constitutive, complementary, or catalytic to achievement in its historical and political contexts. It considers what various understandings of wellbeing have in common, where they diverge, and what important aspects of wellbeing are currently absent from global efforts in education reform.

Authors

• Joelle Pedersen, Boston College

• Caitlin Long, Boston College

• Min Jung Kim, Boston College

• Andy Hargreaves, Boston College