Belts and braces!

There are several ways to enhance staff wellbeing

The Step Back to Empower program uses a two-pronged, two-stage approach to enhance staff wellbeing and improve student learning and outcomes. The two prongs:

the use of practices that are associated with enhancing wellbeing (for example mindfulness*)
using these practices in a way to enhance teacher-to-teacher and teacher-to-student relationships to increase the life meaning from these relationships - meaning in life strongly correlates with wellbeing**

The dual approach increases the possibility of positive outcomes for more participants. At the same time, increasing the quality of teacher-to-teacher relationships is foundational to developing Collective Teacher Efficacy which has the largest effect size (d = 1.57***) of any activity that teachers can engage in with consequent improvements in student outcomes and an individual teacher’s own efficacy.

Thus, benefits for the whole school community are potentially available.

The two-stage approach.

Adopting new practices is hard and only a minority of staff will fully engage, initially, and it is this smaller group that is engaged first (by asking for volunteers) who then become comfortable with a regular practice and the benefits that accrue.

The second time the program is run, this smaller group takes the lead in supporting and encouraging the engagement of the larger group. Once the program has run twice there will be, at least, a core group who continue the key practices on a regular basis allowing new staff – and staff who have been reluctant to engage - to be inducted into the culture of empowerment that supports and stimulates increasing wellbeing.

A low key way, to slowly transform the culture.

*See for example: Lomas, T., Medina, J. C., Ivtzan, I., Rupprecht, S., & Eiroa-Orosa, F. J. (2017). The impact of mindfulness on the wellbeing and performance of educators: A systematic review of the empirical literature. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61, 132–141. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.10.008

**See for example: Chapter 7 - Meaning in Life and Wellbeing - Michael F. Steger, Wellbeing, Recovery and Mental Health pp75-85, Cambridge University Press, online publication date: March 2017: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316339275.008

***The effect size of 1.57 comes from a meta-analysis of 26 studies performed by Rachel Eells. RJ Eells, ‘Meta-analysis of the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and student achievement’, Dissertations, 133, 2011. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/133

You can still download a pdf version of Why We Teach here which builds the case for the value that comes from transforming relationships.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter. Earlier blogs can be found here.

To purchase a copy of Red Brain Blue Brain, Student Feedback or Why We Teach go here

UncategorizedNovember 24, 2020