The Need for Positive Wellbeing Frameworks in Schools (And the Meta-Framework that Helps Schools Design Their Own Wellbeing Curriculums)
One of the biggest challenges that teachers share with me when trying to infuse wellbeing into their school is that their efforts feel fragmented, “we have different programs spread across the school but its’ piecemeal” they tell me . Carefully chosen meta-frameworks can create a whole-school cohesive approach that nurture student and teacher wellbeing. SEARCH is an evidence-based framework that I have developed in my role as a university researcher. It has numerous positive outcomes and is free to implement.
Last month, I wrote about a COVID-19 research study of mine that showed when students learned to support their mental health using the SEARCH wellbeing framework they report higher levels of coping and growth during the pandemic.
The idea that we can teach students skills to boost wellbeing is important at this time.
And in this article, I’m going to take you on a deeper dive into the SEARCH framework.
Why Your School Needs the SEARCH Framework
Building wellbeing in students is doable through wellbeing curriculums but you’ll find far more effective outcomes for students when you start with a strategic approach first that becomes embedded across the curriculum and throughout the school.
Meta-frameworks can help schools by giving them a purposeful direction through which they can embed whole-school wellbeing into their context. These frameworks focus on the big picture, working with higher-order pathways.
And by applying meta-frameworks , schools can foster higher-order skills that help students build wellbeing now and in the long term. These frameworks allow the range of practices (e.g.,random acts of kindness, gratitude practices, mindfulness, resilient thinking and so on) to be connected in ways that students can understand and see the bigger picture. That way when they learn mindsets through one program, or year level, and go on to learn mindfulness at another class they can join the two together and understand they are building up a connected wellbeing tool kit.
Meta-frameworks help schools create a coherent approach that builds up students’ psychological competencies. They can educate students about how everything they learn in school can be oriented towards improving their mental health. For example, mindset can be connected to mindfulness, strengths to savouring, gratitude can accompany grit - your students will see how the separate programs they are learning are all connected together as essential tools for fostering their wellbeing.
Meta-frameworks can also provide school leaders with a balance between consistency and flexibility, allowing them to customise their wellbeing strategy to suit different student groups.
The entire school community can benefit from freely available frameworks developed via data-driven methods and backed by science, with pathways to easily adapt into their context.
The SEARCH framework is one such solution.
SEARCH is helpful for schools that want to create their own wellbeing curriculum and add guiding lessons around six pathways. It can also be beneficial for auditing and evaluating the existing practices.
The SEARCH framework is the result of an extensive bibliometric review and cluster analysis I conducted with one of my PhD students, Dr Rueben Rusk. We analysed the key themes from 16,000+ psychology studies published over a period of 18 years to discover the core pathways to wellbeing. I then went on to conduct action research on SEARCH in 10 schools, as well as publishing a systematic review of psychology and education school intervention studies mapped on the SEARCH framework involving 35,888 students spread over four continents.
Currently adopted by schools across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates, the SEARCH framework covers six pathways to wellbeing:
Strengths
Emotional Management
Attention and Awareness
Relationships
Coping
Habits and Goals
The reach of my SEARCH framework is very meaningful to me after 8 years of university research I spent developing this framework. I hope more and more schools use SEARCH and gain benefit through my research.
Let’s have a deeper look into each of the six pathways and discuss their positive outcomes.
The Outcomes Each Pathway Offers
Each of the six pathways come with its own set of outcomes, including ways to reduce ill-being, ways to foster wellbeing, and ways to use the pathways to enhance learning outcomes.
Pathway #1 - Strengths
The strengths pathway is about using the pre-existing qualities in students that came naturally. When a student uses their strengths, they feel energised and intrinsically motivated for doing so.
Positive outcomes associated with the strengths pathway include:
Higher levels of life satisfaction, positive affect, hope, engagement, emotional, subjective wellbeing, peer relations, self-worth, and emotional engagement.
Improved GPA
Higher academic expectations and motivation
Increased enjoyment of learning and perception of academic ability
Pathway #2 – Emotional Management
The emotional management pathway represents the ability for the students to recognise, understand, and manage their emotions.
Here are the benefits associated with this pathway:
Reduced anxiety, depression, and social stress
Higher levels of self-esteem, mental health, emotional intelligence skills, and gratitude
Better grades at the end of the year
Increased scholastic confidence, better handling of school transitions, and higher school satisfaction
Pathway #3 – Attention and Awareness
The attention and awareness pathway concerns the ability to focus on aspects of the inner self (emotions) or on external stimuli (friends, teacher, classroom environment). Awareness is about paying attention to stimulus as it occurs.
Positive outcomes related to this pathway include:
Lowered state and trait anxiety
Decreased depressive symptoms and stress
Increased social skills, optimism, and positive affect
Higher levels of self-acceptance and self-concept
More calmness
Better social, emotional competence
General wellbeing
Better reading scores and study skills
Enhanced vocab test performance and language proficiency
Higher literacy and numeracy scores
Pathway #4 – Relationships
The relationships pathway nurtures the skills needed to build and support healthy social relationships, to learn short social interactions and build enduring friendships
The benefits of this pathway include:
Less pro-bullying
Increased reports of connectedness, perceived social support, cooperative teamwork, caring, honesty, and more
Better social citizenship
Pathway #5 – Coping
One definition for the coping pathway is the alteration of cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage one’s demands that are internal, external, or even both. In layman's terms it’s the capacity to meet the pressure we are faced with.
Positive outcomes associated with coping include:
Decreased anxiety and behavioural and social problems as well as depression
Higher levels of the following: social skills, self-efficacy, help-seeking, problem-solving, assertiveness, self-worth, social emotional wellbeing, and similar
Increased reading levels and perception of learning
Pathway #6 – Habits and Goals
Habits are constant patterns in making decisions and acting on them. Habits can be good or bad and they can relate a whole host of aspects of a student’s life including study habits, exercise habits, screen habits and mental health habits.Goals are aspirations for what we want in our future and they shape what students are willing to invest effort into.
Positive outcomes of the habits and goals pathway include:
Lowered feelings of boredom and helplessness
Decreased anxiety and behavioural and emotional problems
Higher motivation, self-efficacy, peer social skills, goal orientation, and more
Increased regulation, thinking, learning patterns, metacognition, and more
Accessing SEARCH
The SEARCH framework hits the broad spectrum of the wellbeing building blocks as backed by 8 years of science and is much needed for our students. It’s why the first thing I did after developing SEARCH is help schools to use it as an organising tool.
Everyone can use SEARCH for free, as it’s published in peer review literature in the public domain. There’s zero cost attached to this innovative framework, so you’re free to use it regardless of your location.
Whether you want to use SEARCH to organise your current pathways or audit how you’re currently doing, you can.
Some schools may be offering otherwise excellent programs for relationships that could become even more effective if they incorporated strengths. Meanwhile, others may be great at raising attention and awareness, but not yet link these skills to how they can help students change habits and achieve their goals. Using SEARCH as your school’s meta-framework helps you ‘join the dots’ of your various programs and is a great way to work on all six building blocks to student wellbeing.