A Collection of Articles About School Wellbeing
NB please reference when using
CONTEXTUAL WELLBEING
‘Positive Schools’ is NOT ‘Positive Education’ (but it might be one day...) Do you know the difference?
Positive Schools today is NOT the same thing as Positive Education today. These two approaches to supporting wellbeing in schools do not understand wellbeing in the same way, nor do they incorporate the same understanding of how wellbeing can best be put into action. These are bold statements, but they need making. Understanding what ‘Positive Schools’ is about now and beyond, needs discussion, exploration and clarification.
Why Depth is More Important than Breadth - A Comment on Whole School Wellbeing
Many schools seeking to support school wellbeing, are keen to support a ‘whole school approach’. This sounds like a great idea. After all, surely if we want all staff and students to benefit, and be well; best practice needs to be as universal as possible?
Unfortunately, as with many ideas taken at face value, conceptualizations of ‘whole school wellbeing programs’ can be dangerously ambiguous and substantially flawed.
Why Schools Need to Spend Less Time Thinking About Students (and More Time Thinking About Culture)
Over the past twenty years, there has been an increasing consideration of the role schools can, and indeed ‘should’ play in supporting the mental health of young Australians. But good intentions do not always translate into good actions
The Social Side of Wellbeing – an extract from Contextual Wellbeing
(this is an extract from: Street, Helen (2018) Contextual Wellbeing: creating positive schools from the inside out, published by Wise Solutions) …
Finding Joy Without Judgement - Part One - by Dr Helen Street
‘Behaviours and attitudes only become worthy of positive or negative judgements once they are enacted within a particular time, situation and culture.
Once these contextual factors are accounted for, behaviours and attitudes can be understood as helpful or unhelpful, as strengths or as weaknesses.
Thus, a strength-based approach needs to be about identifying attitudes and behaviours that are healthy within the limits of the context, rather than within the limits of the person.’
Finding Joy Without Judgement - Part Two - by Dr Helen Street
‘A focus on values supports the development of contextual wellbeing with meaning and purpose.
Moreover, the exploration of values within a classroom, living room or board room, helps us to understand and pay attention to what matters, without limiting our understanding of ourselves, or of who we can become.
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Finding Motivation to do Hard Things
By Dr Helen Street
Positive Matters, August, 2023
It is all very well understanding the motivational power of intrinsically rewarding activities, but how do we help students to stay motivated when learning is tough?
