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Educating Whole Human Beings: Converging Global Movements in Policy and Practice Stanton Wortham
Educating Whole
Human Beings:
Converging Global
Movements in Policy
and Practice
Stanton Wortham
The
Problem
The challenge in the US
Youth distress is increasing
▰ In 2016, 62 percent of undergraduates
reported “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous
year
▰ UCLA asks incoming freshmen if they felt
“overwhelmed by all they have to do.” In 1985,
18 percent said they did. In 2010, that number
was 29 percent and in 2016 it increased to
41 percent
▰ The number of teenagers hospitalized for
suicide risk has doubled over the last 10 years
The challenge in the US
Young people are experiencing
an increase in alienation,
disengagement and despair
4
▰ In an average class of 30 15-year-olds:
▰ 3 could have a mental disorder
▰ 10 likely to have witnessed their parents
separate
▰ 7 are likely to have been bullied
▰ 6 may be self-harming
From larger social ills to schools
▰ Various factors contribute to this alienation and malaise,
beyond schooling
▰ But schools are central to developing young people and
preparing them for meaningful lives
▰ Maybe they could help
▰ However, at the same time as we have seen significant
despair and alienation in society, schools have gone
through their own transformation, rendering them
unable to help
“The Struggle for the American Curriculum”
Humanists
Child-centered
educators
Social-efficiency
educators
Social critics
“The Struggle for the American Curriculum”
Humanists
Child-
centered
educators
Social
critics
Social-efficiency
educators
How did this end?
▰ The social-efficiency educators prevailed. They provided technical tools
to expand the school system using a factory model to meet increased
demand
▰ By the 1960s, the key pillars of the US high school system had been
established. Since then, we’ve improved and refined it
o Higher graduation rates
o Better teacher preparation
o Reducing achievement gaps
▰ But we have not changed the main focus
“Dewey lost, Thorndike won”
▰ Dewey represented a mix of ideas from the four
schools of thought, but his perspective lost to
Thorndike’s psychometrics
▰ High school system was built upon instrumental
rationality:
o Measurable outcomes
o Training for the economy
o Accountability systems
What’s the problem?
Practical concerns related to making our
educational institutions efficient have narrowed
our sense of what education is, so we are
experiencing a disconnect
This means that many dimensions of our
students’ and teachers’ lives are neglected, and
schools do not help with the broader loss of
purpose
Brief Conversation
Does this problem
manifest in
Saudi Arabia?
Do you see
educators
experiencing the
same problems?
Do you see students
yearning for purpose,
connection, engagement
and wholeness?
12
Is this too much to ask of schools?
Do we have the luxury of
focusing on a more holistic and
humanistic approach to
education?
On a global scale, students,
parents and educators are
hungry for a deeper vision
UNESCO Delors Report (1996)
Proposed four pillars of education:
1. * Learning to know
2. * Learning to do
3. * Learning to live together
4. * Learning to be
“Education is traditionally focused mainly, if not
exclusively, on learning to know and to a lesser
extent on learning to do”
Converging traditions globally
Formative education
Well-being
Character education
Flourishing
Whole child
Civic education
Social and emotional learning
We imagine education as a
process that involves developing
multidimensional human beings
in just communities
* Shaping purposeful lives
* Developing whole people
* Promoting meaningful learning
* Disrupting inequality
Boston College’s Lynch School of Education
A Response: “Formative Education”
▰ Formation is the guided development
of the whole human being
▰ Help students to develop
interpersonally, emotionally, ethically,
and spiritually in addition to
vocationally and cognitively
▰ Boston College and the Lynch School
help young people to work toward
lives of meaning and purpose
Relational
Dimensions of the Whole Person
Motivational
Emotional
Moral
Spiritual
Our Approach
Purpose Wholeness Community
How is the Lynch School’s take on formative education useful?
Education must deliberately
engage dimensions of human
experience beyond the cognitive
All dimensions are inevitably
present at the same time
We need to work toward the
overarching goal of wholeness
among dimensions
Multiple Dimensions and Wholeness
Doing Formative Education
▰Purpose: beyond instrumental
reasoning; toward more ideal selves
and society
▰Retreats for vocational discernment
▰Measuring progress toward lives of
meaning and purpose
How do we do it?
This is the challenge.
Success
Stories
Success Stories: City Connects
▰ Mary Walsh, Executive Director, City Connects
▰ Mission of having children engage and learn in
school by connecting each student with a tailored set
of prevention, intervention, and enrichment services
to succeed and thrive
▰ Vision of transforming an existing school structure
and developing a system that can be consistently
implemented across schools and districts, and be
adaptable to different age groups
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Success Stories: City Connects
Core Practice
Focal activities
▰ - Identify each child’s unique strengths and needs in major developmental
domains, in collaboration with every classroom teacher
▰ - Develop service plan for every child, working with family, school, and
community agencies
▰ - Connect student to a tailored set of support services and
prevention/enrichment opportunities in the community and in school
▰ - Follow up and track services; document in Student Support Information
System database
▰ - Evaluate intermediate and long-term outcomes
Improved Student Effort - Thriving
City Connects students score better than
comparison students on standardized math test
“We work with children who have substantial needs both inside and
outside the classroom. The opportunity to reach out to a City Connects
coordinator and ask for help is invaluable. Our coordinator works tirelessly
to find every resource available to our kids, and the moment I become
aware of a need she is able to move rapidly…It's truly an amazing position
that every school can benefit from!”
- Boston, MA Teacher
Feedback about City Connects
Success Stories: Positive Youth Development
▰ Basic research on youth flourishing: relational
developmental systems model of the development
of youth as whole people
▰ Interventions to build competence, confidence,
character, connection and caring
▰ Components: opportunities for leadership, positive
sustained interactions with adults, skill building
▰ Implementation with 4-H, Boys and Girls Clubs,
Scouting, Big Brothers/Sisters, YMCA and others
Positive Youth Development
Jacqueline Lerner, Professor of Applied
Developmental and Educational
Psychology
▰ Examination of youth strengths, ecological
assets, and risk problems/behaviors
▰ Devising a set of practices to promote
thriving in and out of school
Core Practice
▰Asked by the Thrive Foundation to develop PYD tools for mentors. This became
known as “Project GPS,” standing for:
goal selection, pursuit of strategies, and shifting gears.
▰Project GPS Goal for youth: To improve the goal management—or intentional self
regulation—skills of youth in mentoring programs, helping them to achieve their
goals.
▰Project GPS Goal for programs: To provide a research- and evidence-based,
scientifically validated, flexible suite of tools designed to measure the longitudinal
impact of programs on youth’s ISR and positive development.
▰ -Mentoring program (individual and group)
▰ -For youth 10-18
▰ -Developed rubrics to track growth in PYD and self-regulation
▰ -Measured youth on PYD and ISR (intentional self-regulation)
▰ -Throughout the program, mentors helped youth to set goals
(rubrics), garner resources (videos and activities), and build
activities in support of PYD
Core Practice
Sample:
Youth will write or draw
their goal on one side of
cardboard, and then make
puzzle pieces that
represent each of the
smaller steps towards the
larger goal
Activities
▰ Opportunities for youth leadership
▰ Sustained, positive interactions with adults; skill-building
Programs must have these elements to support positive youth development
Ingredients for PYD programs
Well-Being in Ontario
▰ Andy Hargreaves, Thomas More Brennan
Chair, and Dennis Shirley, Professor of
Education
▻ Together with graduate students
▰ Study of 10 school districts in Ontario
▰ Exploring their new focus on well-being
Four central goals
▰ Ensuring equity
▰ Promoting well-being
▰ Enhancing public
confidence
▰ Achieving Excellence
Core Practice - Continued
How are Ontario schools promoting well-being within and across the school districts?
2013-2014
2014-2015
2015-2016
One example: Student Voice
Pathways to student voice:
1.Student leadership roles
2.Amplification of student voice
3.Student language rights
4.Students as peer well-being experts
5.Student self-advocacy
Amplification of Student Voice
“It's the power of sharing stories… when we share that kind
of thing with other principals, other teachers, you see the
power and the difference you can make.”
Professional Well-being
“Our school has two teachers that are
on stress leave, and there are other
teachers that are on the verge. This is
no longer a school where someone
might start and end their career
because we don't know if they're going
to last 5 years.”
- Elementary Vice Principal
Fostering professional well-being
Takeaways
▰Global reactions against a narrow, instrumental
view of education
▰Need for formative education, toward
wholeness, purpose and community
▰Expand our educational aspirations
▰BC as a hub for research, interventions, PD
