Best Practice

Flourishing: What it is and how to promote it in the classroom

Pupil wellbeing Mental health PSHE
Wellbeing, meaning, purpose, satisfaction – flourishing is at the heart of the culture at Sevenoaks School. Mark Beverley looks at what it entails and how the school fosters this among its students
Image: Adobe Stock

In a recent interview, Jesse Elzinga, the head of Sevenoaks School, was asked which word he used most. His answer was “flourishing”.

It is a word that you will hear used frequently by both staff and students at Sevenoaks School but it is more than just a word – it is fast becoming central to the way teaching, learning and school culture more generally are evolving.

Since 2021, we have worked with Research Schools International (RSI) and researchers from the Harvard Human Flourishing Programme on research to explore student flourishing.

The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University defines flourishing as a state of complete wellbeing, characterised by happiness and life satisfaction, a sense of meaning and purpose, good character and virtue, physical and mental health, and close social relationships (VanderWeele, 2020).

 

Measuring flourishing

The project was established to discover to what extent our students are flourishing against these measures, review research-based practices we already use to support flourishing and whether we could or should introduce new interventions that will help students to lead more fulfilling lives.

We collected survey data from students across school years and analysed this data using a mixed methods approach. Students and teacher research fellows worked alongside RSI to learn about the ways educational research can tell us things about human flourishing, and to develop their research skills.

Many of the evidence-based activities complied by Harvard to enhance student flourishing were reported in school and staff were invited to initiate practices and interventions that would provide support.

 

Activities and areas of focus

Our research indicated particular areas to concentrate on or develop. These included:

  • Gratitude
  • Mindfulness
  • Promoting a sense of wonder
  • Connecting with nature
  • Kindness
  • Social support
  • Reducing academic pressure

Examples of activities included providing students with options to pursue their own “sense of wonder” through adaptations to the curriculum, cross-curricular projects that focus on nature as a source of inspiration, training for staff in mindfulness and directed attention, explicit reference to the meaning and value of kindness, and webinars for both students and parents on developing resilience and managing anxiety.

Some teachers have gone further and developed their ideas into action research projects. These included the use of mindfulness, activities to promote student reflection, strategies for supporting students with perfectionist tendencies, and facilitating flow through teaching.

 

Sharing our insights

In October, our Institute of Teaching and Learning held a conference entitled Supporting Flourishing in Schools. It was an inspiring and practical event for both our own staff and external teachers, school leaders, education professionals and practitioners.

The conference gave insight into pedagogical research and provided interactive workshops on practices to promote flourishing in schools.

Elsewhere, as a result of the flourishing project, various on-going initiatives have been implemented. For staff, the Institute of Teaching and Learning “takeaway” sessions are a regular lunchtime feature. These informal sessions are open to everyone and run by teachers to share their findings and encourage discussion.

Recent takeaways have included subjects such as: being emphatic, supporting introverted students, eating disorders in school, and developing emotional and intellectual curiosity.

In addition, all teaching staff are members of a learning community. These are small cross-curricular groups that meet to focus on developing an area of school life in relation to what we now know about student flourishing.

Research and reflections on teaching and learning are also brought together annually in the Institute of Teaching and Learning journal Innovate. The online journal provides an opportunity for staff to share their findings with a wider audience and encourage critical thinking.

 

Flourishing and philanthropy

The research we undertook with RSI and researchers from Harvard very much underscored the power and efficacy of working in community partnerships with others.

Service learning is greatly valued at Sevenoaks and this September we created a new Education in Action service group. This group of students from years 10 to 13 are involved in teaching, learning and wellbeing projects that benefit other students. The students are currently busy working on a range of initiatives including:

  • A lower school reading newsletter with the aim of encouraging an uptake in reading.
  • An online teaching and learning magazine featuring student guides on how best to approach different aspects of learning, interviews with teachers, career insights, and podcasts related to how we learn.
  • Organising activities during cross-curricula weeks.

 

Flourishing practices for the classroom

Developed with our focus on flourishing, our middle school programme has sought to increase recognition of the value and importance of elements of character such as self-awareness, collaboration, creativity, and social responsibility.

Our Middle School Diploma presents students with the opportunity to record and reflect upon a wide range of learning activities – and the character dispositions nurtured through them. It very much considers the way cognitive and affective learning exist in a relationship with each other, and seeks to support students as they find meaning, purpose, and direction in these hugely important formative years.

Teachers looking to introduce flourishing practices into their classrooms could consider introducing some of these activities. Each focuses on an aspect that the research shows supports aspects of flourishing:

  • Gratitude: A simple gratitude practice is to write a thank you letter or note. You could consider making this a weekly routine in the class.
  • Mindfulness: Incorporate mindful breathing or slow observational looking as a regular practice.
  • Meaning and wonder: Provide students with the opportunity to work on passion projects or an area that they are intrinsically motivated about.
  • Connecting with nature: Design lessons that use outdoor spaces for pedagogical purposes. For example, observations in a natural environment can easily fit into art, humanities, and science lessons.
  • Kindness: In addition to exploring what the term actually means, teachers can model acts of kindness as well as involve students in creative activities through which kindness can be recognised and promoted. These might include posters, podcasts, imaginative writing, group discussion and self-care.
  • Social support: Teachers can support students by creating and leading activities to help them identify and develop their character strengths.

 

The future of Flourishing at Sevenoaks School

Our on-going focus on flourishing has inspired consideration at the most fundamental level of what education is for. As an International Baccalaureate school, we want to understand better how to help students develop meaningfully, as happy, healthy, fulfilled people, with a greater self-awareness and understanding of others.

Looking forward, our next steps in this flourishing journey will be to further develop three core areas:

  1. Meaning and purpose
  2. Art and creativity
  3. Engaging with nature

We aim to explore ways in which these components can be further developed through the taught curriculum, as well as that which is more “hidden”.

We will also introduce practices through which characteristics associated with flourishing can be more explicitly recognised and communicated. This might mean changing the way we think about reporting and assessment in order to include more developed reference to character dispositions; communication with parents about the relationship between academic success and meaning and purpose in education more generally.

The overarching aim is to make sure the school’s strategic plan can be shaped over the next 10 years in a way that brings flourishing to the front and centre of what we do and what we believe education is for.

 

Further information & references