Student Well-Being and Public Good: The New Front Line of School Effectiveness and Improvement?

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

This symposium addresses the relationship between school improvement and effectiveness and the development of the wellbeing agenda in educational reform. Its purpose is to ask, in contemporary educational policy and practice around the world, what is and should be the relationship between wellbeing, and school improvement and effectiveness?
The idea and aspiration of wellbeing first came to the forefront in 1948 when the World Health Organization defined health as “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Well-being has come into recent prominence in education following its appearance in international indicators from the OECD, UNESCO and elsewhere that rank different countries in relation to their performance in well-being and happiness; in response to mounting concerns with problems of mental, emotional and physical health among young people, including among refugees with post-traumatic stress disorders; and as a way to increase productivity in the workplace and in educational achievement.
Improvement of wellbeing receives strong advocacy from experts and researchers in positive psychology, and is increasing in importance in the policy priorities of nations such as Scotland, Ireland and Canada. At the same time, the emphasis on wellbeing has been criticized as promoting ways of being that reaffirm children’s compliance and express aspects of cultural bias, that subject people’s minds and bodies to the imperatives of profitability, that distract attention from the ways in which systems rather than individuals are responsible for ill-being, and that treat more and more children as vulnerable subjects who need to be constantly calmed and protected rather than energized and engaged.
Wellbeing has significant implications for school effectiveness and improvement and can be expressed through six possible relationships.

Sub Unit

• International Congress for School Effectiveness and School Improvement - ICSEI

Chair

• Andy Hargreaves, Boston College

Papers

• School Leaders: The Key Actor in the Quest to Secure the Well-Being of School-Level Educators - Karen E. Edge, UCL Institute of Education

• Putting Well-Being Strategies Into Place: New Research Findings From Ontario and Germany - Dennis Lynn Shirley, Boston College; Michael Schratz, Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck

• Leadership and Well-Being: Perspectives From Positive Organizational Research in the United States - Karen Seashore Louis, University of Minnesota; Jisu Ryu, University of Minnesota; Jeff Walls, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

• Learning From Singapore: The Paradox of Well-Being - Pak Tee Ng, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

Discussant

• Carol Campbell, University of Toronto - OISE