Wellbeing and Resilience Education: COVID-19 and Its Impact on Education [1 ed.] 0367680963, 9780367680961

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Wellbeing and Resilience Education

Wellbeing and Resilience Education engages with the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the theoretical and applied elements of wellbeing and resilience education. It explores the implications for students, teachers and teaching from a transdisciplinary and international perspective. Featuring 13 chapters written by 27 academics from across the globe, it includes new transdisciplinary research by organisational psychologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, policy experts and education researchers. The book comprises a wide range of topics including appreciative inquiry, educational leadership, refugee education, resilience education, designing online courses, teacher wellbeing and community responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This timely volume will be of interest to academics, initial teacher educators, postgraduate students, school leaders and policymakers researching the feld of wellbeing, resilience, education, schools and schooling. Mathew A. White, Ph.D., is Deputy Head of the School of Education and Associate Professor of Education at the University of Adelaide. He is also a principal fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. He has published scientifc journal articles and book chapters. Publications include Critical Perspectives on Teaching, Learning and Leadership: Enhancing Educational Outcomes (with Faye McCallum, Springer, 2020), Future Directions in Wellbeing: Education, Organisations and Policy (with Gavin Slemp and Simon Murray, Springer, 2017) and Evidence-Based Approaches in Positive Education: Implementing a Strategic Framework for Wellbeing in Schools (with Simon Murray, Springer, 2015). In 2020, Mathew was presented the Distinguished Contribution to Research in Educational Leadership Award by the South Australian Branch of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders. He is the President of the International Positive Psychology Association Education Division. Mathew was a secondary school teacher for 20 years and has a decade’s senior leadership-level experience in schools. Faye McCallum, Ph.D., is Head of the School of Education and Professor of Education at the University of Adelaide. She has published over 100 scientifc journal articles and book chapters. Her research books include Critical Perspectives on Teaching, Learning and Leadership: Enhancing Educational Outcomes (with Mathew A. White) published by Springer in 2020, the forthcoming Wellbeing Education and Professional Practice: Transforming Teaching (with Mathew A. White) published by Springer and Nurturing Wellbeing Development in Education: From Little Things, Big Things Grow (with Deb Price) published by Routledge in 2015. She was awarded the 2019 Australian Council for Educational Leaders South Australian Branch Dr Alby Jones AO Gold Medal ‘for her contribution to the study and practice of educational leadership’. She was a fnalist for the 2020 Telstra Business Women’s Awards.

Wellbeing and Resilience Education COVID-19 and Its Impact on Education

Edited by Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-68096-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-68098-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-13419-0 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

We dedicate this book to the memory of the lives lost, teachers, healthcare workers, and researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contents

List of fgures List of tables Foreword Preface Acknowledgements List of contributor biographies 1 Crisis or catalyst? Examining COVID-19’s implications for wellbeing and resilience education

ix xi xii xiii xv xvii

1

MATHEW A. WHITE AND FAYE MCCALLUM

2 Wellbeing from the outside-in: how mirror fourishing elevates collective wellbeing both within and beyond the classroom

18

LINDSEY N. GODWIN AND SARA TRUEBRIDGE

3 A comparative study of wellbeing in students: Tecmilenio case

33

ROSALINDA BALLESTEROS-VALDÉS AND HUMBERTO CHARLES-LEIJA

4 UPRIGHT – well-being & resilience education: disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic

51

METTE MARIE LEDERTOUG, LOUISE TIDMAND, CARLOTA LAS HAYAS, SILVIA GABRIELLI AND SARA CARBONE

5 How could school leaders improve the fourishing of teachers in the COVID-19 pandemic? KATY E. GRANVILLE-CHAPMAN

77

viii Contents 6 Why embedding character education in schools matters: key learnings from our research on character strengths

96

IRO KONSTANTINOU

7 Supporting English language education for children from refugee backgrounds in Australian schools

111

NINA MAADAD AND MARIZON YU

8 Designing, delivering, and evaluating resilience programs in post-secondary institutions in times of COVID-19: ten key considerations

137

TAYYAB RASHID, JANE GILLHAM, STEVE LEVENTHAL, ZACHARY ZAROWSKY, AND HAREEM ASHRAF

9 Enhancing school – university pre-service teacher professional experience with online wellbeing masterclasses during COVID-19

161

MATHEW A. WHITE

10 Teachers’ wellbeing during times of change and disruption

183

FAYE MCCALLUM

11 Wellbeing literacy as an emancipatory and transformative capability

209

LINDSAY G. OADES, JESSICA A. TAYLOR, JACQUI FRANCIS AND LISA M. BAKER

12 Destruction to regeneration: how community trauma and disruption can precipitate collective transformation

232

LUCY C. HONE, CHRIS P. JANSEN AND DENISE M. QUINLAN

13 Flourishing Students in a time of change

255

ÅSE FAGERLUND AND MARI LAAKSO

Index

276

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 7.1 7.2 9.1

9.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

COVID-19 and its impact on schooling, teaching and student wellbeing Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework for human development (1979) COVID-19 and its mid- and longer-term impact on schooling, teaching and student wellbeing A multidimensional conceptualization of PERMA-H The UN global goals for sustainable development (from www.globalgoals.org) Wellbeing and happiness ecosystem Correlations among the 23 items of the PERMA Profler, 2018–2020 Correlations among the 23 items of the PERMA Profler, four groups, 2018–2020 The UPRIGHT timeframe Three phases of pandemic (Fegert et al., 2020) COVID-19 and its implications for the progress of the UPRIGHT project Pedagogy of the displaced as a framework for understanding EAL/D students from Syrian-confict refugee backgrounds Intersectionality of identities of the child from a refugee background Process for the development of an accredited character, resilience and wellbeing online masterclass structure at Adelaide Carpe Diem process for Adelaide’s character, resilience and wellbeing online masterclass Adverse consequences of school closures Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework for human development (1979) Respondents’ years of teaching experience Respondents’ year levels of teaching experience

5 7 13 25 28 36 44 45 56 62 67 127 130

169 170 187 188 190 190

x Figures 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 11.1

Value of professional learning on wellbeing Value of professional learning on wellbeing Key wellbeing terms used by participants Key wellbeing strategies used by teachers Degree of change – wellbeing language and responses to challenge

191 192 193 198 221

Tables

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3

5.1 5.2 5.3

5.4 7.1 8.1 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 11.1 11.2 13.1

What service learning looks like in K-12 (from National Youth Leadership Council, 2020) Summary description of skills and values contents Students who responded to the survey, spring 2018, 2019 and 2020 Description of the PERMA Profler questionnaire items Averages for PERMA elements by academic level, 2019 and 2020 Averages for health, negative, happiness elements by academic level, 2019 and 2020 Overview of the core components and skills in the UPRIGHT programme Example of a rubric Processes of change, common issues and potential outcomes of overlooked or poorly executed (indicated by a strikethrough and bolding) processes (Hoare et al., 2017) An overview of data collection and how methods were mixed How each data set was used to answer the research questions The impacts of the interventions on factors most frequently identifed by teaching staf as factors afecting participants’ fourishing Model of school leadership: leadership for teacher fourishing Language and literacy levels Defnitions and conceptualizations of resilience Expert interview questions mapped against the Australian Professional Standards for teachers at the Graduate Level Character, resilience and wellbeing online masterclass structure Teacher strategies to support wellbeing School strategies to support teacher wellbeing The fve components of wellbeing literacy The fve components of wellbeing literacy in an educational context Outline of the Flourishing Students program curriculum

27 37 42 43 46 47 57 58

65 83 84

89 91 125 138 171 173 199 202 211 215 259

Foreword

This research book is a treasure trove for educators, researchers, administrators, counsellors and psychologist working in education. First conceptualised by Associate Professor Mathew A. White, PhD, and Professor Faye McCallum, PhD, at the height of wave one of COVID-19 (March 2020), the book pulls together the latest research and thinking from wellbeing and resilience experts across the globe about the challenges and opportunities for schools experiencing the intense disruptions caused by the coronavirus global pandemic. In a year where more than 90% of the world’s learners experienced school closures, the need for wellbeing and resilience to be at the forefront of the education agenda was highly apparent. Importantly, the chapters in this book provide focus on a range of stakeholders from students through to teachers and school leaders, both in terms of the impact that the pandemic had upon these groups and in terms of insights for how to capitalise on the disruptions to create forward momentum and ensure that wellbeing remains front and centre of education initiatives moving forward. A glance through the contents of this book shows the role that many tried and true wellbeing education approaches played during the COVID-19 crisis. Resilience, character strengths, fourishing, wellbeing literacy, appreciative inquiry and post-traumatic growth are used to help us understand the experience of living through a global pandemic. Each of these topics is cast in a new light within the context of COVID-19 and on account of the fresh voices and early career researcher who form part of the author line up. At the same time, we, the readers, are the benefciaries of established researchers who have been working in this feld for decades. This book provides an invaluable contribution to the feld of wellbeing education at a critical point in time, and I have no doubt it will become a key resource for schools everywhere. Professor Lea Waters AM, PhD Centre for Positive Psychology Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne

Preface

The case for wellbeing and resilience in education has been the focus of signifcant research over the past 20 years. It is the backbone for much of this book; however, COVID-19 is redefning all parts of society and rewriting progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Good Health and Wellbeing, Quality Education and Gender Equality. There has been an estimated number of over 119 million COVID-19 cases, 67.1 million recovered cases and 2.63 million deaths worldwide and rapidly climbing (‘Coronavirus [COVID-19]’ 12 March 2021).1 As the world adapts to the unparalleled disruption of the pandemic, we believe it is timely to share new international research on wellbeing and resilience. Chapters in this edited research book generate new concepts, methodologies, interventions and understandings of COVID-19’s impact on wellbeing and resilience in education. We started planning this book in mid-March  2020. At this time, UNESCO (2020) estimated that there were 53 countrywide school closures caused by COVID-19 across Asia, Europe, North America, South America and the United Kingdom. By the end of April 2020, we invited a mix of early, mid-career and established researchers from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America to contribute as rolling lockdowns spread across the United Kingdom and Europe. Reading each chapter, you will discover new knowledge and studies that extend existing knowledge on the topics of wellbeing and resilience. Chapters investigate the impact of the pandemic on diverse topics including 21st-century skills, afect, comparative and cross-cultural education, initial teacher education, student wellbeing, teacher wellbeing, teachers and teaching and resilience interventions in higher education. As Routledge considered our book proposal during May  2020, UNESCO (2020) estimated COVID-19 caused a staggering 192 countrywide school closures  – literally turning education upside down. Of course, higher education was afected as well. From an education perspective, the unfolding impact of the health crisis is challenging teachers, teaching, student, parents and universities. We expect the book will be benefcial for initial teacher educators preparing pre-service teachers entering the profession, researchers in higher education, counsellors, school leaders, policymakers, teachers and scholars interested in

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Preface

wellbeing and resilience. Now hope appears on the horizon with Pfzer and BioNTech’s announcements of vaccines in November 2020, their approval and national roll-out strategies worldwide from January 2021. We dedicate this book to the memory of all the lives lost, teachers, healthcare workers, and researchers’ inspirational eforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.2 Mathew A. White & Faye McCallum School of Education Faculty of Arts The University of Adelaide, Australia

Notes 1 Johns Hopkins University. (2021, March 12). COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html 2 Sow, A. A. (2020, November  13). COVID-19 vaccine update: Pfzer may be the frontrunner, but Canada has hedged its bets. The Conversation. https://theconver sation.com/covid-19-vaccine-update-pfzer-may-be-the-frontrunner-but-canada-hashedged-its-bets-149962

Acknowledgements

First, we would like to thank Will Bateman, Senior Editorial Assistant – Education for his support of our initial book proposal, and Sarah Gore, Editor – Education and Mental Health, with Taylor & Francis, for her support and guidance as we prepared the manuscript. Our thanks to the following 27 researchers from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America who have contributed to this publication: Hareem Ashraf, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada Lisa M. Baker, The University of Melbourne, Australia Dr Rosalinda Ballesteros-Valdés, Universidad Tecmilenio, Mexico Sara Carbone, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy Dr Humberto Charles-Leija, Universidad Tecmilenio, Mexico Dr Åse Fagerlund, University of Helsinki & The Folkhälsan Research Center, Finland Jacqui Francis, The University of Melbourne, Australia Dr Silvia Gabrielli, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy Professor Lindsey N. Godwin, Champlain College, United States of America Katy E. Granville-Chapman, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Professor Jane Gillham, Swarthmore College, United States of America Dr Lucy C. Hone, University of Canterbury & New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, New Zealand Dr Chris P. Jansen, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Dr Iro Konstantinou, Eton College, England Mari Laakso, University of Helsinki  & The Folkhälsan Research Center, Finland Dr Carlota Las Hayas, Health Services Research, Spain Dr Mette Marie Ledertoug, Aarhus University, Denmark Steve Leventhal, CorStone, United States of America Dr Nina Maadad, The University of Adelaide, Australia Professor Lindsay G. Oades, The University of Melbourne, Australia Dr Denise M. Quinlan, University of Canterbury & New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, New Zealand

xvi Acknowledgements Dr Tayyab Rashid, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada Jessica A. Taylor, The University of Melbourne, Australia Dr Louise Tidmand, Aarhus University, Denmark Dr Sara Truebridge, Southern New Hampshire University, United States of America Dr  Marizon Yu, Curriculum Support Ofcer in Department for Education, South Australia Zachary Zarowsky, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada We are incredibly grateful for the support of our universities, enabling us to write these chapters during the pandemic. We thank Professor Jennie Shaw, Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic) and Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts; Professor Rachel Ankeny, Deputy Dean (Research), Faculty of Arts; Dr John Willison, Acting Chair of the Research Management Committee in the School of Education; and the University of Adelaide for their support and interest. We also thank the anonymous Taylor  & Francis peer-reviewers. They made important suggestions and improvements to the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to Professor Lea Waters AM, the Immediate PastPresident of the International Positive Psychology Association and Inaugural Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology, Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne, for generously agreeing to write the foreword to this book. While waves of COVID-19 continue to challenge, it has united our international research colleagues to share their learning during this time. We hope this research represents such an international endeavour as each author carried on during various government interventions and restrictions. It is our colleagues’ love of learning, leadership, teamwork and perseverance that inspires us. Mathew A. White & Faye McCallum School of Education Faculty of Arts The University of Adelaide, Australia

Contributor biographies

Foreword Lea Waters AM, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She is the frst Australian to be appointed a professorship in positive psychology, the Founding Director of the Centre for Positive Psychology and the Inaugural Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology. She has published over 100 scientifc journal articles and book chapters and held an academic position at the University of Melbourne for more than 20  years. She holds afliate positions at Cambridge University’s Wellbeing Institute and the University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizations. Lea was named one of the Australia’s Top 100 Women of Infuence by the Financial Review and Westpac Bank. Her book The Strength Switch: How the New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen to Flourish was published by Penguin in 2017 and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hungarian, Arabic, Russian, French and Spanish. She was named the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management Educator of the Year (2004), received an Australian University Individual Teaching Excellence Award (2007), awarded the Teaching Excellence Award by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (2011) and received a team Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning from the Australian Government’s Ofce for Teaching and Learning (2013). Lea sits on several boards, including the Science Board of the University of California, Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, the Executive Board of the International Positive Psychology Association (where she served as President 2017–2019) and the Advisory Board for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. She serves on the World Happiness Council’s Council of Happiness & Education, Ambassador for the Positive Education Schools Association and Patron for Flourishing Education Japan. She is a registered psychologist (AHPRA) and a full member of the Australian Psychological Society. In 2020, she was presented the Media Award for Public Engagement with Psychological Science by the Australian Psychological

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Society. The Governor-General of Australia appointed Lea a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for signifcant service to education and psychology in the Australia Day 2020 Honours List.

Book chapters Hareem Ashraf is completing her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough with a specialist in Mental Health and a major in Molecular Biology. Hareem Ashraf has led and worked on several research projects at York University and the University of Toronto, including research at the UTSC Health and Wellness Centre and research on eating disorders and personality measures. Hareem Ashraf is also highly active on campus and in her community and has taken on leadership and creative initiatives. As the founder of the UTSC Eating Disorders Association, Hareem Ashraf aimed to bring awareness and education to UTSC by leading a team in several events and initiatives throughout the year. Hareem Ashraf also formulated and helped launch a one-of-a-kind annual mental health conference for the Muslim community hosted at various Toronto mosques to improve mental health literacy, inclusivity and resources. Lisa M. Baker has been a teacher, researcher and learner in the feld of early childhood education for over 30  years. She holds a bachelor of education, specialising in early childhood, a masters of applied positive psychology and three decades of professional erudition, action research and practitioner inquiry. She is also a member of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Positive Psychology Wellbeing Literacy and Language Research Stream. Lisa has a breadth of knowledge and experience in education. She understands childhood is a critical time for development, learning and wellbeing. Lisa’s writing and presentations, which highlight the synergies between the felds of early childhood, wellbeing science and nature pedagogy, combine evidence, theory and strategy for educators. She advocates that meaningful relationships, wellbeing and wellbeing literacy are integral to positive education environments and that respect for the capabilities of children must be prioritised so they can fourish. Rosalinda Ballesteros-Valdés, Ph.D., is the Director of the Institute for Wellbeing and Happiness at Universidad Tecmilenio, considered the frst Positive University. At Tecmilenio, she previously held the position of vice-president for High School Education and designed the Positive Education Curriculum for 28 Tecmilenio High Schools (more than 15,000 students). Rosalinda holds a Ph.D. in humanistic studies from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico and a master of applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She has 24  years’ experience in education and curriculum design. Rosalinda has worked extensively in peace education programs, from Education for Peace International and Peace Begins with Children in Mexico.

Contributor biographies xix Sara Carbone is a researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, a leading research centre in Italy, bringing 30 years of expertise on artifcial intelligence to scientifc–technological innovation as well as social and cultural innovation. She holds a master’s degree in clinical and community psychology, specialising in psychotherapy. She contributed to the HBSC study at a regional level and has been involved in several EU projects aimed at mental health promotion and suicide prevention for young and adults funded by the Public Health Programme and H2020. Sara is passionate about action research and collaborates with schools, providing training to teachers and running projects for students to improve their wellbeing and resilience. Humberto Charles-Leija, Ph.D., is a researcher at the Institute for Wellbeing and Happiness at Universidad Tecmilenio in Monterrey, Mexico. Humberto is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI in Spanish) in Mexico. His research focuses on subjective wellbeing and wellbeing education. Humberto has published more than 10 research papers in Australia, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico and participated as a speaker at the Conference of International Society of Quality-of-Life Studies on three occasions, in Phoenix, the United States, Seoul, Korea and Innsbruck, Austria. He is a part of the Technical Group Specialized in Measuring Income and Wellbeing (GTMIB in Spanish) at the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI in Spanish) in Mexico. GTMIB is overseeing the development of a new indicator to measure income and wellbeing in national statistics in Mexico. Åse Fagerlund, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and senior researcher at the Folkhälsan Research Center in Helsinki and an afliated researcher at the University of Helsinki. She worked for many years with children as a clinical neuropsychologist before turning to research on children with brain damage. Working and researching with troubled children and youth led Åse to her current interest in positive psychology. At present, Åse leads an extensive series of randomised controlled trial research projects on enhancing child, youth and adult wellbeing through positive psychology interventions. In addition to her research work, Åse is also a cognitive-behavioural therapy psychotherapist, integrating positive psychology methods into her clinical work with clients of all ages. Jacqui Francis is an educator and researcher with extensive experience teaching in primary schools in the United Kingdom and Australia. Jacqui currently contributes to undergraduate breadth subjects and master subjects at the Centre for Positive Psychology in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne and is a research assistant for the Centre’s Wellbeing Literacy and Language Research Stream. Jacqui has a bachelor of behavioural science (psychology), bachelor of teaching (Hons), master of education and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her studies inquire into planning for, developing and measuring efective online positive psychology interventions. Jacqui has a passion for wellbeing and the

xx Contributor biographies purpose-driven intention to fnd and share pathways to the language, knowledge and skills of wellbeing, facilitating access equity so individuals and their communities can thrive. Silvia Gabrielli, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, a leading research centre in Italy, bringing 30  years of expertise on artifcial intelligence to scientifc–technological innovation as well as social and cultural innovation. Silvia holds a Ph.D. in cognitive sciences and a master’s degree in psychology. Her expertise is on participatory methods and the co-design of personal healthcare solutions for mental health, motor-cognitive rehabilitation and chronic patients. She has a track record of more than 50 publications in international conferences and journals and is an adjunct professor at the University of Trento. She has worked in several EU projects funded by FP7 and H2020. Jane Gillham, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, USA. Her research and applied interests are at the intersection of clinical psychology, developmental psychology and education. Much of this work focuses on developing, evaluating and disseminating school- and communitybased interventions designed to promote psychological resilience and wellbeing in young people. Jane regularly collaborates with educators, counsellors and clinicians at schools and other organisations that serve youth and with researchers at many other academic institutions. Together with her collaborators, she has developed several wellbeing programs and curricula, including the Penn Resiliency Program and Strengths-Based Resilience. She has led several large-scale evaluations of school and community wellbeing programs. Jane serves as a scientifc advisor for CorStone, a non-proft organisation that develops and implements resilience programs for youth around the world. Jane also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Positive Psychology and as an editorial board member for several academic journals. At Swarthmore, Jane teaches courses on clinical psychology and social and emotional wellbeing. She directs the Resilience and Wellbeing Lab and supervises students who are conducting empirical research in the lab. She also mentors students who are interested in applied work in psychology and frequently teaches the clinical feld placement course (Psyc 90), one of the longest-running communitybased learning courses at the College. Lindsey N. Godwin, Ph.D., is the Robert P. Stiller Endowed Professor of Management at the Stiller School of Business at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, in the United States, where she serves as the Academic Director of the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry. She holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University, where she studied with the founding thought leaders in Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Her work has been published in a variety of journals and books, including The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. As a practitionerscholar, she remains active in the global AI community, having served as

Contributor biographies xxi the Chair and/or Global Advisor for the past fve World AI Conferences and continues to serve as a managing editor for the AI Practitioner Journal. Lindsey helped lead the World Positive Education Accelerator in June 2018. With a passion for assisting organisations to leverage their potential through strength-based change, she continues facilitating AI processes with organisations around the world. Katy E. Granville-Chapman is an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Character Project. She is the co-founder of Global Social Leaders, a leadership program that has participants in 105 countries, all passionate about creating and sustaining positive change in the world. Katy is currently completing a DPhil in Education at Oxford, asking how leaders could improve the fourishing and wellbeing of those they lead. She is a research associate at the Oxford University Wellbeing Research Centre, a deputy headteacher at Wellington College and founder of the Wellington Leadership and Coaching Institute, which she now co-directs. Katy is (with Emmie Bidston) co-author of the book, Leader: Know, Love and Inspire Your People. Lucy C. Hone, Ph.D., is an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury and director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing  & Resilience. Lucy’s work focuses on population wellbeing promotion, which is currently mostly through building capability and capacity for wellbeing and resilience in communities via the education sector. She was the project lead for the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s frst pilot scheme into wellbeing promotion across school clusters in 2016 and is a project lead on the Grow Waitaha wellbeing initiatives. Lucy’s research has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including The Journal of Positive Psychology, Social Indicators Research, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, International Journal of Wellbeing and New Zealand Journal of Human Resources Management. Her Ph.D. was recognised for its contribution to wellbeing science at the World Congress of Positive Psychology in 2019. She is an executive member of the New Zealand Associate of Positive Psychology, a member of the International Positive Psychology Association and a global representative for the International Positive Education Network. She is also co-convenor of the Wellbeing in Education New Zealand conferences and co-author (with Denise M. Quinlan) of The Educators’ Guide to Whole-school Wellbeing: A  Practical Guide to Getting Started, Best-practice Process and Efective Implementation published by Taylor & Francis in 2020. Chris P. Jansen, Ph.D., is the director and senior consultant at Leadership Lab, developing collective approaches to complex issues across the education, health, social services and community sectors in a range of projects. These include the design and delivery of leadership development programs, change management initiatives, organisational capability and strategic planning, collective impact and community development. Chris is a senior fellow at the University of Canterbury, where he teaches courses on leading change and

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Contributor biographies

leading collaborative partnerships in the Postgraduate Diploma of Strategic Leadership and Master of Business Administration programs. He is part of the Grow Waitaha governance group. Chris is involved in executive coaching and regularly facilitates workshops and presentations at conferences and with a range of organisations around New Zealand, Australia, the Pacifc and Asia, and is currently facilitating leadership programs with international schools in Singapore, Thailand, China and Taiwan. Chris has a Ph.D. in management and a master of education (counselling) and has published extensively. Iro Konstantinou, Ph.D., is the Head of Research Programmes at Eton College in the United Kingdom. She has been researching character education and wellbeing in secondary school and higher settings and is currently trialling large-scale interventions focusing on resilience. She is the editor-in-chief at the Eton Journal for Innovation and Research in Education. Iro has previously been a research fellow at the Oxford Character Project, taught at the Department of Education and Sociology at the University of Warwick, where she completed her Ph.D. and was seminar chair at the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism at the London School of Economics. She recently published a chapter titled ‘Becoming a Successful Learner’ looking at how positive psychology and neuroscience can inform educators (Routledge, 2020). Iro is currently teaching research methods at Pearson Business School where, with a team of colleagues, she is looking into refection and skills development in work-integrated learning and degree apprenticeships. Mari Laakso has a master’s degree in social sciences and is currently undertaking PhD studies at the University of Helsinki. Since 2015, she has been working at the Folkhälsan Research Center in Helsinki in the research project Strength, Happiness and Compassion. Her dissertation is about enhancing the wellbeing of children and families from a positive psychology perspective. As a counterbalance to the research and dissertation work, she teaches parents, teachers and other educators about positive psychology and education. Carlota Las Hayas, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at Kronikgune Institute for Health Services Research in Spain. The Institute aims to generate new knowledge concerning sustainable responses of healthcare and socio-healthcare systems to chronicity. Carlota has conducted a range of research on resilience, quality of life and wellbeing in the general population, people with chronic diseases and caregivers, and she has experience in quantitative and qualitative methods. Currently, she is the principal investigator of the UPRIGHT project – Universal Preventive Resilience Intervention Globally – implemented in schools to improve and promote mental health for teenagers (an EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program). Carlota has more than 50 publications on the topics of resilience, psychometrics, patient-reported outcomes, mental health, quality of life and wellbeing, among others. She is an accredited teacher by the National Agency for the Evaluation of Quality and Accreditation and an invited lecturer at diferent institutions.

Contributor biographies xxiii Mette Marie Ledertoug, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher in positive education at Aarhus University, Denmark. She has a master of arts in educational psychology and positive psychology and 20  years of experience within the feld of education. She is currently in charge of the Danish participation in the EU’s UPRIGHT project – a resilience and wellbeing program for teenagers in schools. Mette’s research focuses on positive education: strength-based learning, engaging education and battling boredom in schools, wellbeing and resilience for students and teachers. She has published a series of books and articles (in Danish and English) on positive education, most recently a contribution to the forthcoming Handbook on Positive Education published by Palgrave and The Battle Against Boredom in Schools published by Strength Academy in 2019. Mette is a community lead within the Danish Positive Psychology Network PIV and part of the organising committee IPPA Education Division, facilitating pre-conferences for Positive Education in Budapest in 2018 and Iceland in 2022. Steve Leventhal is the chief executive ofcer of CorStone, USA, which develops and provides personal resilience programs to improve wellbeing for youth worldwide, focusing on adolescent girls as critical change agents in their communities. Steve Leventhal has focused on helping some of the world’s most marginalised and economically disadvantaged populations to fnd their personal strengths, advocate for their rights and become agents of positive societal change. Through Steve’s passionate leadership, CorStone’s evidencebased positive psychology and resilience-based programs have reached over 100,000 youths and women living in poverty in India, Kenya, Rwanda and the USA. Steve oversees all strategic planning, global program development, external relations and operations for the organisation. During Steve’s tenure, CorStone has pioneered the development, implementation and scale-up of some of the frst resilience and positive psychology programs delivered in lowand middle-income countries. Steve holds a BA degree in psychology and Asian studies from Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, and an MPA with an emphasis in organisational psychology and confict management from The Evans School of Public Afairs, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. He holds a 4th-degree black belt in the martial art of Aikido. Steve received the Outstanding Practitioner Award at the 2019 World Congress of Positive Psychology, awarded biannually to a practitioner who has shown outstanding excellence and impact in advancing the practices of positive psychology in ethical and evidence-based ways. Nina Maadad, Ed.D., is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Adelaide. She coordinates the bachelor of teaching program and lectures a range of courses in the School of Education, including Primary and Secondary Schools Interaction and Contemporary Issues in Education and Multicultural Education. She has published several books, including Syrian Refugee Children in Australia and Sweden: Education and Survival among the Displaced, Dispossessed and Disrupted (Routledge, 2019), Schooling

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Contributor biographies

and Education in Lebanon: Syrian and Syrian Palestinian Refugees Inside and Outside the Camps (Peter Lang AG, 2017), Academic Mobility: International Perspectives on Higher Education Research (Emerald Group Publishing, 2014) and The Adaptation of Arab Immigrant to Australia: Psychological, Social, Cultural and Educational Aspect (2007). Her research interests include identity and marginalisation of new arrivals, refugees particularly from NASB across the curricula, culture and education and languages, and topics she has taught at both tertiary and secondary school levels. Lindsay G. Oades, Ph.D., is an internationally acclaimed wellbeing public policy strategist, researcher and author. As director and professor at the Centre for Positive Psychology at The University of Melbourne in Australia, he leads a growing and dynamic team of researchers and educators who promote and investigate how people learn to improve wellbeing in education, health, organisations and communities. Currently, he is a coordinating lead author with a UNESCO assignment examining the relationship between education and human fourishing. In 2013, he was awarded an Australian Government Citation for outstanding contribution to student learning. As a sought-after speaker, known to provoke thought, he has given keynote or invited presentations in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. With over 130 refereed journal articles and book chapters related to wellbeing, recovery and coaching, and fve books with esteemed publishers including Cambridge University Press, Wiley-Blackwell, Routledge and SAGE, he is a scientifc reviewer for the Australian Research Council. Lindsay has consulted for multiple organisations including the NSW Department of Education, NSW Mental Health Commission, Beyond Blue and the Australian Mental Health Commission. Lindsay’s current work involves wellbeing literacy – how we communicate about and for wellbeing – which is part of his new Thriveability Theory. Lindsay aims for every school child in Australia to have a personalised wellbeing plan via coaching. Denise M. Quinlan, Ph.D., is a founding director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury and a published academic researcher. Trained in wellbeing science at the University of Pennsylvania by the world’s leading thinkers and researchers, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in psychological wellbeing from the University of Otago. As an adjunct professor at one of Europe’s leading business schools and facilitator of the only accredited Diploma in Wellbeing Science in Australia and New Zealand, she has taught global business leaders and educators around the world how to use wellbeing science for peak performance and wellbeing. She has lectured on strengths and positive psychology around the world and worked extensively in wellbeing development in state and private education over the past decade in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. The Institute’s strengths programs draw on Denise’s

Contributor biographies xxv validated strengths program, demonstrated to enhance wellbeing, engagement and relatedness. She has served as a New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology Executive Committee Member. Her work has been published in international academic journals and edited volumes on positive psychology, wellbeing in education and restorative practices. Denise is co-convenor of the Wellbeing in Education New Zealand conferences and co-author (with Lucy C. Hone) of The Educators’ Guide to Whole-school Wellbeing: A Practical Guide to Getting Started, Best-practice Process and Efective Implementation published by Taylor & Francis in 2020. Tayyab Rashid, Ph.D., is a licenced clinical psychologist at the Health & Wellness Centre and an associate faculty in the graduate psychological clinical science program at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), Canada, as well as an adjunct faculty at the Executive Master’s Program in Positive Leadership at the IE University, Spain. Trained with Professor Martin Seligman, at the Positive Psychology Centre, University of Pennsylvania, Tayyab Rashid’s research expertise includes positive clinical psychology, strengths-based clinical assessment, resilience, multicultural counselling and mental health of young adults in post-secondary settings. Tayyab Rashid is co-chair of Canada’s National Campus Mental Health Community and is the inaugural president of the Clinical Division of the International Positive Psychology Association. Tayyab Rashid has worked with individuals surviving severe trauma, including survivors of the 9/11 attacks, the Asian Tsunami and refugee families. Currently, Tayyab leads Flourish – a preventive mental health initiative at the University of Toronto Scarborough. This program has been recognised with two Excellence in Innovation Awards and has also won a large grant to implement the program at multiple sites. Jessica A. Taylor is an educator, presenter and researcher with expertise in the felds of education and wellbeing. She has extensive teaching experience across primary and secondary education. As a senior wellbeing leader for Geelong Grammar School’s Institute of Positive Education, Jessica worked with schools, organisations and governments globally – including the UAE Prime Minister’s Ofce and the UAE and Singapore Ministry of Education – assisting them to place wellbeing at the heart of their vision and practice. Currently part of the teaching team at the University of Melbourne, she contributes to undergraduate breadth subjects and both the Systems Informed Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Literacy and Language Research Streams at the Centre for Positive Psychology. Her qualifcations include a master of applied positive psychology, bachelor of education and diploma in positive education. Jessica advocates that wellbeing is everyone’s responsibility. Throughout her research, writing, presentations and consulting work, she enjoys inquiring into and co-creating spaces that support individuals and communities build awareness of the interdependent nature of wellbeing and wellbeing approaches that create thriving social systems.

xxvi Contributor biographies Louise Tidmand, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher in positive education at Aarhus University in Denmark. She has a master of arts in educational psychology and more than 25 years of experience in education. Louise is currently involved in the UPRIGHT research program as well as other research and practice development programs. Louise’s research focuses on social-emotional learning, wellbeing, optimism, self-efcacy and life skills. She has authored several educational books, games and articles (in Danish and English) and recently contributed to the forthcoming Handbook on Positive Education published by Palgrave and The Battle Against Boredom in Schools published by Strength Academy in 2019. Louise is a well-known speaker at conferences and passionate about connecting research to everyday lives through strengthbased methods and approaches that enable schools to develop positive education cultures. She educates and trains professionals who work with children and young adults in social-emotional learning, strengths, wellbeing and life coping skills. Sara Truebridge, Ed.D., is an adjunct faculty in the Educational Leadership doctoral program at Southern New Hampshire University. Sara is a consultant, researcher, TED Talk presenter, educator and author specialising in resilience, combining her experience and expertise in the areas of research, policy and practice to promote success and equity for all. Sara has given many presentations, webinars and workshops throughout the United States and abroad from a strengths-based perspective. Her book, Resilience Begins with Beliefs: Building on Student Strengths for Success in School, was published by Teachers College Press in 2014. Sara has over 20 years of classroom experience ranging from pre-kindergarten to high school. Before becoming a teacher, she worked on policy and legislation as the Legislative Analyst for Education in the New York State Senate. New York State Governor Mario Cuomo later appointed her to be the Special Assistant to the New York State Secretary of State. Sara earned her doctorate and master’s in educational leadership and an administrative credential from Mills College. She received her teaching credential from California State University, East Bay, and bachelor of arts in psychology from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, USA. Marizon Yu, Ph.D., has worked as a Curriculum Support Ofcer in Department for Education secondary schools in South Australia. Her teaching and research interests include literacy and numeracy, humanities and social sciences, community studies and research project. Zachary Zarowsky is an undergraduate research assistant work with Dr Tayyab Rashid at the Health & Wellness Centre at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), Canada. He is studying for an honours program in the bachelor of science (HBSc) in the Mental Health Studies Specialist Co-op Program. He has also worked at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada. His research interests include interpersonal relationships, the psychology of communication and resilience.

1

Crisis or catalyst? Examining COVID-19’s implications for wellbeing and resilience education Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum

Introduction As governments across the globe introduced restrictions to slow down the spread of the coronavirus, educators scrambled to fatten the education impact curve (Reimers  & Schleicher, 2020). In some parts of the world, schools remained open. Teachers developed hybrid models of online teaching with online face-toface teaching (synchronous) or pre-recorded teaching material (asynchronous) or adopted fully online learning and teaching strategies (Hill et al., 2020; Viner et  al., 2020). This book investigates the immediate impact of COVID-19 on education and educational systems from international perspectives and explores issues related to the future of schools, schooling and education. As Viner et al. (2020) and Zhu and Liu (2020) contend, we argue that COVID-19 has accelerated change and, in some cases, hastened improvements in several educational areas, recent publications by Harris (2020) investigate this from a school leadership lens, and Zhao (2020) boldly calls for schools to ‘reimagine and recreate human institutions’ (p. 1) in a post-COVID-19 world. In this book, we examine the infuence of the pandemic through the themes of wellbeing and resilience. Various chapters investigate and discuss the impact on teachers and teachers’ work, initial teacher education, university responses to COVID-19, the role of wellbeing theory in progressing the feld, data collected during the frst wave of the pandemic, program enhancements and the perspective of refugee children. In this chapter, we refect on the immediate impact of COVID-19. This is then placed into an educational context by adapting Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological framework for human development as the theoretical framework for the chapter. Next, we explore the implications for teachers and teaching and students (La Velle et al., 2020). We present operational defnitions of wellbeing and resilience for this book and refect on related educational equity issues, as raised by Azevedo et  al. (2020) and Bacher-Hicks et  al. (2020). Health publications have developed various models to explain how public health measures fatten the health curve and efects of COVID-19, including various government restrictions (such as the Victorian State Government in Australia’s Stage 4 restrictions, which implemented a curfew between 8 pm and 5 am from 2 August 2020). This chapter proposes an education model to interpret the pandemic’s immediate impact

2 Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum during the frst 10 months of the crisis. Our proposed model explores how educational institutions and systems (e.g. government departments, schools, universities and teachers) have sought to increase education capacity, adopt online learning and teaching strategies, modify curriculum, form hybrid teaching tools and shift modes of teaching. The model links current research on wellbeing and resilience education with issues related to student belonging and the unexpected and continuous mental health difculties faced by students, teachers, school leaders and parents (Roman, 2020). Finally, we provide an overview of how this book was created and the details of each chapter.

COVID-19: the defning health crisis of our time Before COVID-19, education already operated within multifaceted and complex state, national and international systems (Jacobson et al., 2019). The escalation of a global economy has driven competition among many nations, changing the social, political and economic landscapes and educational systems within these nations (Veugelers, 2020a, 2020b). Nevertheless, it appears that in less than 10 months, COVID-19 has systematically dismantled elements of globalisation not only in economic terms but also at a political, social and educational level (Douglas et al., 2020). Recent publications argue that education, and initial teacher education specifcally, ‘operate within a highly complex world that is mediated by multi-layered political, social and educational arenas’ (Alexander et al., 2020, p. 3). What does this landscape look like now? It is difcult to imagine that as people across the world celebrated New Year’s Eve, a burgeoning health crisis that would touch all aspects of life rapidly across the world was unfolding. On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Country Ofce in the People’s Republic of China became aware of a media release from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission about a cluster of ‘viral pneumonia’ cases (ProMED, 2019). Within 24 hours, WHO activated its Incident Management Support Team (IMST) and requested more details (WHO, 2017). By 9 January 2020, WHO identifed it as a new strain of coronavirus, named COVID-19, and is now referred to by its ofcial designation: SARS-CoV-2. In this book, we will refer to the pandemic as COVID-19. On 11 January 2020, the frst death was recorded in China. By 13 January, the frst case appeared in Thailand, then Japan; on 21 January, it reached the United States of America (the USA), and, by 24 January, it was in France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Looking back at the experiences learnt from earlier pandemics, including H1N1 and Ebola, WHO determined the new strategy. The growth of COVID-19 cases then began to accelerate throughout China, Europe and the Americas. On 26 March  2020, the WHO Director-General addressed an Extraordinary G20 Summit on COVID-19. At this stage, 500,000 people were infected, 20,000 deaths were recorded, and the virus was characterised as ‘the defning health crisis of our time’. By 4 April 2020, 1 million cases of COVID-19 were confrmed worldwide (WHO, 2020) escalating to over 100 million by January 2021 and climbing (Johns Hopkins University, 2021).

COVID-19’s implications for education 3 Health systems across the globe were overwhelmed, and, within the space of months, the broader social impacts of COVID-19 rapidly appeared as the world experienced the scale of the disaster (United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2020). As reported in the media, there were immediate government recommendations and restrictions implemented at various stages across the world. These included practising good personal hygiene, physical distancing, limitations on the number of people in public gatherings, wearing face masks, mandatory isolation of those with COVID-19 and those suspected of having it, wide scale and in some instances free mobile testing clinics and quarantine (UNESCO, 2020; Viner et al., 2020; WHO, 2020). During the early months, there was widespread public concern over the pandemic, panic buying of many goods in supermarkets around March (Dave et al., 2020; Devi, 2020).

A crisis or catalyst for education Is COVID-19 the defning education crisis or catalyst of our time? It is what Peters (2017) classifes as a wicked problem in public policy, which are ‘emerging policy problems that . . . [do] not correspond neatly to the conventional models of policy analysis used at the time’ (p. 385). What is less clear is whether COVID-19 has triggered an education crisis or is a catalyst for change (Reimers & Schleicher, 2020). For example, in a June 2020 report for McKinsey & Company, Dorn et al. (2020) present statistical modelling to investigate the impact of the pandemic on the US education system, and especially on low-income, black and Hispanic Americans (pp. 2–3). Dorn et al. (2020) hypothesise that the ‘COVID-19 closures will probably increase high-school drop-out rates (currently 6.5 percent for Hispanic, 5.5 percent for black, and 3.9 percent for white students, respectively)’ (p. 6). Similarly, in a report prepared for the World Bank Group, Azevedo (2020) explores the global impact of school closures due to the pandemic and contends that worldwide nearly 7 million students from primary up to secondary education could drop out due to the income shock of the pandemic alone. Students from the current cohort could, on average, face a reduction of $355, $872 or $1,408 in yearly earnings and ‘globally, a school shutdown of 5 months could generate learning losses that have a present value of $10 trillion’ (p. 1). In an article, examining how school leaders are reforming education because of the pandemic, Harris (2020) uses a supernova metaphor for the impact of COVID-19: that is, the explosion of a star and largest explosion in space (NASA, 2018). For example, Harris (2020) notes that the growing discourse on COVID-19’s impact on education is ‘polarised’. There is discourse calling for a new normal in education that tends to be optimistic and buoyant, embracing the transition to online learning and the potential implications for teachers and students. Conversely, another discourse by Van Lancker and Parolin (2020) focuses on more entrenched systematic inequalities that exist within systems and sectors in education and how the pandemic has accelerated existing education crises. At the school leadership level, Harris (2020) refects on the challenges

4 Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum faced by school leadership and provocatively examines whether school leadership is in crisis. Harris (2020) warns that ‘by treating COVID-19 as a short-term crisis, however, it has been proposed that an important opportunity to change schools and school systems for the better will be missed’. Yet Zhao (2011, 2012, 2015, 2020), who has previously called for the reform of education systems for 21st-century learning, asserts that this may be the opportunity education needs to advance and, deep in the system, move towards a fourth education revolution. For example, when we consider the rapid transition to fully online learning as a result of the pandemic, it has been seen that schools, universities and other learning providers have transitioned rapidly into online education in the space of weeks. In contrast, it has taken many years of comprehensive and considered change management processes to achieve the same outcome.

COVID-19 schooling, teaching and student wellbeing The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most signifcant disruptions to education globally since the Second World War (Azevedo, 2020). However, unlike earlier pandemics such as the Zika Virus, West African Ebola, H1N1, AIDS, Asian Flu, Polio and Spanish Flu, this disruption has taken place at the same time as students around the world have access to modern technologies that make them connected in ways that were previously the realm of science fction (OECD, 2020; Reimers & Schleicher, 2020; WHO, 2020). The speed of COVID-19’s transmission across the globe has brutally illustrated how interconnected the world has become. For example, as governments across the world adopted diferent measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, people transitioned to work from home arrangements and governments began the closure of schools. UNESCO (2020) claims that by 24 May 2020, 1,194,497,798 school learners were afected, including 68.2% of total enrolled learners across 148 countrywide closures. Further, countries including Australia, Finland, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the USA implemented localised school closures depending on the number of cases in various provinces and territories. However, unlike earlier pandemics, technology has enabled learners across the world the opportunity to show, support and cultivate online learning environments in unexpected ways (UNESCO, 2020; WHO, 2020). Figure 1.1 is proposed as a model to problematise and interpret the immediate impact and disruption caused by COVID-19 in education. With Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) framework, the model has enabled us to organise the various themes and chapters of this book. For example, the education impact curve illustrates the sharp initial impact and decline over time of COVID-19 on education. We argue that almost all schools, teachers, school leaders and systems will be somewhere along the educational disruption curve depending upon the number of cases in each country, the local contexts, government policy on coronavirus restrictions and implementation of these restrictions more broadly. In the initial stages of the pandemic, across the world, there was a sharp and immediate educational impact culminating in a total of 91.3% of total enrolled learners in schools worldwide

COVID-19’s implications for education 5 IMPACT 91.3% total enrolled learners worldwide 1,598,099,008 affected learners 194 countrywide closures (4 April, UNESCO, 2020) Flatten education impact

BACK TO SCHOOL

Increase education capacity

TIME

Figure 1.1 COVID-19 and its impact on schooling, teaching and student wellbeing

impacted by COVID-19 restrictions (UNESCO, 2020). The grey arrow depicts how governments responded to increased institutional ability across systems, and how individual schools operationalised these restrictions to maintain student learning as many turned to online learning management systems. Here we see evidence of widespread adoption of online learning with many existing face-toface classes transferred immediately into the online environment. The goal of increasing the institutional capacity of teachers via technology and the implementation of online learning meant that teachers were aiming to fatten the educational impact curve and disruption experienced by students as they were no longer at school.

Defning wellbeing and resilience education Tesar and Peters (2020) assert that wellbeing is the zeitgeist of the past decade. Well before COVID-19 appeared as the signifcant disruption for 2020, concerns around student wellbeing and teacher resilience in education have been broadly documented. As mentioned by Marsh et  al. (2019) and Vella and Pai (2019), the research terms ‘wellbeing’ and ‘resilience’ are notoriously difcult to defne. For this book, we embrace Huppert and So’s (2013) defnition of wellbeing as ‘a combination of feeling good and functioning efectively’ (p. 837) and Vella and Pai’s (2019) defnition of resilience as ‘the ability to bounce back or overcome

6 Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum some form of adversity and thus experience positive outcomes despite an aversive event or situation’ (p. 233). Over the last decade, international studies have documented the implementation of wellbeing programs at the school level and the issue of teacher wellbeing at the school and systems levels as critical challenges for workforce planning and whole-school improvement. Issues of school belonging and engagement are increasingly recognised as linked with school culture, climate and wellbeing (Allen, 2020). There is growing recognition of challenges faced by students throughout the world from a wellbeing perspective. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data collected from participating OECD (2017) countries, there has been an increase in the rate of student anxiety and depression reported across various countries. In the Australian context, we have seen an increase in anxiety and depression recorded by people aged 16–24 years. Globally, there have been varying responses to this concerning trend. These include the integration of evidence-informed and scientifcally based wellbeing programs that focus on helping young people to know and understand how to improve their own emotional, physical and social wellbeing. These developments have been characterised in diferent movements such as 21st-century learning (Lavy, 2019), character education (Arthur et al., 2016; Bates, 2019; Kristjánsson, 2017a, 2017b), positive education (Waters & Loton, 2019) and wellbeing education (White & Kern, 2018; White & McCallum, 2020). We argue that what unifes all these approaches is the aim to improve students’ fourishing within educational contexts. In the OECD’s (2019) Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), 14% of school principals ‘still report regular acts of intimidation or bullying among their students’. COVID-19 presents education researchers with an important juncture to pause, evaluate and reimagine the next decade of research. Before COVID-19 disrupted education, the international evidence supporting learning and mental health cases for the integration of wellbeing in education has been shown by Sachs et  al. (2019), Seligman (2019), Waters et al. (2017) and Waters and Loton (2019) investigating the case for wellbeing schools and, as Owens and Waters (2020) contend, an increase in the number of evidence-informed wellbeing practices in schools. While diferent theories and constructs have dominated educational debate (Marsh et al., 2019; Waters & Loton, 2019), there is no doubt that wellbeing and resilience are major educational issues of the past decade. The COVID-19 disruption not only afects schooling at the individual student and teacher level, but it also raises several wellbeing issues for all stakeholders. With increases in unemployment, underemployment and uncertainty in the job market emerging as an intergenerational casualty in the early months of COVID-19 (Dorn et al., 2020), the disruption across families around the world has been signifcant. It is possible to consider that the impact on a child’s life because of this economic impact may be large. Throughout this time, teachers were faced with the challenge of supporting continuity of learning (Cahill et al., 2020). They also aimed to create an ongoing sense of belonging and engagement with school and progress students in their fnal school examinations. The immediate impact of many

COVID-19’s implications for education 7 families being forced to work from home, and to home-school or care for their children simultaneously, has unlocked a diferent discourse around teachers, teaching and schooling. As detailed in discussion more broadly, teachers are now being seen potentially in a diferent light than before the pandemic. The longterm efects of this are yet to be seen (Allen et al., 2020; Azevedo et al., 2020).

Theoretical framework To interpret whether COVID-19 is education’s crisis or catalyst for change, we use Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological framework for human development (see Figure 1.2) as the theoretical framework for this chapter. Bronfenbrenner (1979) asserts that individuals (i.e. school students) operate within a system between and across diferent levels. When COVID-19’s impact is interpreted from Bronfenbrenner’s child-centred ecological framework across what he characterises as the micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chrono-systems, the pandemic’s potential infuence on various systems within education is evident. For example, Bronfenbrenner argues that individuals interact with various levels of systems: •

Microsystem – considers the child (or individual’s) institutional and group changes. For example, because of the pandemic, the dynamic of schools, various neighbourhoods and their peers’ experiences, let alone the family dynamic and potential impact of job losses. Individual: Sex, age, health, etc Microsystem: Family, Peers, Church, Health Services, School Mesosystem: Child and various actors within their world Exosystem: Industry, social services, mass media, local politics, neighbours Macrosystem: Attitudes and ideologies of the culture Chronosystem: Changing socio-historical circumstances

Figure 1.2 Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework for human development (1979)

8 Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum •

•

•

•

Mesosystem – explores the relationship between the child and various actors within their world, such as teachers, peers and members of their immediate and surrounding family. Exosystem – the impact of various social systems on a child, usually the world of work, which afects the child’s experience. For example, a parent loses his or her job because of the pandemic, or a child of an essential worker in the medical sphere is separated from their parents. Macrosystem – considers the cultural implications and location, socioeconomic status, cultural background and context of schools that infuence the overall development of the child. Chronosystem – includes the changing socio-historical circumstances that infuence a child’s world. For example, it could be argued that the pandemic will have signifcant economic ramifcations for at least the next generation, as various governments implement social security support for those initially afected by the pandemic-induced economic downturn.

About this book As Harris (2020) cautioned, ‘There is insufcient data, yet, to decide whether a new education order is emerging or whether the old education is simply resting’ (p.  322). Our goal was to draw together contemporary international research and examine new knowledge about wellbeing and resilience education to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings to reframe and critique the current wellbeing and resilience research in the context of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. This book has three aims: • • •

to examine how COVID-19 impacts learning and teaching in schools and higher education to analyse how COVID-19 is infuencing innovations in wellbeing and resilience education to assess if COVID-19 is the defning education crisis or catalyst of our time

As COVID-19 spread across the globe, it was clear that this worldwide issue was presenting a signifcant juncture in wellbeing and resilience research. On 18 March 2020, as 12,018 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed worldwide, the editors contacted researchers in Asia, Australia, Europe, New Zealand, North America and the United Kingdom to gauge their level of interest in contributing to a research book examining issues related to wellbeing and resilience in education during COVID-19. We issued invitations to authors for chapter submission for Wellbeing and Resilience Education: COVID-19 and Its Impact on Education Systems, and they provided abstracts on their proposed chapter responding to the following provocations: •

What can educational systems learn from an appreciative model of change during a pandemic?

COVID-19’s implications for education 9 • • • • • •

What impact, if any, has the COVID-19 pandemic had on the wellbeing of university students? How does resilience education ft into a COVID-19 educational landscape? How can school leadership and empathy play a signifcant role in fourishing during COVID-19? What might teachers’ professional practice look like after COVID-19? Can wellbeing literacy act as a model for educational fourishing? What can wellbeing and resilience education learn from earlier traumatic events?

Chapter 1, written by Australian researchers Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum, critiques COVID-19’s disruption and explores this in the context of many students around the world having access to modern technologies that make them connected in previously inconceivable ways. White and McCallum argue that the COVID-19 pandemic presents wellbeing and resilience education researchers with an opportunity to pause and reimagine the next 20 years of research. They hypothesise a model to interpret the impact of COVID-19 in education. Writing from an American higher education context, Chapter  2 by Lindsey N. Godwin and Sara Truebridge argues for the integration of mirror fourishing in wellbeing education research. She introduces an outside-in model to further expand the conceptualisation of wellbeing and resilience education to a macrolevel. Mirror fourishing is defned by Cooperrider and Fry (2012) as the ‘consonant fourishing or growing together that happens naturally and reciprocally to us when we actively engage in or witness the acts that help nature fourish, others fourish, or the world as a whole to fourish’. Godwin contends individuals can focus their energy on ‘doing good’ in the broader social context by connecting and using their strengths in the service of improving the world beyond the walls of their school building, addressing issues such as ecological renewal. In the wake of the global economic, social and psychological disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no shortage of need for transformative wellbeing-focused work in the world. Chapter 3 is written by Rosalinda Ballesteros-Valdés and Humberto CharlesLeija, who investigate the wellbeing of students at Tecmilenio University in Mexico during March 2020 as students were quarantined across the University due to the health risks caused by COVID-19. Ballesteros-Valdés and Charles-Leija report on the results of a wellbeing questionnaire measuring wellbeing and its fve main domains. They examine these results in comparison to previous data. The chapter presents the impact on the student population during the quarantine period and the protective mental health factors during the contingency period. Chapter 4 is written by Mette Marie Ledertoug, Louise Tidmand (from Denmark), Carlota Las Hayas (from Spain), Silvia Gabrielli and Sara Carbone (from Italy). It reports on the UPRIGHT project, a European project (Horizon 2020) aiming to increase wellbeing and resilience for teenagers, while at the same time decreasing mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. UPRIGHT aims to enhance the resilience capacity of teenagers. The project includes a co-design

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phase of a resilience program aimed at teenagers, families and teachers in schools from fve pilot countries: Iceland, Italy, Poland, Denmark and Spain. It is a wholeschool approach based on the Geelong Grammar School wellbeing framework – learn it, live it, teach it and embed it – involving students, teachers, parents and the school community. This chapter focuses on the UPRIGHT program as a means to wellbeing and resilience for teenagers and how the project may have afected students in ordinary life and extraordinary situations. Chapter 5, written by Katy E. Granville-Chapman from the United Kingdom, investigates the issue of school leadership during this challenging period. They argue that school leadership can have a signifcant impact on the wellbeing of teachers and, therefore, also the wellbeing of students, particularly at a time of unprecedented change. Granville-Chapman proposes a new model of school leadership: leadership for fourishing. The chapter explores the design and development of the model and how it can be applied to schools. Chapter  6, written by Iro Konstantinou from the United Kingdom, investigates the impact of personal, social, health education lessons in the United Kingdom, where schools are required to demonstrate how they are developing skills such as resilience and character development in pupils and schools. In this chapter, Konstantinou outlines research undertaken at Eton College as part of our broader strategy on character education. This chapter reports on interventions trialled examining resilience, using Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) Virtues In Action framework. Konstantinou refects on why such interventions are vital within education more broadly and especially at a time of unprecedented change and challenge. Chapter  7, written by Australian researchers Nina Maadad and Marizon Yu, focuses on the issue of language learning and investigates the challenges Arabicspeaking refugee children face at home, in school and in the community, as well as the pressures that COVID-19 has created. The chapter considers research on children and adolescents from refugee backgrounds. Specifcally, it explores the signifcant educational disadvantages children experience due to infuences beyond their control, particularly as a result of forced migration due to wars, confict, violence and persecution. The pressures and vicissitudes of migration to a refugee-receiving country, as well as having to learn a new language, aggravate these educational disadvantages. The chapter explores the experiences of Arabicspeaking refugee children who are currently enrolled in schools in four major states in Australia (South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria). Chapter  8, written by a joint team of Canadian and American researchers Tayyab Rashid, Jane Gillham, Steve Leventhal, Zachary Zarowsky and Hareem Ashraf, investigates the design, operationalisation and impact of resilience programs in higher education and the potential repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigators claim that many resilience interventions are Eurocentric and often overlook the complexity of culture and context. Rashid et al. examine how the shockwave of COVID-19 may impact college students from culturally diverse backgrounds

COVID-19’s implications for education 11 Mathew A. White writes Chapter 9 and investigates the gap between wellbeing and resilience developments in schools and initial teacher education programs. This chapter reports on a series of pilot online wellbeing masterclasses created during COVID-19 for second-year bachelor of teaching pre-service teachers at an Australian University. White outlines how Salmon and Wright’s (2014) Carpe Diem learning design process was used to create the overall masterclasses. The chapter documents interviews undertaken with international researchers on the topics of character, resilience and wellbeing education from the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. This chapter asserts it is possible to integrate these approaches within a bachelor of teaching students’ learning experience to improve their professional practice. In Chapter  10, Faye McCallum asserts that teachers’ work and the role of teachers will change because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Refecting on the recent (and pre-pandemic) OECD Education Working Paper No. 213, A Teachers’ Well-being: A Framework for Data Collection and Analysis, McCallum investigates the work of teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic noting the demands for change have been rapid and unprecedented. McCallum relates how teachers have responded to the disruption and asserts that many groups across the community have acknowledged the value of teachers’ work, with some now seeing it as a highly respected and demanding profession. McCallum reports the initial fndings of a survey of thoughts, feelings and impact on the wellbeing of teachers as they plan for and implement efective teaching and learning in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. McCallum’s discussion adopts an ecological perspective to show that teachers’ work spreads across many levels, and their wellbeing is of foremost importance as teachers support future student learning during times of disruption. Chapter  11, written by Australian researchers Lindsay G. Oades, Jessica A. Taylor, Jacqui Francis and Lisa M. Baker, extends previous research on wellbeing literacy (WL) or the capability refecting what we can be and what we can do. It is conceptualised as habitual, intentional communication about and for the wellbeing of self and the wellbeing of others. Oades et al. contend that communication is both receptive and productive, occurring via multimodal pathways, including reading and writing, listening and speaking, viewing and creating. They assert that there are at least fve necessary conditions for WL, including having vocabulary and knowledge about wellbeing; the capability to comprehend multimodal wellbeing texts; the ability to compose multimodal wellbeing texts; context awareness and adaptability; and the habit of intentions to improve the wellbeing of self and others. Oades et al. extend this further and note that multimodal WL pairs naturally with existing literacy curriculum conceptualisations and structures within education systems. Further, they investigate how existing educator confdence in multimodal teaching, educator buy-in is heightened, creating an opportunity to embed WL in education practices and culture. While most of these chapters focus on COVID-19’s disruption, Chapter 12, written by New Zealand research practitioners Lucy C. Hone, Chris P. Jansen and

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Denise M. Quinlan, draws on previous research of trauma experienced during the Christchurch earthquakes. Hone et al. refect on the devastating earthquakes of 2011 and trauma with profound disruption to wellbeing and education at many levels. They note that through years of anxiety, disruption, uncertainty and rebuilding, this community learnt lessons that are relevant for the period of global upheaval and uncertainty communities face in 2020. In Canterbury, these lessons include enabling creative collective action and practical channels and resources to support and protect collective and individual mental health and wellbeing. From this period emerged communities of practice (COPs) dedicated to supporting educator and student wellbeing. These COPs broke down earlier silo walls and encouraged a collective approach to wellbeing, whereby knowledge and experience (failures as well as successes) were shared across previously competing schools, early childhood centres and other education providers. This chapter shares what can be learnt from earlier disaster response education practices. These collective structures, used to collaborate and share for the collective good, were well placed to collaborate to create and share efective approaches to virtual learning during periods of lockdown and to pay attention to the mental health and wellbeing needs of their communities. Chapter 13 is written by Åse Fagerlund and Mari Laakso from Finland. Fagerlund and Laakso report on Flourishing Students, an evidence-based program to enhance wellbeing in students through methods in positive psychology and cognitive behaviour therapy. The program consists of 32 wellbeing lessons spanning strengths work, enhancing positive emotions and relationships, strengthening a dynamic mindset and increasing realistic hope and resilience to bounce back from difculty. With the Flourishing Students program as a starting point, this chapter focuses on how wellbeing work in schools can be applied and adapted in a time of unprecedented change due to COVID-19.

Signifcance of this book A challenge facing educational leaders is that as they try to cope and solve the diffculties emerging in the classroom, stafroom and schoolyard, the pandemic itself is evolving as the virus ebbs and fows across the world as shown in Figure 1.3. At a time when there are limited publications on the pandemic’s bearing on schools and schooling, this book makes a unique contribution to the discussion of the impact of COVID-19 on teachers, teaching and schooling more generally. Each chapter in this book portrays diferent perspectives, culturally, contextually and theoretically. They draw from multiple disciplines, including organisational psychology, educational psychology, culture and pedagogy. When combined, these chapters contribute to much-needed new knowledge and understanding of the impact of the pandemic on educational systems and those who work and learn within them. We argue that this book will be of value to policymakers, school leaders, teachers and researchers interested in the disruption caused by the pandemic. As Harris (2020) argues, it is still unclear the type of impact that COVID-19 will have upon educational systems. However, what is plausible is that the impact will be

COVID-19’s implications for education 13 IMPACT 91.3% total enrolled learners worldwide 1,598,099,008 affected learners 194 countrywide closures (4 April, UNESCO, 2020) Flatten education impact

BACK TO SCHOOL

Increase education capacity

TIME

Figure 1.3 COVID-19 and its mid- and longer-term impact on schooling, teaching and student wellbeing

ongoing for another generation. Education is experiencing a signifcant change in knowledge and understanding around the complex roles of the relationship between students and their peers, initial teacher education, the role between teachers and what is taught, and the function of school and schooling. As the severity of pandemic impact ebbs and fows through societies across the world, school leaders and teachers may believe they are returning to a new normal. As the vaccines developed in record time are rolled out across the world and equilibrium returns, we contend that what is unfolding in these turbulent times will mean we are not at the same point in the change cycle. Wellbeing and resilience are now coming of age in education. This feld has the potential to make a signifcant contribution to how teaching and learning are conceptualised within the next decade to create more resilient, robust and fourishing education systems in which all young people believe they belong. Acknowledgements: Mathew A. White and Faye McCallum presented an earlier version of Figure  1.1 during a research webinar presented with Lindsay G. Oades and Lea Waters AM for the Stretton Institute at the University of Adelaide on 28 May 2020, on COVID-19 and its impact on schooling, teaching and student wellbeing. Funding details: There was no funding awarded for this project. Disclosure statement: No potential confict of interest was reported by the author.

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COVID-19’s implications for education 15 Huppert, F. A.,  & So, T. T. C. (2013). Flourishing across Europe: Application of a new conceptual framework for defning well-being. Social Indicators Research, 110(3), 837–861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9966-7 Jacobson, M. J., Levin, J. A.,  & Kapur, M. (2019). Education as a complex system: Conceptual and methodological implications. Educational Researcher, 48(2), 112–119. Johns Hopkins University. (2021, January 27). COVID-19 Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). https://www.arcgis. com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 Kristjánsson, K. (2017a). Recent work on fourishing as the aim of education: A critical review. British Journal of Educational Studies, 65(1), 87–107. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00071005.2016.1182115 Kristjánsson, K. (2017b). Teachers as facilitators of student fourishing in positive education: What are the political implications? In M. A. White, G. R. Slemp,  & A. S. Murray (Eds.), Future directions in well-being: Education, organizations and policy (pp. 187–190). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56889-8 La Velle, L., Newman, S., Montgomery, C.,  & Hyatt, D. (2020). Initial teacher education in England and the Covid-19 pandemic: Challenges and opportunities. Journal of Education for Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.18 03051 Lavy, S. (2019). A review of character strengths interventions in twenty-frst-century schools: Their importance and how they can be fostered. Applied Research in Quality of Life. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9700-6 Marsh, H. W., Huppert, F. A., Donald, J. N., Horwood, M. S.,  & Sahdra, B. K. (2019). The Well-Being Profle (WB-Pro): Creating a theoretically based multidimensional measure of well-being to advance theory, research, policy, and practice. Psychological Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000787 National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2018, May  17). What is a supernova? NASA. www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/ what-is-a-supernova.html OECD. (2020). Learning remotely when schools close: How well are students and schools prepared? Insights from PISA. www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264239555en.pdf?expires=1599037991&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=874E4D1C48B F35EFBF86BE8B7FEDEFB7 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2017). PISA 2015 results (Volume III): Students’ well-being. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/ 10.1787/9789264273856-en Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2019). TALIS 2018 results (Volume I): Teachers and school leaders as lifelong learners. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/1d0bc92a-en Owens, R., & Waters, L. (2020). What does positive psychology tell us about early intervention and prevention with children and adolescents? A  review of positive psychological interventions with young people. Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(5), 588–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1789706 Peters, B. G. (2017). What is so wicked about wicked problems? A conceptual analysis and a research program. Policy and Society, 36(3), 385–396. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. (2004). Character strengths and virtues a handbook and classifcation. American Psychological Association.

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ProMED. (2019, December 30). Undiagnosed pneumonia – China (Hubei): Request for information. ProMED International Society for Infectious Diseases. https:// promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=6864153%20#COVID19 Reimers, F., & Schleicher, A. (2020). A framework to guide an education response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. OECD Publishing. Roman, T. (2020). Supporting the mental health of teachers in COVID-19 through trauma-informed educational practices and adaptive formative assessment tools. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 28(2), 473–481. Sachs, J., Adler, A., Bin Bishr, A., de Neve, J-E., Durand, M., Diener, E., Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Seligman, M. (2019). Global happiness and wellbeing policy report 2019. www.happinesscouncil.org/ Salmon, G., & Wright, P. (2014). Transforming future teaching through ‘carpe diem’ learning design. Education Sciences, 4(1), 52–63. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci4010052 Seligman, M. E. (2019). Positive psychology: A personal history. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15, 1–23. Tesar, M., & Peters, M. (2020). Heralding ideas of well-being: A philosophical perspective. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(9), 923–927. https://doi.org/10. 1080/00131857.2019.1696731 United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural Organization. (2020). Distance learning strategies in response to COVID-19 school closures. UNESCO COVID19 Education Response Education Sector Issue Notes, 2.1(April), 1–8. Van Lancker, W., & Parolin, Z. (2020). COVID-19, school closures, and child poverty: A social crisis in the making. Lancet Public Health, 5(5), e243–e244. Vella, S. L. C., & Pai, N. B. (2019). A theoretical review of psychological resilience: Defning resilience and resilience research over the decades. Archives of Medicine and Health Sciences, 7(2), 233–239. Veugelers, W. (2020a). Diferent views on global citizenship education: Making global citizenship education more critical, political and justice-oriented. In D. Schugurensky & C. Wolhuter (Eds.), Global citizenship education in teacher education (pp. 20–39). Routledge. Veugelers, W. (2020b). How globalisation infuences perspectives on citizenship education: From the social and political to the cultural and moral. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/030579 25.2020.1716307 Viner, R. M., Russell, S. J., Croker, H., Packer, J., Ward, J., Stansfeld, C., Mytton, O., Bonell, C., & Booy, R. (2020). School closure and management practices during coronavirus outbreaks including COVID-19: A  rapid systematic review. Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, 4(5), 397–404. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S2352-4642(20)30095-X Waters, L., & Loton, D. (2019). SEARCH: A meta-framework and review of the feld of positive education. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 4(1–2), 1–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41042-019-00017-4 Waters, L., Sun, J., Rusk, R., Cotton, A., & Arch, A. (2017). Visible Wellbeing and Positive Functioning in Students. In M. Slade, L. Oades, & A. Jarden (Eds.), Wellbeing, recovery and mental health (pp. 245–264). Cambridge University Press. White, M., & Kern, M. (2018). Positive education: Learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery. International Journal of Wellbeing, 8(1). https://doi. org/10.5502/ijw.v8i1.588

COVID-19’s implications for education 17 White, M.,  & McCallum, F. (2020). Responding to teacher quality through an evidence-based wellbeing framework for initial teacher education. In J. Fox, C. Alexander, & T. Aspland (Eds.), Teacher education in globalised times: Local responses in action (pp. 115–137). Springer. World Health Organization. (2017). Emergency response framework, ERF (2nd ed.). Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. WHO. World Health Organization. (2020). Timeline: WHO’s COVID-19 response. Retrieved August  25, 2020, from www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus2019/interactive-timeline#event-1 Zhao, Y. (2011). Students as change partners: A proposal for educational change in the age of globalization. Journal of Educational Change, 12(2), 267–279. Zhao, Y. (2012). World class learners: Educating creative and entrepreneurial students. Corwin Press. Zhao, Y. (2015). A world at risk: An imperative for a paradigm shift to cultivate 21st century learners. Society, 52(2), 129–135. Zhao, Y. (2020). COVID-19 as a catalyst for educational change. Prospects, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11125-020-09477-y Zhu, X., & Liu, J. (2020). Education in and after Covid-19: Immediate responses and long-term visions. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s42438-020-00126-3

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Wellbeing from the outside-in How mirror fourishing elevates collective wellbeing both within and beyond the classroom Lindsey N. Godwin and Sara Truebridge

Introduction One of the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is a heightened global consciousness around wellbeing. From increased vigilance around physical wellbeing as individuals seek to protect themselves and others from becoming infected (exemplifed by educational campaigns and elevated practices around handwashing, sanitizing, and mask-wearing), to elevated dialogues and resources on mental wellbeing during times of quarantine and physical distancing, the importance of wellbeing in all forms is gaining attention in both academic and popular press discourses (i.e. Brown, 2020; Mosley, 2020; Meda, 2020). As schools around the world reconvene classes during the pandemic, implementing an array of new instructional delivery models – including completely virtual, hybrid, and physically distanced in-person instruction – the wellbeing of students and educators alike is a topic that many are raising as a critical element in successfully navigating the turmoil COVID-19 has caused in educational systems (CDC, 2020; Morrison, 2020; Gold, 2020; Buccella, 2020; Porter, 2020; Terada, 2020). Fortunately, wellbeing and resilience in education have an extensive history even before these tumultuous times, providing a strong foundation of frameworks and practices that can be leveraged to help address the wellbeing needs of students and educators alike (Benard, 2004; Truebridge, 2014). Research has long supported the benefcial impacts that incorporating validated positive psychology interventions into educational environments has on not only students’ wellbeing but also their academic performance (Niemiec, 2017; White et  al., 2015). Additionally, models of positive education have also emerged that extend beyond focusing on only enhancing individual students’ wellbeing to include the importance of also elevating the wellbeing of teachers and other stakeholders toward the evolutions of schools as positive institutions (Waters et al., 2012; Cooperrider et al., 2018). The growing research in the areas of compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and vicarious trauma reinforce the need for resources to support the parallel process of supporting the health and wellbeing of educators so that they are at their best to support students (Figley, 1995; Newell & MacNeil, 2010). While these systemwide models start to expand the conceptualization of wellbeing education to include a more wholistic and systemic approach to wellbeing,

Wellbeing from the outside-in 19 they primarily continue to advance an inward-out conceptualization of wellbeing, wherein wellbeing is an individual-centric proposition with most interventions focusing on the interpersonal level. One of the many lessons that the COVID-19 pandemic is teaching us, however, is that wellbeing is not solely an individualistic proposition. The dynamics associated with eforts to mitigate a communicable disease remind us that our wellbeing is interdependent with the wellbeing of others – including those not only across from us in the classroom but also across the globe. Wellbeing is a collective phenomenon as well as an individual one. As such, we need to evolve both our conceptualization of, and our practices for, wellbeing and resilience education to include this multidimensionality. Drawing upon the concept of ‘mirror fourishing’ that is emerging in the organizational sciences, this chapter proposes an outside-in conceptualization of wellbeing to further expand the approach of wellbeing education to include macro-level, or collective, wellbeing. Defned by Cooperrider and Fry (2012) as the ‘consonant fourishing or growing together that happens naturally and reciprocally to us when we actively engage in or witness the acts that help nature fourish, others fourish, or the world as a whole to fourish,’ (p. 8) mirror fourishing ofers an expansion to how we approach the theory and practice of wellbeing. In other words, when individuals, whether alone or together with others, focus their energy on ‘doing good’ for others in the broader social context, connecting and leveraging their strengths in the service of improving the world beyond themselves and the walls of their individual organization, they actually in turn activate mechanisms that support their individual wellbeing and fourishing (Cooperrider & Fry, 2012). The concept of mirror fourishing that is emerging in the organizational sciences transfers elegantly into education and supports the benefts of expanding the PERMA-H model (Norrish et al., 2013) to recognize that contributing to the collective wellbeing of others also expands individual wellbeing. In the wake of the global economic, social, and psychological disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no shortage of need for addressing the wellbeing of our collective global community. Recognizing that wellbeing can occur from the ‘outside-in’ through mirror fourishing provides a pathway to expand the conceptualization of wellbeing in education as a mechanism for creating mutual beneft for both individuals within our educational systems and the broader global community. To further detail this approach, the chapter begins with an exploration of the literature and research that underlies and supports the concept of mirror fourishing, including emotional contagion theory and the implications of mirror neurons from the feld of neuroscience. After exploring how the concept of mirror fourishing is transferrable from the business to the educational sphere, an updated conceptualization of the PERMA-H model is proposed that expands the idea of wellbeing from inside-out to also include the outside-in dimension. The chapter concludes with examples of what possible mirror-fourishing inspired interventions might look like in schools in today’s COVID-disrupted world, and an invitation for further research needed in this area.

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Background: the science of mirror connections The notion that we are connected to and impacted by others around us is perhaps one of the most timeless and fundamental concepts in the social sciences. Fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and biology have long explored the nuances of how we are interconnected and efected by our interactions with others. As Christakis and Fowler (2009) summarize in their book, Connected: How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Afect Everything you Feel, Think and Do, ‘Most of us are already aware of the direct efect we have on our friends and family. . . . Conversely, our friends and family serve as conduits for us to be infuenced by hundreds or even thousands of other people. In a kind of social chain reaction, we can be deeply afected by events we do not witness than happen to people we do not know. . . . As part of a social network, we transcend ourselves, for good or ill, and become a part of something much larger. We are connected’ (p. x). Lending support to the emotional connections to others that many of us have likely experienced on a daily basis, over two decades of research support the theory of emotional contagion in our social lives (Barsade et al., 2018). Defned as a ‘phenomenon of an automatic adoption of an emotional state of another person’ (Singer & Tusche, 2014), emotional contagion simply means that emotions are transmissible from one person to another. Furthermore, research in the areas of compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and vicarious trauma (Figley, 1995; Newell & MacNeil, 2010) share the commonality of having as its focus, the state of the helper’s wellbeing being connected to the emotional engagement with the one being helped. These streams of research suggest that even beyond our consciousness, we pick up on the emotional states of others around us and begin to mimic their facial expressions, tone of voice, and even physical postures (Hatfeld et  al., 1994). Then, as our socio-emotional self begins to align with these physical cues, we actually begin to feel the emotional states that we are mimicking, leading to a transference, and in some cases escalation, of emotional states from one individual to another. This phenomenon has been theorized as a mechanism that results in ‘mob psychology,’ wherein negative emotions can transfer and spread in groups resulting in escalated feelings of fear or moral outrage (Lhommet et al., 2011). On the other hand, research has also demonstrated that positive emotions are similarly contagious and that those who experience the spread of positive afect are more cooperative and less prone to confict (Barsade, 2002). Any classroom teacher could likely share example after example of instances where they have witnessed this phenomenon in action, with the emotions (positive or negative) of one student spreading across the class and thus impacting the emotional dynamic of the entire room. Expanding emotional contagion theory, advancements in neuroscience have enabled us to literally look inside of our heads to better understand at a neurological level the relationship between our observations of others and our felt experiences. One specifc discovery that has had a ‘profound efect on the feld of social cognition’ is the detection of mirror neurons (Kilner & Lemon, 2013).

Wellbeing from the outside-in 21 Unlike regular motor neurons, these neurons become active not only when an individual is performing a task but also when the individual observes someone else doing a task, thus ‘mirroring’ the same neurological activity as though the observer were doing the action themselves (Rizzolatti et al., 2004). The discovery of these neurons has ‘prompted the notion that, from a functional viewpoint, action execution and observation are closely related processes’ (Kilner & Lemon, 2013). Research suggests that our mirror neurons are always ‘on.’ As such, if we see others experiencing an emotion such as happiness or contentment, our mirror neurons engage in a way that leads us to experience the same emotion. We actually experience the emotion in the same way when observing others as if we had an experience that triggered the emotion for ourselves. In his book, Mirroring People, Marco Iacoboni (2008) summarizes the importance of mirror neuron research stating that ‘the more we investigate the properties of mirror neurons, the more we understand how these cells help us to be empathic and fundamentally attuned to other people. This is perhaps the most important fnding of all, and it is a beautiful one’ (p. 279). The existence of mirror neurons poses interesting implications for wellbeing theory and practice. Could it be that observing someone else experience a heightened state of wellbeing in turn triggers our own sense of wellbeing? In an attempt to begin answering this query, Cooperrider and Fry (2012) began building upon and expanding the implications of the mirror neuron, applying them to a collective level. They were the frst to posit the concept of ‘mirror fourishing’ as an organizational phenomenon. As defned earlier, mirror fourishing ‘speaks to the unifed and integral two-way fow’ between organizational systems and our broader world in a way that blurs ‘the boundaries of “in here” and “out there” – and the possibility that when we help life “out there” to fourish we cannot help but beneft ourselves as well’ (Cooperrider & Fry, 2012, p. 8). Refecting on their own case studies where organizational systems united to do ‘good work’ beyond their own institutional walls (i.e. engaging in projects that had positive environmental impacts and/or contributed to a broader socially responsible agenda), they noted that ‘[a]s people come together to accomplish “doing good” out there – that is, concentrating and connecting their strengths in the service of building a better organization, or city or world – they too begin to activate the PERMA mechanisms for their own and others’ fourishing’ (2012, p. 7). In other words, much like when mirror neurons fre when one observes someone else performing an action, so too do we experience an increase to our own wellbeing when we are observing the wellbeing of others increase. Cooperrider and Fry state that mirror fourishing is a developmental force in the world, noting that ‘we can consciously create a fourishing workplace by working to build a better world that fourishes’ (2012, p.  8). The notion of mirror fourishing challenges the assumption that collective fourishing is solely a result of individual enlightenment or development  – it might be the reverse that is also true. Cooperrider and Fry hypothesized that when people experience themselves and their organizations working to build a ‘more sustainable future,

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they will experience higher levels of wellbeing as expressed by the many dimensions of PERMA or fourishing’ (2012, p. 8). As such, what if we conceptualized collective fourishing not as the summative efect of individual fourishing but rather as a possible driving mechanism for creating individual fourishing? That is to say, collective fourishing could be a cause for individual fourishing just as much as the converse relationship is also valid.

PERMA & positive education: a brief overview While the concept of mirror fourishing was originally proposed in the context of business, it has tremendous implications for the educational domain as well. Before we further apply the concept of mirror fourishing in education, however, we frst turn attention briefy to defning and understanding the PERMA model as a mechanism for understanding wellbeing and current trends in positive education interventions. Positive education has been defned in multiple ways, with its fundamental aim being to ‘re-unite the great aims of education in a way that produces both wellbeing as well as forwarding the traditional outcomes of schooling. . . . where positive education is imagined as a powerful educational double helix, blending together great 21st-century academics plus human fourishing’ (Cooperrider et al., 2018, p. 4). In practice, positive education is the intentional incorporation of a variety evidence-based positive psychology interventions delivered into educational models with the fundamental goal of promoting fourishing or positive mental health within the school community (Norrish et al., 2013). A common model used in this work is the PERMA model, which proposes that personal happiness and wellbeing are informed by fve core elements: Positive Emotion (P), Engagement (E), Relationships (R), Meaning, Purpose (M), and Achievement (A) (Seligman, 2011). Subsequently, a sixth dimension has been added to the model, Health (H), resulting in an updated PERMA-H conceptualization (Norrish  & Seligman, 2015; Norrish et  al., 2013; Kern et  al., 2015) that has provided a measurable framework for the theoretical and practical development of positive education interventions. Numerous schools around the world have used the PERMA and PERMA-H models to both inform curricular interventions and measure the impact of those interventions on student’s wellbeing (i.e. Seligman & Adler, 2018; Shankland & Rosset, 2017). A scan of the common curricular interventions in positive education reveals that the primary focus of these approaches has been aimed at impacting individual student’s wellbeing (typically measured by the PERMA or PERMA-H models). For example, activities that invite students to cultivate gratitude are a common intervention and have been shown to positively impact students’ wellbeing (Seligman et  al., 2005). Other activities such as having students engage in visualizing their best possible selves (Liau et al., 2016) have been shown to increase positive afect, life satisfaction, and decrease depressive symptoms. Even the simple act of conducting content lessons on the interpersonal skills of wellbeing has been shown to help students understand the factors that help them

Wellbeing from the outside-in 23 fourish as individuals (Green  & Norrish, 2013). Seligman and Adler (2018) include a summary of reasonably well-validated positive education interventions in their chapter as part of the Global Happiness Policy Report, including activities such as: ‘what went well,’ where students record three events in their day that went well (Seligman et  al., 2006); gratitude visits, where students write a gratitude letter and deliver it to the source (Emmons, 2007); active, constructive responding, where students respond to another student’s success (Gable et al., 2004); studying character strengths, where students learn to identify and apply their signature strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004); mediation and mindfulness practice (Davidson et al., 2003); and empathy training, where students learn how to actively apply empathy techniques (Bryant, 1982), among others. Indeed, there are treasure troves of evidence-based practices of positive education interventions that have been used in classrooms around the world (i.e. Froh  & Parks, 2012; Niemiec, 2017; White et  al., 2015; Sin  & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Nearly two decades of research support claim that such interventions not only result in improved academic performance (Adler, 2016) but also help foster students who grow into adults with increased creativity, emotional intelligence, and even leadership capacities (Leventhal et al., 2015). Given the demonstrated impact that such individual-focused interventions have shown on increasing student wellbeing, we suggest that there is an opportunity to expand the conceptualization of PERMA-H from an individually focused framework to a more collective one, thus expanding the dimensionality of, and impacting our pedagogical approaches as well as interventions for, wellbeing education.

Toward a multidimensional conceptualization of wellbeing Drawing upon implications from mirror neuron research and the concept of mirror fourishing discussed earlier, we can begin to posit that an individual’s wellbeing may not only be impacted by actions they take for themselves but can also be positively impacted by observing, or even more so, helping to cultivate wellbeing in others in a collective sense. Just as Cooperrider and Fry posited that individuals in organizations can increase their wellbeing (as expressed via the PERMA-H dimensions) by engaging in activities that create wellbeing at a collective level, likewise, we can apply what we are calling the ‘mirror fourishing hypothesis’ to the education sphere. As such, we posit that when students and educators work, either independently or together to create positive impacts for others in the community beyond the bounds of themselves and even their school building, they will experience higher levels of wellbeing as expressed by the PERMA-H dimensions as well. This expanded conceptualization of the PERMA-H model allows us to move from conceptualizing that wellbeing is something that only happens from the inside-out (i.e. an individual engages in an activity or practice that focuses them on increasing their own wellbeing, where in the primary goal of the wellbeing activity is impacting the individual) to also conceptualizing it as an outside-in

24 Lindsey N. Godwin and Sara Truebridge process, wherein by focusing on the expansion of others’ and/or the broader community’s wellbeing (i.e. where the primary goal of the wellbeing activity becomes impacting others or the broader community), the individual in turn fourishes. This expanded conceptualization allows us to also expand our discourse on the means and ends of wellbeing education. Now we can consider that individual fourishing is both a means and an end of wellbeing education and collective/community fourishing is also both a means and an end of wellbeing education. Leveraging the research around mirror neurons, it is not a large leap to assert that when we witness others around us fourishing (through the active expression of PERMA-H mechanisms), we in turn will experience an engagement of our own PERMA-H mechanisms. Our own wellbeing may not only be dependent upon our own individual actions but also impacted by our observations of others’ wellbeing. As such, engaging in actions that are aimed at cultivating wellbeing in others will subsequently increase our own wellbeing. Specifcally, applying the ‘mirror fourishing hypothesis’ to each of the PERMA-H dimensions generates a series of testable propositions ripe for further exploration. • • • •

• •

Proposition 1: Positive Emotions – Cultivating and observing the demonstration of positive emotions within others will elevate the observer’s wellbeing. Proposition 2: Engagement – Cultivating and observing others’ experiences of engagement will elevate the observer’s wellbeing. Proposition 3: Relationships – Cultivating and observing positive relational connections among others will elevate the observer’s wellbeing. Proposition 4: Meaning  – Cultivating and observing other individuals’ discovering their higher meaning and purpose will elevate the observer’s wellbeing. Proposition 5: Achievement – Cultivating and observing others achieve or accomplish a collective goal will elevate the observer’s wellbeing. Proposition 6: Health  – Cultivating and observing environmental health improvements (i.e. actions that positively impact sustainability, climate, and other global health concerns) will elevate the observer’s wellbeing.

In stating the outcome in each of these propositions is connected to the overall wellbeing versus a specifc dimension of wellbeing, there is a room to test whether cultivating and observing a specifc dimension of PERMA-H will afect other dimensions beyond the one being expressed. Taken collectively, these six propositions begin to create an expanded model of wellbeing that has implications on the intervention strategies for, and impact tracking of, wellbeing education. The mirror fourishing hypothesis would suggest that the PERMA-H model has room for expansion. Visualized in Figure 2.1, applying the mirror fourishing hypothesis to each of the PERMA-H dimensions, we can begin to broaden how we think about the mechanisms for impacting each of these dimensions. The intervention mechanism for impacting wellbeing, for example, may be not only at the individual level but also at the collective one.

Wellbeing from the outside-in 25

Figure 2.1 A multidimensional conceptualization of PERMA-H

For example, we can focus on helping a student identify and recognize their own accomplishment on a task to help activate the ‘accomplishment’ mechanism of PERMA-H. Or, we can also focus the individual student to notice and, better yet, contribute to a collective goal that is much bigger than themselves – for example, a community-wide initiative outside of their own ‘sphere’ that they engage in independently or with other individuals – so that they are both contributing to and observing the accomplishments of others. The mirror fourishing hypothesis would suggest that such an engagement will likewise expand their own sense of accomplishment.

Signifcance of mirror fourishing for wellbeing education in today’s disrupted world Expanding our conceptualization of wellbeing education from an inside-out to also include an outside-in model is particularly impactful in today’s COVIDdisrupted world. As students and educators alike continue to face daily headlines

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of environmental crises as demonstrated by the wildfres in Australia and the USA, equity issues, civic unrest around the world in the aftermath of racial turmoil, and economic insecurities that translate into many students and their families experiencing food and shelter insecurities at an increasing rate, the wellbeing of our collective society is in need of attention. There has been tremendous work to help address the individual mental health issues (i.e. feelings of isolation, depression, and anxiety) that have seemingly increased since the world began moving into diferent states of quarantine (i.e. CDC, 2020; NAMI, 2020). There will undoubtedly be a need for continued wellbeing interventions that focus on the mental health and wellbeing of our individual students and educators alike in the days ahead. If we also embrace the implications of the mirror fourishing hypothesis, then the process, tools, and strategies supporting and sustaining wellbeing will begin to expand in ways that move students, educators, and family members beyond only refecting on their own personal wellbeing. It will move students, teachers, and families to actively engaging in creating wellbeing for others. Cooperrider and Fry state that ‘[m]irror fourishing happens most powerfully, as demonstrated in the cases and examples when organisations go beyond talk. It happens when people see outcomes – when they are engaged beyond dialogue and move into co-action’ (2012, p. 9). The co-action of creating something for and with others is powerful because it activates not only our primary neural response system but also our mirror neurons. Individuals’ wellbeing will be stimulated through the active engagement of behaviors that impact the greater good of the collective, because the individual then sees others fourishing which subsequently increases their own fourishing. Translating this insight into the educational sphere suggests that we begin to consider the intentional inclusion of experiential and service-learning approaches as pedagogical strategies for wellbeing education. The notion of experiential learning, specifcally in the form of service learning and community-engaged learning has a long history in the educational spheres (Furco  & Billig, 2001). Service learning as defned by the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse is ‘a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and refection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities’ (National Youth Leadership Council, 2020). Similarly, according to the Center for Community-Engaged Learning at Michigan State University, communityengaged learning is ‘a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community partnerships with instruction and critical refection to enrich the student learning experience, teach civic and social responsibility, and strengthen communities’ (Michigan State University, 2020). These hands-on, civic-focused approaches to education include having students engage in activities that will be ‘of service’ to the greater good, such as engaging in advocacy work for a cause they are passionate about, contributing to community and economic development opportunities, environmental conservation, volunteering with communitybased organizations, and even democratic engagement in the political system to try to impact change at a structural level.

Wellbeing from the outside-in 27 Table 2.1 What service learning looks like in K-12 (from National Youth Leadership Council, 2020) Examples of Service Learning by Grade Level Elementary School

Middle School

High School

Fifth graders tutored younger students in reading over the course of a school year. The project improved language skills for both younger and older students and helped the tutors develop their organizational and leadership skills.

A middle school science class studying pollution and disease worked with the Environmental Protection Agency to learn about the dangers of radon and how to test for it in homes. To educate the community on hazards, testing, and cleanup, students created an infomercial to share with local schools and community groups.

Tackling discrimination against HIV-positive people, tenth graders wrote skits that drew parallels between the treatment of people living with AIDS and racial discrimination. They built sets, made costumes and programs, and performed their work for the community. Proceeds supported a local AIDS hospice.

Summarized in Table 2.1, the National Youth Leadership Council (2020) provides specifc illustrations of what service learning looks like by grade level. While such experiential, community-focused learning activities have demonstrated positive impacts on students’ academic achievement, we contend that they also specifcally positively impact students’ wellbeing (as measured by PERMA-H), while also impacting the wellbeing of the broader community. By focusing on creating wellbeing ‘out there’ for others, students and educators alike inherently increase their own wellbeing, demonstrating mirror fourishing in action. If we lean into the notion that wellbeing can be positively impacted through this ‘outside-in’ (i.e. focusing on doing good in the broader world as the ‘means,’ with increased individual wellbeing as one of the ‘ends’), then we will continue to expand the pedagogical interventions we create and track as part of wellbeing education. Cultivating learning activities that invite students to have a positive impact in our COVID-impacted world, including economic, social justice, and environmentally focused activities, expand both the theory and practice of wellbeing education. Wellbeing education thus begins to intersect more directly with broader social needs, opening up new doors and pathways for engaging schools and communities directly into the timely issues facing us as a global community. One framework for considering the ‘out there’ work within which students and educators alike can engage in to positively impact their ‘internal’ wellbeing is the UN Global Goals (2020). As shown in Figure  2.2, these 17 goals (formerly known as the sustainable development goals or SDGs) are a set of universal targets adopted by the UN in 2000 that outlines a vision for the future for people and the planet to make global progress on poverty, education, health, hunger, and the environment by 2030 (SDG, 2020). These goals not only provide a road map for global development but also provide a guidebook for conceptualizing innovative wellbeing education using the notion of mirror fourishing.

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Figure 2.2 The UN global goals for sustainable development (from www.global goals.org)

There is already active work happening to infuse the Global Goals into K-12 classrooms. For example, the TeachSDGs organization aims to contribute to the UN’s 2030 agenda including connecting educators who are interested in this work and pointing to open and accessible resources and lesson plans for educational projects that align with the Global Goals (TeachSDGs, 2020). Such organizations add to the UN’s own resources for educators to use with students around the Global Goals (www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ student-resources/). Such activities and materials have not traditionally been considered within the scope of wellbeing education, yet with a broadened conceptualization of wellbeing and the mechanisms by which it occurs through mirror fourishing, they could be. The possibilities that open up for students and educators alike to engage with the pressing needs of our time while also increasing their own wellbeing is an exciting new frontier for wellbeing education to continue evolving in ways that ensure its relevance in today’s disrupted world.

Conclusions Our current events, including but not limited to, COVID-19, equity issues, global wildfres, racial injustice, and economic insecurity have exponentially contributed to the heightened pressures, anxiety, and stress of all. This has further contributed to a non-negotiable awareness of the need to address health, wellness, and work toward the greater good. The expanded conceptualization of wellbeing as an outside-in proposition via the mirror fourishing hypothesis invites us to enlarge the scope of what wellbeing education looks like in practice.

Wellbeing from the outside-in 29 By doing good out in the world  – especially in a world that is facing unprecedented challenges – students and educators alike can not only increase their own wellbeing but also help to address many of the very issues that are root causes of the mental and physical stressors that wellbeing education is designed to help bolster against. While we are positing an expansion of the PERMA-H model to incorporate the conceptualization of outside-in mechanisms to wellbeing, this expansion in no way is meant to exclude an inward-out approach to wellbeing as a continued critical approach. It is not an ‘either-or,’ rather we suggest that wholistic wellbeing education is a ‘both-and’ proposition. While we need to continue integrating and expanding the individually focused evidence-based practices that have been demonstrated to positively impact the wellbeing of students and educators alike, wellbeing education will beneft from an expansion of approaches that invite the creation of collective wellbeing (that have the added beneft of also increasing individual wellbeing). Further research is needed to continue feshing out the implications of mirror fourishing in wellbeing education. Explorations of the propositions outlined herein will add to the science of wellbeing education, helping us to better understand the true multidimensionality of the PERMA-H model. From experiments to case studies, there is a plethora of opportunity for researchers to explore questions such as: What are the impacts on individuals’ PERMA-H levels when engaged in collective wellbeing work for the greater good? How is mirror fourishing activated in educators who support students’ engagement in service learning and community-engaged learning? What are the reverberations of mirror fourishing for those who are helping others as well as those being ‘helped’ – is there an upward spiral of wellbeing created? What are additional evolutions of the PERMA-H model that help expand our theory and practice of wellbeing education in today’s world? In today’s COVID-disrupted world, the need for wellbeing education is clearer than ever. As we begin to consider how mirror fourishing ofers pathways for simultaneously creating positive interventions at both the individual and collective level, the opportunities for wellbeing education multiply exponentially. Identifying wellbeing education as a mechanism for addressing the pressing social and environmental issues of our time elevates the importance of wellbeing education for all and only amplifes an already growing call for this work in the world. Through mirror fourishing, wellbeing education becomes a critical element in educating future generations in a way that not only benefts the individual learner but also wider society. As many continue to ask what life will look like on the ‘other side’ of COVID, the mirror fourishing hypothesis helps us answer that question by actually creating the new humanity that can collectively fourish both today and tomorrow. Funding details: This work was not supported by any external funding. Acknowledgements: The authors thank Drs David Cooperrider and Ron Fry for their inspirational article, Mirror Flourishing and the Positive Psychology of Sustainability that inspired the seed for this chapter to grow.

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Niemiec, R. (2017). Character strengths interventions: A feld guide for practitioners. Hogrefe Publishing. Norrish, J. M., & Seligman, M. E. (2015). Positive education: The Geelong grammar school journey. Oxford Positive Psychology Series. Oxford University Press. Norrish, J. M., Williams, P., O’Connor, M.,  & Robinson, J. (2013). An applied framework for positive education. International Journal of Wellbeing, 3, 147–161. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v3i2.2 Peterson, C.,  & Seligman, M. E. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classifcation (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, American Psychological Association. Porter, T. (2020). https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/pacifc/blogs/blog28_ refecting-on-teacher-wellbeing-during-COVID-19-pandemic.asp Rizzolatti, G.,  & Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience,  27(1), 169–192.  https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev. neuro.27.070203.144230. PMID 15217330. SDG (Sustainable Development Goals – United Nations). (2020). https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press. Seligman, M. E. P., & Adler, A. (2018). Positive education. In Global happiness council, global happiness policy report 2018 (pp. 52–74). Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Seligman, M. E. P., Rashid, T., & Parks, A. C. (2006). Positive psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 61(8), 774–788. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.61.8.774. Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410–421. Shankland, R., & Rosset, E. (2017). Review of brief school-based positive psychological interventions: A  taster for teachers and educators.  Educational Psychology Review, 29(2), 363–392. Sin, N. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2009). Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: A  practice-friendly metaanalysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 467–487. https://doi.org/10.1002/ jclp.20593 Singer, T., & Tusche, A. (2014). Understanding others: Brain mechanisms of theory of mind and empathy. In P. Glimcher & E. Fehr (Eds.), Neuroeconomics (2nd ed., pp. 513–532). Academic Press. TeachSDGs. (2020). www.teachsdgs.org Terada, Y. (2020). www.edutopia.org/article/covid-19s-impact-students-academicand-mental-well-being Truebridge, S. (2014). Resilience begins with beliefs: Building on student strengths for success in school. Teachers College Press. Waters, L., White, M., & Murray, S. (2012). Toward the creation of a positive institution: St. Peter’s College. AI Practitioner: International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, 14(2), 60–65 White, M., Murray, S.,  & Seligman, M. (Eds.). (2015). Evidence-based approaches in positive education: Implementing a strategic framework for well-being in schools. Springer.

3

A comparative study of wellbeing in students Tecmilenio case Rosalinda Ballesteros-Valdés and Humberto Charles-Leija

Introduction This study focuses on the impact of the health emergency due to coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19), which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, on the students at Tecmilenio University. The following are some questions of interest addressed in this research: What is the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of students at Tecmilenio University? What is the efect of COVID-19 on the positive emotions of students? Is there a diference between academic levels? This topic is relevant because it allows identifying whether being immersed in an ecosystem of wellbeing fosters greater resilience skills in students to help them better carry the emotional burden posed by a health emergency. It is expected that the present study will identify a moderate impact of the COVID-19 health emergency on student wellbeing. The methodology used for this work included a wellbeing survey conducted during the month of April in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The survey is representative of the student population, which is approximately 60 thousand students. The results indicate that the Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem at Tecmilenio University (Universidad Tecmilenio) is fulflling its mission of providing students with tools to face various personal and professional challenges. The students reported fewer negative emotions in 2020 than in 2019. The fnding merits greater importance when considering that other surveys conducted in Mexico by other universities indicated that the country had experienced an increase in emotions such as anxiety and fear. This chapter is divided into four sections: the frst section includes a theoretical review, empirical background and a description of the Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem at Tecmilenio University; the second section describes the data and the methodology used; the third section presents the results of the study; and the fnal section presents the conclusions.

Objectives The objectives of the study are to identify the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of students at Tecmilenio University and explore the diferences between high school and college students.

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Theoretical framework As of August 2020, Tecmilenio University has more than 60,000 students, more than 100,000 graduates and more than 5,800 professors. Approximately 30% of the enrolled students are high school students, 30% are professional-level students taking in-person classes, 20% are professional-level students taking online classes and 20% are master’s students. The university currently has 30 in-person campuses throughout 25 cities in Mexico and is about to open the 31st in-person campus. In addition, the online campus serves almost one-ffth of current students in undergraduate programmes and master’s programmes, in particular, the master’s degree in management. The university has a nonproft status and is part of an educational group led by the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey), an institution with 77  years of leadership in education in Mexico. This year marks the 18th year, the university has operated with the interest of expanding educational coverage to populations that usually only have access to public universities. Thirty-three percent of university students are the frst generation in their family to pursue a bachelor’s degree and 70% have some type of fnancial support or scholarship. Children and adolescents require emotional skills training, and there are different conceptual frameworks on how to teach these so-called soft skills or life skills. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) presents a conceptual framework on what children should learn; the framework includes wellbeing because it is considered a personal mastery skill that leads to signifcant learning opportunities. According to Peterson (2006), universities should provide students with much more than professional skills and abilities. Universities must have ethical goals that guide their students to be compassionate and seek intellectual, social and emotional growth. Most of the universities do not have wellbeing programmes for their students (Waters et al., 2012). In 2013, Tecmilenio University in Mexico generated a wellbeing model, based on the sense of life purpose, as a mandatory part of the university-level curriculum. The English economist Richard Layard argues that each of us, in all our decisions, must generate the greatest possible happiness (Layard, 2020). In Layard’s view, today we have enough information to make evident the need to work with schools on these issues. A large number of people, millions, who engage in meditation services or holistic practices worldwide, the growth in coaching services and social support groups, labour policies promoting stress management, are evidence of the underlying need to address these issues. Happiness can be seen as an indicator of the progress of societies (Charles-Leija et al., 2018; Rojas & Charles-Leija, 2021). If we further consider the high dropout rate and the increase in depression and anxiety diagnoses among the young population, dealing with issues of emotional wellbeing is a prevailing need not only for basic education schools but also for universities (Oades et al., 2011). In Mexico, the dropout rates are 15.5% for high school and 38% for universities.

A comparative study of wellbeing in students 35 Positive psychology presents one option for training in emotional wellbeing. In 2019, the most popular class at Yale University was “Happiness and a good life” but that is not the only evidence of need that exists. An important question in education is what kind of people do we want to shape? One need that became evident in 2020 is the need to manage emotions, understand and care for others and understand and protect mental health. Positive interventions should be applied not only at the curriculum level but also in a transversal manner and should change educational institutions (Peterson, 2006). More than creating isolated courses, such as at Yale, the challenge has been for Tecmilenio University to have a comprehensive strategy for the entire educational community, that is, students, professors and administrators, even extending further to parents and graduates. Tecmilenio University, with almost 60 thousand students, integrates the principles of wellbeing and happiness in its educational philosophy as an integral part of its model and culture. The new university model includes a curriculum created to incorporate this comprehensive view of wellbeing into the baccalaureate, bachelor and graduate degree levels. Additionally, student life programmes aim to generate life skills, and a training programme has been created for professors and collaborators. A true transformation of the educational model and the institution occurred based on wellbeing. The 2020 vision established by the university was to train people with life purpose and the skills to achieve it. A key planning approach for the year 2020 was the idea that human beings are living longer, up to 35 years longer than the generation of our grandparents, and that university education can contribute to creating skills that go far beyond work or professional life. To design the model, a working group consulted with experts who had shown evidence of the benefts of wellbeing and happiness and their positive correlation with a long, successful and satisfactory life. Additionally, it has been shown in several studies in Bhutan, Peru and Mexico that there are immediate benefts in the school performance of children and young people who receive training in emotional wellbeing and resilience (Seligman & Adler, 2019). In 2013, the university created the Institute for Wellbeing and Happiness, signifying that wellbeing was a central project of the university. The Institute was born with four objectives: (a) teach wellbeing through courses and ofer certifcates and postgraduate degrees in positive psychology; (b) exemplify wellbeing in our daily life at the university by applying what we know about wellbeing; (c) provide services for wellbeing through consultations, training and coaching for organizations and companies based on positive psychology; and (d) investigate wellbeing by applying knowledge about happiness and how to enhance it. From 2013 to date, a longitudinal study has been carried out on university students seeking to measure the shifts in wellbeing based on the PERMA (Positive Emotion (P), Engagement (E), Relationships (R), Meaning (M), Accomplishment (A)) model and seeking to gather evidence of the positive efect of the creation and implementation of the Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem. To carry out this approach towards wellbeing and happiness within the university, the Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem was created on the basis of the elements of the PERMA model (Seligman, 2012) and components of physical

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wellbeing and mindfulness (Goleman & Davidson, 2017); additionally, the model was framed around developing character strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). The ecosystem is represented graphically in Figure  3.1; the core aspects of the university are placed in the centre (Figure 3.1). The multidimensional model emphasizes the main pathways of inserting wellbeing into the institution as a whole: (a) introducing wellbeing and happiness as a compulsory subject at the high school and professional levels and incorporating it into the business semester (professional practices) of undergraduate students; (b) reconfguring student activities as wellbeing activities (including sports, culture and student clubs) and generating a sense of collaboration with the community through community service; (c) ensuring the application of the components of wellbeing through the training of all professors and creating minimum standards; and fnally, (d) making changes in the facilities, such as redesigning cafeterias, gyms and libraries, to generate a culture of wellbeing. As part of the curriculum at the high school and professional levels, all frstyear university students are exposed to wellbeing and happiness content. At the

Figure 3.1 Wellbeing and happiness ecosystem

A comparative study of wellbeing in students 37 high school level, the content is distributed through six courses called Skills and Values. At the undergraduate level, there are four important curricular moments. Introduction to the University and Principles of Wellbeing and Happiness are studied in the frst semester of the frst year. For the proper functioning of the model in the ecosystem, it is essential that students are aware of and are owners of their own wellbeing, know how to identify the elements that compose wellbeing and have their own tools to utilize in specifc contexts. They are even invited to teach others these tools on two occasions: the frst occurs through community service (mandatory element of all degree programmes in Mexico) and the second occurs during the business semester or through internships, where students generate a positive intervention in their workplace. The age of the student population was a determining factor in establishing a diferentiated curriculum between high school and professional-level students. High school students receive content distributed in six subjects throughout high school according to age (Table 3.1): The model for undergraduate has four stages that will be described in this section. The frst one is just learning theory, the last one is teaching others.

Table 3.1 Summary description of skills and values contents Course (Term)

Wellbeing Dimension

Description and Source

I

Introduction to the Wellbeing and Happiness’ Ecosystem in Tecmilenio Active constructive responding

Students know the Wellbeing and Happiness’ Ecosystem and learn on its diferent dimensions.

Skills and Values I (First Term)

Physical wellbeing and healthy habits

Personal strengths

II

Skills and Values II (Second Term)

III Skills and Values IV (Fourth Term)

Personal strengths

Meaning

Students practise how to react in a visibly positive and enthusiastic way to good news from someone else (Gable et al., 2004). From a theoretical perspective, students learn on the benefts of promoting physical wellbeing and developing healthy habits (i.e. healthy food, exercise & sleep). Students identify their personal strengths by completing the VIA-IS scale (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Parents also complete the Values in Action scale so students may identify family strengths of character. Students complete some exercises to start defning their purpose in life (Steger et al., 2009). (Continued)

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Table 3.1 (Continued) Course (Term)

Wellbeing Dimension

Description and Source

Goals

Students set self-concordant goals (setting goals according to their purpose in life) (Sheldon, 2014). They also practise a SOAR analysis based on appreciative inquiry (Stravos et al., 2003). Students learn on the benefts of gratitude and practise the three blessings exercise (Seligman, 2012). Students defne and identify positive emotions (Seligman, 2012). Students learn what fow is and identify moments in their life when they experience (Wesson & Boniwell, 2007). Students practise again SOAR analysis (Stravos et al., 2003). They learn how to set goals with mental contrasting techniques (Duckworth et al., 2011). Students express gratitude to others (e.g. parents or teachers).

Gratitude

V

Skills and Values V (Fifth Term)

VI Skills and Values VI (Sixth Term)

Positive emotions Flow

Goals

Gratitude

Source: VIA-IS: Values in Action Inventory of Strengths.

(a) The introduction to the University course The Introduction to the University course serves as a guide to contact a mentor or counsellor, who guides students in learning everything that the university has to ofer within its fexible curriculum. In this regard, the topic of life purpose becomes especially relevant given that it is with a mentor and through practical exercises regarding the subject that students determine their life purpose statement. With this statement, students make decisions regarding the future selection of courses that bring them closer to developing the professional skills needed to fulfl their purpose; this exercise is based on the purpose model described by Michael Steger (Steger et al., 2008). Since students start university, it has been proposed that individuals should make decisions based not on professional success but on the combination of personal strengths, what he or she is passionate about and what will generate value for his or her community.

(b) The principles of wellbeing and happiness course The Principles of Wellbeing and Happiness course is the cornerstone of the Tecmilenio University curriculum model at the undergraduate level. This is a 16-week course that all students take in their frst semester at the university and consists of the basic positive psychology topics using the PERMA model (Seligman, 2012),

A comparative study of wellbeing in students 39 in addition to a detailed analysis focusing on strengths (Peterson  & Seligman, 2004). This course is taken by the bulk of students in the fall given that the fall semester is when entry is greatest. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico (beginning in March 2020 and still occurring at the time of writing this chapter), students at the undergraduate level had nearly completed the course. The instructional design of the course includes an explanation of the topic and exercises that students must complete individually. That is, students seek to understand why the topics are relevant and always have practical exercises. The evaluations during the course occur through refection. In the design of this course, it was recognized that it is not possible to evaluate whether an exercise such as a gratitude journal or a portfolio of positive emotions is well done; therefore, each student’s refection on their own understanding of wellbeing and how to generate it is evaluated. These are the topics that make up the course: introduction to the scientifc study of happiness, the components of wellbeing (PERMA), positive emotions, optimism, pleasure and joy for life, character strengths, optimal experiences (fow), positive relationships, gratitude, purpose and meaning of life, resilience, goals and achievements, perseverance and self-regulation, mindfulness, social wellbeing and life purpose component during community service. Mexican legislation requires 600 hours of community service to obtain a bachelor’s degree. Tecmilenio University made the decision that this service should be oriented towards teaching vulnerable populations (primary and secondary students of public schools in low-income areas) the topic of wellbeing, selecting the programme Aulas Felices (Arguis et al., 2010). Additionally, this study shows how helping others can bring wellbeing to their own lives. To date, 4,200 students per year participate in community service. Another of the community service programmes that are related to positive psychology is positive museums. In association with a cultural festival in the city, students guided by staf of the Institute for Wellbeing and Happiness generate tours and activities in which museum visitors can explore their positive emotions through art, history and science. Currently, there are 11 museums in the city of Monterrey and approximately 15,000 visitors annually participate in positive museum activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, community service was interrupted because it was not possible to attend schools, museums and other organizations in person. During this period, students voluntarily taught lessons about the programme to children of university collaborators, with an average participation of 400 children.

(c) Business semester and the positive organizations course All university students, according to the university plan, must complete a practical internship in a company for six months; the purpose is two-fold: developing professional skills and incorporating positive elements into the company. During the pandemic in Mexico, 2,073 students were enrolled in the business semester; these students had to follow the rules of the industries and states where they were located. Generally, during the internship, students are supported and monitored by a business coach, who is a professor who guides their learning process in their

40 Ballesteros-Valdés and Charles-Leija professional training. They are taking the Positive Organizations course, which is based on the Healthy and Resilient Organization model (Salanova, 2008). In this course, students must frst learn the Healthy and Resilient Organization model and then perform an intervention, in which they have the option of choosing between three pathways for their work team. These pathways focus on strengths (Peterson  & Seligman, 2004), positive relationships at work (Seligman, 2012) and meaningful work (Dik et al., 2013). This course is always taken in an online format because it is a complement to the business semester, during which students do not visit the campus or the headquarters at which he/she is enrolled during that period. For the development of this course, the idea is that students will learn and deepen their development strategy skills by teaching others about topics related to positive organizations.

(d) Student wellbeing and development activities During the course of their studies, university students have access to sports, cultural programmes and student clubs. At the high school level, a redesign of student activities was carried out to create a system of houses or fraternities similar to the English model. With this model, it is intended that students generate a network of positive relationships through student activities. Students have a sense of belonging to their group, and within cultural, sports and academic clubs, processes of competition and coexistence are generated. Students also undertake a community support project during high school. Students in their fnal year are the captains of the societies and transfer this leadership to their classmates each year. There is an intensive robotics programme with regional, national and international tournaments in which students participate. In these leagues, university students have taken the Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem to other spaces and shared it with universities throughout Mexico and the world. At the university level, there are clubs by academic area, the discipline of study and interest. In addition, some student leadership events, such as the “Empower” congress, promote participation in community entrepreneurship projects. Both at the undergraduate and high school levels, students from all campuses of the university are invited to national events, including national sports and cultural events, a student leadership event and an event on wellbeing and happiness organized by the Institute for Wellbeing and Happiness. Currently, the university has students in 31 cities. There are two annual academic cycles. The frst is for young people from 15 to 23  years old; the cycle runs from August to December and from January to May of each year. In this calendar cycle, there are high school students and undergraduate level students. The second calendar cycle is for adults or executives and runs from September to December, from January to April and from May to August. In-person activities are primarily designed for young students, with exercises, networking meetings and mindfulness practices incorporated into classrooms for adult students. During the pandemic, sports and cultural classes were converted into an online model, with daily oferings by the university’s social networks and in closed classes. As an additional measure, an 8-week mindfulness course based on

A comparative study of wellbeing in students 41 character strengths was made available to the entire university and translated for the university with the authorization of the VIA Institute (Ivtzan et al., 2016). Importantly, professors and collaborators are also part of the Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem of the university. All collaborators at the university take the Foundations of Positive Psychology course. From 2013 to date, 7,054 university collaborators, either professors or administrators, have completed the 12-week programme. In the period from 2018 to 2019, scholarships for this programme were also extended to the relatives of the collaborators to generate a community based on positive psychology. During the period of confnement, programmes have been deployed to allow working from home, and these have been accompanied by additional training, such as an 8-week course on mindfulness and topics related to work fexibility. In addition, activities were designed to support collaborators who are home-schooling their children. A wellness programme, with small wellness interventions at the beginning of class and/or at closing, was implemented very quickly for all courses taught remotely. Twelve short mindfulness audio exercises, one-minute videos with positive emotion exercises, stretching and strategies to generate positive relationships were made available so that students and professors continued to cultivate the Ecosystem from home. From March to August  2020, 40 webinars were also given with the aim of educating the entire community regarding issues related to positive organizations, mindfulness, emotional education, positive families, sleep management and healthy stress management during the period of confnement. This was designed as a community outreach programme, and it was hoped that collaborating students, professors, parents of the students and alumni would participate. There was also another community activity designed by the university that occurred during the pandemic. In the city of Monterrey, where our main campus is located, in a previously made agreement with city museums that has continued throughout the pandemic, virtual tours for the community based on positive emotions were made available, with the goal of combining art and wellbeing through a virtual intervention. To date, 5,000 people have viewed the positive museum tours. The efect of the Tecmilenio University Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem, which incorporates life purpose as its central axis, is also refected in its graduates. A survey conducted in 2020 identifed that university graduates who developed a better-defned life purpose experience a series of heliotropic efects at the personal, family and work levels. Cameron (2008) likens the “heliotropic efect” as being the natural tendency of humans to fnd elements that enrich our lives and lead us to live them better, drawing closer to positive energies and away from negative energies. The main fndings of the study suggest that graduates of Tecmilenio University who have a more defned purpose manifest multiple positive side efects (heliotropic), in terms of having lower chances of being unemployed or recently losing employment as well as greater chances of fnding themselves in a higher income bracket. Notably, having a better-defned purpose also impacts the personal level because it is positively correlated with greater satisfaction with life and good health and having more friends and family willing to provide support in emergency situations (Charles-Leija et al., 2020).

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The present study This chapter is necessary because it is worth investigating the wellbeing of young people in a country such as Mexico, a nation that has unique characteristics. The pandemic generated a health crisis in a country that was already experiencing severe problems in terms of economy and violence. In August  2020, Mexico was among the three countries with the highest number of deaths associated with COVID-19 worldwide. In this context, it is essential for universities to have wellbeing and happiness ecosystems that can be applied in virtual spaces and contribute to students being able to better face the difculties associated with the pandemic. This study seeks to answer three research questions: What is the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of students at Tecmilenio University? What is the efect of COVID-19 on the positive emotions of students? Is there a diference in academic levels?

Methods and data sources This chapter presents data obtained in the spring session, during the month of April for 2018, 2019 and 2020. The most recent survey was carried out amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Tecmilenio University has a population obtaining master’s and specialty degrees, the high school and professional student populations have more involvement with the wellbeing and happiness ecosystem developed by the institution. This is why the present analysis focuses on such educational levels. Table 3.2 presents the number of students who participated by answering the wellbeing survey. Student participation was highest for 2019. However, representative samples were obtained for all periods. The instrument used to capture the wellbeing of students is the PERMA Profler, developed by Butler and Kern (2016). It consists of 23 items that measure seven dimensions, the fve corresponding to the PERMA proposed by Seligman (2012, 2018), negative emotions (N) and health (H), as well as an item for the overall happiness (hap). For each element of PERMA, there are three items; for health, there are three items; and for negative emotions, there are four items. Next, the PERMA Profler questionnaire is described (Table 3.3). The questions are answered using a scale that ranges from 0 to 10.

Table 3.2 Students who responded to the survey, spring 2018, 2019 and 2020 Period

High School

Professional

2018 2019 2020

2,853 4,949 1,345

1,226 2,354 914

Source: Opin@ survey

A comparative study of wellbeing in students 43 Table 3.3 Description of the PERMA Profler questionnaire items Original Question

Name of the Variable

In general, how often do you feel joyful? In general, how often do you feel positive? In general, to what extent do you feel content? How often do you become absorbed in what you are doing? In general, to what extent do you feel excited and interested in things? How often do you lose track of time while doing something you enjoy? To what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? To what extent do you feel loved? How satisfed are you with your personal relationships? In general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life? In general, to what extent do you feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile? To what extent do you generally feel you have a sense of direction in your life? How much of the time do you feel you are making progress towards accomplishing your goals? How often do you achieve the important goals you have set for yourself? How often are you able to handle your responsibilities? In general, how would you say your health is? How satisfed are you with your current physical health? Compared to others of your same age and sex, how is your health? In general, how often do you feel anxious? How lonely do you feel in your daily life? In general, how often do you feel angry? In general, how often do you feel sad? Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?

P1 P2 P3 E1 E2 E3 R1 R2 R3 M1 M2 M3 A1 A2 A3 H1 H2 H3 N1 N2 N3 N4 Hap

Source: Opin@ survey

Figure 3.2 shows the correlations among the 23 items of the PERMA Profler, showing two large groupings: 19 items corresponding to elements of student wellbeing, both high school and professional, and a correlation among elements of discomfort. From the illustration, it can be observed that the overall happiness variable presents a strong correlation with positive emotion variables (feeling joyful, content and positive) and, in a second level, with E2 (feeling excited and interested in things), R3 (feeling satisfed with personal relationships) and A2 (achieving goals). All correlations are signifcant at 0.01.

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Figure 3.2 Correlations among the 23 items of the PERMA Profler, 2018–2020 Source: Opin@ survey

Figure 3.3 shows the correlations in four groups. Negative emotions represent one group; E3 (losing track of time when doing an enjoyable activity) represents a group by itself; health represents a group by itself; and the remaining items, being very similar to each other, form a grouping representing the overall wellbeing. The illustration corresponds largely to the theoretical postulates of PERMA: although health is a fundamental element of the overall wellbeing of individuals, the fve blocks that correspond to positivity, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement are elements more integrated within themselves as pillars of wellbeing (Seligman, 2018). Item E3 is not fully integrated into the overall block of wellbeing items, perhaps because this fow component is not as close to the other items for the overall happiness.

Results Tables 3.4 and 3.5 present the averages for the PERMA components for high school and professional students. For ease of interpretation, only the years 2019

A comparative study of wellbeing in students 45

Figure 3.3 Correlations among the 23 items of the PERMA Profler, four groups, 2018–2020 Source: Opin@ survey

and 2020 are contrasted. The majority of the 15 items show a negative efect caused by the pandemic. The only PERMA domains for which adverse efects are not shown is in the third item, engagement, which corresponds to the perception that time is passing very quickly when engaged in an activity, as well as in the last item, achievement, corresponding to feeling able to handle responsibilities. For high school students, the frst question of the domain is “meaning”, specifed as follows: “In general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life?”. This is a highly relevant result for Tecmilenio University because “purpose” is central to its Wellbeing and Happiness Ecosystem, and this suggests that high school students do not perceive that their life purpose has been impacted by the pandemic. Several studies have shown the importance of adolescents having a well-defned life purpose (Brassai et al., 2011; Damon et al., 2003). Regarding the other elements measured by the PERMA Profler, that is, health, negative emotions and happiness, the results showed interesting improvements.

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Table 3.4 Averages for PERMA elements by academic level, 2019 and 2020 High School

Joy Positive Content Absorbed Excited Time_passes_q Help_from_others Feel_loved Satisfed_relat Purpose_meaning Life_worth_living Life_direction Achievement_goals Frequency_goals Responsibilities Sample

Professional

Period

Mean

Std. Dev.

Sig

Mean

Std. Dev.

Sig

2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020 2019 2020

8.32 8.15 8.19 8.03 8.50 8.33 8.28 8.19 8.41 8.26 8.99 9.00 8.31 8.11 8.52 8.44 8.48 8.35 8.19 8.12 8.29 8.16 8.17 7.96 8.03 7.88 8.08 8.00 8.41 8.37 4,949 1,345

0.02 0.05 0.03 0.05 0.02 0.05 0.02 0.05 0.02 0.05 0.02 0.04 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.05 0.03 0.05 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.05 0.02 0.05

***

8.42 8.20 8.43 8.25 8.59 8.39 8.48 8.19 8.58 8.42 8.93 8.95 8.46 8.22 8.65 8.50 8.51 8.31 8.59 8.35 8.61 8.39 8.45 8.25 8.32 8.02 8.28 8.02 8.61 8.55 2,354 914

0.03 0.06 0.04 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.05 0.04 0.07 0.04 0.06 0.04 0.07 0.03 0.06 0.04 0.06 0.04 0.06 0.04 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.05

***

*** *** ** ***

*** ** **

** *** *** *

*** *** *** ***

*** ** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Source: Own elaboration with data obtained from the four-month student survey. Signifcance levels: *** p