Examining Whole-School Well-Being: Improving Well-Being in Schools From a Community-Responsive Approach

• In Event: Thinking Long-Term: Retaining Educators and Sustaining Efforts to Improve Districts and Schools

Abstract

Wellbeing in schools has become an essential area for improvement, with an increasingly reported lack of it among students, teachers, administrators, and staff, despite good intentions and resources and programs to improve wellbeing. Recognizing that wellbeing in schools is experienced through the relationships and organizational structures that support the central work of the school—student learning and development—this research examines wellbeing as an outcome of the learning culture of schools. This provides a new model of research and practice for wellbeing in schools that is sustainable and accessible because it attends to the strengths, needs, and potentials that exist within all school communities when paying attention from a strengths-based, appreciative view.

Authors

• Sabre Lynn Cherkowski, University of British Columbia

• Julia Mahfouz, University of Colorado - Denver