Happiness & Wellbeing

Laura (Mole) Chapman

EQuality Training

Leading On Wellbeing

Wellbeing in the early years

Pressures arising from a culture of testing, means that current priorities affect practitioners, parents and children negatively.

Children’s happiness needs to be

taken much more seriously to enable a better learning experience.

EconomicWell-being

Contribute

Enjoy and achieve

Health

Safety

WellbeingPersonal Capacity

Social justice Culture

Environment

Factors enabling wellbeing

Defining happiness

• More than absence of pain or suffering

• Deeper and longer-lasting than pleasure

• A measure for wellbeing

• Specific implications for learning

• Seligman’s 3 lives = not an empty life

Broaden-and-build theory‘pleasant life’

Broaden-and-Build (Fredrickson): – Positive emotions and feelings – Flexible, creative and clearer thinking

• Skills and interest – Plasticity of intelligence– ‘Opportunity cost’

Intelligence portfolio

Verbal /LinguisticLogical /mathematicalVisual / Spatial

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal

Bodily /KinestheticMusical

Naturalist

Broaden-and-build theory‘pleasant life’

• Choice & option– Agreement on ‘learning– Choice and control

• Resilience – Positive emotion = positive feelings – Virtuous cycle

Barriers and boundaries‘the good life’

• Barriers to engagement

• Need for change or complexity

• (Mike) Csíkszentmihályi - ‘Flow’

• Boundaries for safety

• Risk not hazard

• The right choice to suit interest

Positive attitude and belief‘meaningful life’

• People who drift become unhappy

• No moral or value judgement

• Happiness is a skill - time

• Other people’s experience and Personal feelings

• Present quality

• Value based purpose

Inclusive practice

• Valuing a learning culture

Celebrate growth and effort

Growth definition of inclusive practice

Culture of possibility

Culture of belonging

Points to consider:• Flourishing is more than absence of pain, and to flourish young people need to

learn about happiness: pleasure, engagement, and meaning.

• Systems that identify academic performance as the proof of education success are potentially very damaging to success and achievement.

• Happiness is fundamental to optimal learning: resilience, emotional wealth and physical health.

Personal meaning • Do I understand the impact of happiness on my own learning?

• How am I happy?

• What do I do to take responsibility?

Shared understanding • How do we ensure young people have a right to happiness?

• How do we design a curriculum

with more options to value multiple intelligence?

Onwards….

EconomicWell-being

Contribute

Enjoy and achieve

Health

Safety

WellbeingPersonal Capacity

Social justice Culture

Environment

Factors enabling wellbeing