Why make wellbeing visible?

Student wellbeing has become a focus of international education policy for global organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The 2015 OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation reports that over 70% of OECD countries now have wellbeing as an explicit goal of their National Curriculums.

With the challenge for schools to turn well-being policy into practice, schools need a scientific approach that enables them to build wellbeing in students, staff, parents and their community.

Designed by Dr Lea Waters (AM, PhD), research professor and world expert in positive psychology, Visible Wellbeing™ (VWB) combines the science of wellbeing with the science of learning and teaching to make wellbeing visible in all classes and across co-curricula. The VWB techniques help teachers to use the learning process itself as a delivery mechanism to build student wellbeing. VWB is not a set curriculum, it is a flexible approach which can be applied across any subject matter, and in all contexts – early learning, primary, secondary, and in the staff room. With the VWB approach, academic learning and wellbeing are truly integrated.

VWB aims to help everyone thrive at school and the training and techniques are equally relevant to staff, teaching and non-teaching, as they are to students as a way to build a culture of wellbeing across the entire school. The VWB Partnerships also comes with a facilitated parent evening, helping the VWB techiques to have a positive impact at home as well as school.