Teaching and Learning English - ebook

LIST OF AUTHORS

Przemysław E. Gębal is an applied linguist and researcher in the field of foreign language learning and teaching. His research interests include multilingualism and cross-cultural communication with a particular focus on their pedagogical and didactic aspects. He is a professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Gdańsk and the Institute of Applied Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw, involved in research and practice of foreign language teacher training. He is the scientific editor of the publishing series “Foreign Language Didactics” for the PWN publishing house.

Czesław Kiński works at the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Warmia and Mazury, where he teaches Methodology, Psychology in Education and other ELT-related subjects. His interests include various aspects of language learning psychology, student well-being, public speaking, and group dynamics; his main research area is the role of emotions in language learning. He also works as an author of educational materials and a teacher training consultant, both in Poland and abroad.

Sarah Mercer is head of ELT at the University of Graz, head of the Fachdidaktik Research Network at the University of Graz, and head of the Doctorate Programme for language teaching research. She is interested in all aspects of language learning psychology (teacher and learner perspectives). She is the author, co-author, and co-editor of several books in this area and has served as Principal Investigator on several funded research projects mostly examining wellbeing in language education.

Sabina A. Nowak works at the Institute of English Philology at the Pedagogical University of Cracow in the Department of English Language Education. She teaches Didactics, Assessment, and lectures on CLIL, as she holds a degree in Applied Linguistics and Tourism. Her research interests focus on reflection through journal writing as well as testing and assessment. She worked as an examiner of the Polish Maturity exam and Cambridge UCLES (KET, PET, FCE, CAE) oral exams. She is currently involved in running international telecollaborative projects.

Małgorzata Szulc-Kurpaska is an assistant professor at the Witelon College State University in Legnica and she works as a teacher trainer at the primary school and kindergarten level. She is the co-author of the coursebook Sparks and a methodology book on Teaching English to Young Learners. She cooperated with the Educational Research Institute in Warsaw in conducting research into the conditions of foreign language instruction and its effectiveness in the primary school. Her research interests involve creativity, special educational needs and pre-primary teacher training.1
WELL-BEING IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION
SARAH MERCER

Lead-In

In 2009, a research team in the US asked parents what they wanted for their children in life and what they felt school taught (Seligman et al., 2009). Before reading on to find out what the responses were, perhaps take a moment to consider how you would have responded to those questions.

It is probably no surprise to learn that the most common answers to what parents wanted for their children in life included: happiness, confidence, contentment, balance, kindness, health, satisfaction etc. In other words, they wanted their children to lead happy, fulfilled lives; they wanted well-being for them. In response to what they thought that school taught, the parents referred to quite different things including achievement, thinking skills, success, conformity, literacy, mathematics, discipline etc. These are the tools of accomplishment. While students doubtless need many of those competences, it is worth reflecting on just how much of the first set of life skills for well-being we consciously address in education.

In order to supplement your understanding of teaching English and life skills, watch the plenary talk given at TESOL-SPAIN 43rd on “Positive Language Education: Teaching English and Life Skills”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAp1sxyreLI.

Activation

In the 1946 constitution of the World Health Organization, health is defined as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Health is a basic human right which should be advocated for and supported in all social and educational systems. In other words, schools should be seeking to actively promote and support the health and well-being of all the stakeholders involved in their community – staff and students.

To what extent do you feel this is already common practice in your context or, indeed, in other educational settings across the globe?

Input

1. Defining Well-Being

Well-being is a highly contested term with many different perspectives, definitions, and theoretical frameworks. Part of the reason for this plurality of understandings is the inherent complexity of the notion which defies easy, straightforward definitions (La Placa, McNaught, & Knight, 2013). Well-being has been connected with health, and indeed physical and mental health are closely interconnected (e.g., Fox, 1999; Hays et al., 1994). However, the more broadly accepted notion of well-being is that it is a subjective psychological and emotional perception of how satisfied one is with one’s life.

Essentially, there are typically two main perspectives on well-being: one takes a hedonic approach and the other a eudaemonic approach (Ryan & Deci, 2001). The most dominant hedonic perspective is evinced in work on Subjective Well-being (SWB) which is defined as the presence of pleasant/positive affect, relative lack of unpleasant/negative affect, and life satisfaction (e.g., Diener et al., 1999; Lucas et al., 1996). SWB places a strong emphasis on the subjective affective dimension of the moment with less consideration of the socially embedded and long-term character of well-being across the lifetime. In contrast, eudemonic approaches focus more on meaning and self-actualisation considering aspects of life such as meaning, purpose, engagement, and social connection among others. In reality, well-being is likely to emerge from an integration of both hedonistic and eudaemonic perspectives with experiences of positive affect at the moment as well as a sense of doing well in life more broadly over time (e.g., Jayawickreme, Forgeard, & Seligman, 2012). Eudaemonic approaches more typically see well-being as multifaceted with models typically comprised of multiple components which interact to generate a person’s subjective sense of well-being. No single factor can define well-being; rather multiple components contribute to it.

One useful multidimensional model is proposed by Dodge et al. (2012) who describe well-being through the use of the metaphor of a see-saw balancing between resources and challenges. They explain that “well-being is when individuals have the psychological, social and physical resources they need to meet a particular psychological, social and/or physical challenge. When individuals have more challenges than resources, the see-saw dips, along with their well-being, and vice-versa” (Dodge et al., 2012, p. 230). This model appeals for its simplicity, the combination of psychological and social factors, and dynamic character, which conceptualises well-being as being in a constant state of flux in response to contextual variables or perceived challenges. As the authors explain, it is also an optimistic model in that it suggests people can build resources (psychological, social, and physical) in order to meet challenges in their lives.

Perhaps one of the most widely used models of well-being in education, including also in language education, has been Seligman’s (2011) PERMA model (see, e.g., Gregersen et al., in press; MacIntyre et al., 2019; MacIntyre et al., 2020, cf. Chapter 15). PERMA stands for: Positive emotions (such as awe, joy, happiness etc.), Engagement (being fully engrossed in activities), positive Relationships (healthy social connection), Meaning (a sense of purpose), and Accomplishment (achieving meaningful goals). In recent years, an additional health component has been added (e.g., Butler & Kern, 2016) to include physical well-being, given the close interconnections between physical and mental well-being.

A short excerpt of a video of Martin Seligman explaining PERMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqqHUxzpfBI&feature=emb_title.

Although these models include social elements such as relationships, there is no direct reflection on the role of contextual and systemic factors and how they relate to well-being. An alternative has been to take an ecological perspective on well-being which understands that the individual’s sense of well-being emerges from the interaction of their psychologies and subjective perceptions of their social ecologies (e.g., Mercer). Such an ecological perspective is important to ensure that interventions attend to a balance of both individual self-care strategies to empower the individual to take action to protect and enhance their well-being, but also systemic, structural factors which can impact individual well-being. For example, with respect to teacher well-being, strategies for boosting an individual’s psychological resources can be affective but also specific contextual factors can play a role and these need addressing at the systemic level too (e.g., Babic et al., in press; Sulis et al., in press).

2. Positive Psychology and Well-Being

More recent interest in well-being has been boosted by work in positive psychology although the history of the field links back to work in humanism in the 1970s (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). Positive psychology (PP) is a branch of psychology that focuses on flourishing, positive functioning, and a life well-lived. In contrast to traditional deficit views in psychology which seek to fix problems, PP emerged as a balanced counter perspective which is concerned with understanding well-being. It does not deny problems or negative emotions but takes strength and positivity as a starting point alongside understanding how individuals cope with challenges through resilience. The field of PP is based around three main pillars (see Peterson, 2006):

• Positive subjective experiences (e.g., happiness, joy, satisfaction etc.)

• Positive individual traits (e.g., character strengths, values, passions etc.)

• Positive institutions (e.g., schools, families, communities etc.)

The thinking underlying this model implies that “positive institutions facilitate the development and display of positive traits, which in turn facilitate positive subjective experiences” (Peterson, 2006, p. 20). This means that in approaching well-being, we can seek to enhance all three pillars helping to address individual-level factors as well as contextual and systemic factors. It is the integration of all three pillars which provides a solid basis for well-being development.

In language education, there has been a considerable body of work in recent years examining theoretical, empirical, and practical approaches to looking at various aspects of PP in language teaching and teacher education (e.g., Gabryś-Barker & Galajda, 2016; MacIntyre et al., 2016; MacIntyre et al., 2019; Mercer et al., 2018; Strambi et al., 2018) including work with a specific focus on well-being (e.g., Gregersen et al., 2021; MacIntyre et al., 2019; MacIntyre et al., 2020; Mercer, 2020).

3. Well-being in Education

Well-being has increasingly been gaining attention in education from policymakers, curriculum designers, and school leaders. For example, good health and well-being are listed as one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals with an expectation in the EDU2030 framework that this should be addressed in schools (see https://sdgs.un.org/goals). In addition, since 2017, PISA now measures levels of learner well-being alongside academic scores; and several national curricula now incorporate some form of well-being instruction either as a separate subject or as a transversal competence across all subjects (e.g., UK, Canada, Brazil, and Tanzania among others). Education systems globally have now formally begun to recognise the value and importance of learner well-being and there is growing interest in how to teach well-being competencies alongside traditional academic subjects.

A movement that places well-being at the heart of education is known as ‘Positive Education’. Positive Education (PE) is defined as “the bringing together of the science of Positive Psychology with best practices teaching, to encourage and support schools and individuals to flourish” (Norrish, 2015, p. xxvii). The PE approach is designed to promote flourishing through and alongside the teaching of academic subjects without either being compromised. Indeed, combining the two should be positively mutually reinforcing, with well-being contributing positively to academic achievement and vice versa. The International Positive Education Network (IPEN) use the double-helix metaphor to illustrate how the promotion of well-being and character values should be taught in a fully integrated way intertwined with traditional academic goals throughout the curriculum and across all subjects. The notion of PE has already been adapted to the field of language teaching although empirical work remains lacking as yet (see, e.g., MacIntyre et al., 2019: Mercer et al., 2019).

4. Student Well-being

Student well-being can be taught as a desired outcome, part of the process, or as a topic in teaching. Ideally, we want learners to flourish in school and enjoy high well-being during their studies as part of the process of learning. It has been shown that students who have higher levels of well-being tend to perform better in school, and have higher motivation and better achievement scores (e.g., Gilman & Huebner, 2006; Quinn & Duckworth, 2007; Verkuyten & Thijs, 2002). As such, approaches which support student well-being in the present also promote educational success and flourishing. Therefore, attending to learner well-being now creates an optimal learning environment which strengthens academic achievement. Rather than distracting from traditional learning goals, attending to well-being supports subject success.

A video of Martin Seligman talking about student well-being in learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl8yX_8LVnc&feature=emb_title.

Additionally, if we recognise the main purpose of education in preparing students for a happy and successful, meaningful life in the future then we must acknowledge that schooling needs to also be teaching the competences needed for well-being throughout life as a desirable outcome of education. This means teaching about well-being as an explicit topic as well as addressing the skills known to foster it. Helping learners to learn how to flourish in life beyond school and in their future lives must surely be a desirable purpose for all education systems. Given the benefits of student well-being in the present and the future, Seligman et al. (2009, p. 295) conclude that well-being should be taught in all schools, “as an antidote to depression, as a vehicle for increasing life satisfaction, and as an aid to better learning and more creative thinking” (cf. Chapter 14).

5. Teacher Well-Being

It will come as no surprise to many that teacher and learner well-being are tightly interconnected – referred to as ‘two sides of the same coin’ (Roffey, 2012). When teacher well-being is high, it is more likely learner well-being will also be high (Harding et al., 2019), there are likely to be better student/teacher relationships, fewer discipline issues, and teachers tend to teach more creatively (e.g., Klusman et al., 2008; Kunter et al., 2013; Roffey, 2012). In essence, teacher well-being is the foundation of good professional practice. Yet, it is surprising that so little attention is given explicitly to this. There are systemic problems which fail to recognise the value for both teachers and learners of attending to teacher well-being. In addition, teachers may often feel guilty for prioritising their well-being as they get caught in a ‘self-sacrificing discourse’ (Nias, 1999) where they dedicate themselves to their learners to such an extent that they neglect their own needs and self-care. Although teachers can take steps to protect their own well-being and exercise their agency to engage in strategies for well-being, this does not abdicate responsibility from the education systems, institutions, and policy makers who create the working conditions for educators. There are two strands that should come together to promote teacher well-being – systemic interventions and individual strategies. Putting the onus solely onto teachers for their well-being misunderstands the nature of the interaction between the individual and their ecologies. However, once teachers have the strength from positive well-being, they may also feel more empowered to work and advocate collectively with others for systemic change if and where necessary. If teachers are expected to promote well-being for their learners, they should ideally also be in the position to model such positive behaviours.

Know-How Activities

Well-being-informed approaches to pedagogy in language teaching remain relatively uncommon as yet. There has been work with educators addressing individual aspects of well-being such as growth mindsets, resilience, self-esteem, and mindfulness. However, there remain hardly any empirical studies investigating more holistic approaches to well-being as infused throughout a course or curriculum (for an exception, see Strambi et al., 2018). A theoretical lens for understanding how such teaching could function has been developed under the notion of ‘Positive Language Education’ (PLE) (MacIntyre et al., 2019; Mercer et al., 2019). PLE is an approach to language education which has a dual objective of teaching for well-being alongside teaching language competences.

Study the website provided by Berkeley with practical and great ideas supported by empirical research. It has various kinds of activities related to well-being; https://ggia.berkeley.edu.

Language teaching has a long history of teaching more than just language alone. Most contemporary approaches to CLT, for example, include socio-cultural competences alongside language skills. Perhaps the most explicit model of a dual-strand pedagogy can be found in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approaches which seek to teach language objectives simultaneously alongside objectives for a second subject such as biology, history, geography etc. CLIL is defined as having, “a focus not only on content, and not only on language. Each is interwoven, even if the emphasis is greater on one or the other at a given time” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 1). In PLE, the content is well-being. As with CLIL, teachers can potentially take a ‘soft/hard’ approach to PLE meaning they can make small adjustments to their regular practice to bring in elements of PLE, or they can introduce specific, explicit activities or they can even infuse the whole curriculum with PLE elements and projects. What is appropriate for a particular teacher in a specific setting depends on their contextual conditions, needs of their learners, and personal preferences.

Reflection

How do you feel about the following quote with respect to your educational context?

We are currently allowing the educational provision to be determined by efficiency and maximization of output for exam results and we have lost the sense that education should be seamlessly woven into our vision for human life as a whole; that our aims of education should be coterminous with our aims for good human life (Morris, 2016, p. 7).

To what extent does your institution actively and explicitly support student and staff well-being?

How much attention do you give to your own self-care and well-being?

What aspects of your teaching already directly or indirectly contribute to learner well-being ongoing (e.g., teaching for self-esteem, lowering anxiety, promoting a growth mindset etc.)?

Thinking about the PERMA+health model of well-being (Mercer, 2021), which aspects would you like to focus more on in your teaching?

Experimentation

Teaching for and about well-being can stretch along a continuum from small adjustments to regular practices to reflect consciously on well-being, to more explicit activities or even extensive projects. I will offer some suggestions across this continuum in each category. To organise the activities, I will structure them around the PERMA+health model.

Positive Emotions

Emotions are traditionally classed as negative or positive, although it is more complex than that as it is the function of an emotion that can be defining for how it is perceived. Nevertheless, this distinction remains a useful guide. In essence, negative emotions can be inhibitive for learning as they can cause problems with language processing and performance. Therefore, one approach is to find ways of reducing negative emotions. The other approach is to actively seek to generate positive emotions. Fredrickson (2011) found that positive emotions are not only a balance to negative emotions, but they are desirable in themselves as they can ‘broaden-and-build’ our capacity as they open our minds and willingness to engage with resources and thus grow in our capacities. In sum, this means when teaching for positive emotions, we can seek to reduce or counter the effects of negative emotions as well as actively boost positive emotions.

• Activity: A focus on positivity does not mean suppressing negative emotions. Rather it means understanding our whole range of emotions and finding strategies to cope with them. The ability to understand one’s own emotions is the cornerstone of socio-emotional competence which is central to positive relationships. To help learners get a better understanding of their emotions, they can keep an emotions journal where they note: Emotion, trigger, response. Learners become aware of their diverse emotions and are able to identify and name them. They learn to recognise their emotional triggers and can reflect on possible ways to respond. This awareness of their own emotional lives can help them manage their emotions better and choose appropriate responses. As teachers, we can further encourage this process by having an emotional check-in each day with learners to see how they are doing such as through the use of emotions boards or stickers.

• Activity: One of the most effective ways of boosting positivity is to engage in gratitude practices (e.g., Froh et al., 2009). Regular gratitude practices habituate us to recognising more positives in our lives and learning to appreciate them more consciously by savouring their presence in our lives. There are many forms of gratitude practices you can do with learners such as keeping a daily gratitude journal where they note down three things each day they are thankful for or keeping a gratitude jar where they add a note on a slip of paper every day of things they are grateful for. These two options also provide a resource of positivity to revisit if emotions are taking a dip. Learners can also think of somebody in their lives whom they are grateful for and write them a letter telling them how thankful they are for this person and why. This approach benefits both the giver and receiver of gratitude.

• Activity: Savouring refers to “the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in life” (Bryant & Vernoff, 2007, p. xi). As humans, we are gifted to be able to mentally engage in time travel. This means we can revisit past positive experiences, slow down time to consciously and mindfully appreciate positive moments in the present, and look forward to future positive experiences with hope and positive anticipation. With learners, we can help them remember pleasant memories through story-telling about positive past experiences or using their imagination and vision to imagine positive future experiences. These ideas can be used in writing or speaking activities with learners sharing their positive stories and savouring each other’s. Learners can also be asked to savour a moment in the present. They can choose an activity out of school to focus on such as doing a hobby or having a meal with one’s family. They should take time to slow down and consciously savour the experience, thinking about all their 5 senses as they do so. They can then report back in class on what they noticed while savouring their moment of positivity and they can offer advice to peers about how they were able to become more mindful and appreciative in the present.

• Project: Everyone knows that smiling and laughing boost your mood, release endorphins in the brain, and are contagious for those around. Students can work on a project to collect together some of their favourite funny things – these can be jokes, comedy memes, excerpts of films or TV programmes, or cartoons. Students can prepare a portfolio of laughter reflecting on what they find funny and why. Depending on their level of proficiency, they can also take a more critical stance to understanding the cultural character of humour analysing examples for their cultural content or creating their own funny stories and memes.

Engagement

To be engaged in something means to be deeply absorbed in an activity that we find interesting and meaningful. A strong form of engagement is also known as ‘flow’ in which the person is absorbed to such an extent that they lose track of time and their surroundings (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Engagement stems from feeling appropriately challenged, emotionally safe and interested, and having a sense of agency.

• Activity: A core contributor to feeling a sense of engagement is feeling empowered and competent to do something. The foundation of this is a belief that your abilities can be developed and enhanced – this is referred to as having a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006). The opposite perspective is when someone believes that their ability to learn a language is fixed; a given natural talent that no amount of effort can really change. Such a fixed mindset leads to helplessness and students feeling unable to affect their learning. As such, it is vitally important that we encourage learners to understand that their ability to learn a language can be developed with the right strategies, effort, motivation, and opportunities. One way to work on mindsets is to have learners search out examples of fixed and growth mindsets in action – looking at novels, films, TV, historical figures, advertising and seeking positive role models of those who persevered, worked hard, and despite setbacks succeeded. Some typical examples of people with growth mindset characteristics are Einstein, J. K. Rowling, or Michael Jordan.

• Activity: Another way to boost engagement is to build on learners’ intrinsic motivations to learn and use a language. Students can be encouraged to see learning English as building up linguistic capital – a resource they can spend and use in the future. They can reflect on what opportunities knowing English would offer them such as by brainstorming all the ways in which English can be valuable, precious, or simply useful – possibly creating a wall poster with the whole class on the value that English offers. This idea of linguistic capital can also be extended to support learners in reflecting on their future selves using the language as they describe their English-speaking selves 10 or 20 years into the future.

• Project: Learners can feel especially engaged when doing a hobby they love. Hobbies can make a valuable, positive contribution to well-being (for example Burt & Atkinson, 2012; Seidman & Zager, 1991). They are also an opportunity to get deeply engrossed in an activity that you love, engendering deep engagement and a sense of flow. Learners can be encouraged to carry out their hobbies and report on them in class through projects, presentations, show-and-tell demonstrations, or by personalising tasks where possible to include references to their hobbies. Simply even thinking about doing something you love can generate positive emotions. Allowing learners the chance to bring their hobbies into their English classes and personalise tasks where possible is a good way to boost engagement and positivity. Learners can also be encouraged to try out a new hobby and report back on their experiences.

Positive Relationships

Relational quality among learners and between teachers and learners is absolutely defining for how connected and safe learners feel in school. If learners feel cared for and have a sense of belonging, they are more likely to flourish in school and be more engaged in school life. However, developing strong interpersonal skills will not only be critically important for classroom dynamics, but it will also help learners to build a strong, positive social network with significant others beyond school.

• Activity: A core contributor to positive relationships is empathic skills. Empathy can be developed through careful, reflective questions posed by teachers with respect to art, photos, poems, short stories, or novels. Role play is also an excellent way to encourage students to switch perspectives and try to see the world through somebody else’s eyes imagining how they might feel and why they might behave in a certain way. One particular way to switch perspectives is to ask students to reflect on what characteristics are important to them in a good friend or classmate. They should list all the things they value in a friend or classmate and compare the list with a peer. Then they should look at the list and reflect on how they would score as a friend or classmate. It is a useful task to reflect on what we need from others and what we give to others in the reciprocity of a relationship (Murphey et al., 2014).

• Activity: An important dimension of positive relationships is being concerned for the welfare of others and looking beyond one’s self. To promote better relationships, students can work together and brainstorm ideas to create random acts of kindness bingo either for acts beyond the classroom in the local community or specifically within the school and the class. They can then work on completing all the acts of kindness over weeks. It has been shown that engaging in acts of kindness can boost not only the well-being of the actor but also strengthen peer relationships (e.g., Layous et al., 2012).

• Project: A valuable way of developing relationship skills is to support student exchange schemes or online partnership projects where learners work with peers in other countries. It can offer students opportunities to learn about the lives of people in different parts of the world, they can use their English as a lingua franca, and they can become more empathic with the right kind of scaffolding and support from their teachers. There are many opportunities online to join school-oriented networks which partner up schools and classes, and groups of students across contexts can even work collaboratively on joint projects and topics. This works especially well in the area of socio-cultural competence.

Meaning

There are two contexts in which people can find meaning. The first is concerned with finding meaning in the sense of life and one’s life goals. The second is about finding meaning in one’s day-to-day experiences. As educators, one of our roles is to help learners as they reflect on the larger purposeful goals they may envisage for themselves after school. We can also help them to see the meaning in their daily lives such as in experiences with other people, art, nature, or small acts contributing to the world more broadly.

• Activity: Everyone can make a difference in the world and each small act of kindness contributes to others sending positivity out like a ripple from a stone dropped in a lake. To prompt discussion, students can reflect on the African proverb: If you think you are too small to make a difference in the world, try spending the night with a mosquito. They can discuss how people are interconnected and imagine a chain of events starting with one person smiling at another as they pass in the street. Students can imagine the interconnected stories in writing or orally, with each person contributing a knock-on positive effect stemming from the initial smile in the street. Students can also be prompted to create memes to inspire and motivate each other to make small differences in their daily lives to affect those around them with kindness. Learners can also keep a journal of what they did to make a difference to the world today or what they saw somebody else do – it is important to stress the notion that sharing a pencil or smiling at someone is already making a difference to others around us. The website Random Acts of Kindness has many other useful resources for educators seeking to teach more kindness. This topic can also be explored through the lens of making a positive difference to the planet and reflecting on actions of a sustainable lifestyle.

• Activity: To encourage students to think more long-term about their purpose in life and career goals, they can be encouraged to reflect on their strengths and how they could work with these in the future as well as any new skills they might want to learn. An interesting task can be to imagine they lived to 90 years of age and someone is writing their obituary and what it would say. What kind of life did they lead and what legacy did they leave behind? Again, it is worth perhaps first exploring the notion of legacy with learners and remembering this can be memories other people have of you as a person.

• Project: A larger-scale project that learners can work on is to investigate the meaning of happiness across the globe. The students can draw on various online resources including the ‘World Happiness Report’, ‘Our World in Data’, National Geographic resources, or contributions to ‘The Blue Zones of Happiness’ by Dan Buettner, among many others. Students can focus on a specific country working in small groups and exploring what happiness is defined as in each country. Then they can come back together as a whole class to compare countries and work towards an understanding of universal elements of happiness and well-being as well as aspects of uniqueness.

Accomplishment

Feeling a sense of accomplishment means feeling a sense of progress and success in areas of personal meaning. It does not have to be about schoolwork but whatever goal is meaningful or important to an individual. Often large, distant goals can sometimes seem unattainable and so it can help to break such goals down into smaller, manageable steps and become conscious of progress. Here teachers can also help by using scaffolding as well as taking time to provide focused, constructive positive feedback.

• Activity: One way to help learners to feel a sense of accomplishment is to help them work with their strengths. When learners work with their strengths, they are likely to grow in confidence and experience a range of positive emotions including enhanced motivation (see Lopez & Louis, 2009). There is an online survey that students can take or they can simply read about the different character strengths and discuss in pairs which ones they think they have (https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths). Students can then brainstorm ideas of ways to work with these strengths and use them more in their daily lives. This activity can also be done by focusing explicitly on a learner’s strengths in language learning, what they are good at, and how they could help peers who struggle with the aspects they have as their strengths. A related writing task could involve learners writing a personal introduction about themselves using only positive attributes and character strengths or telling a story which illustrates one of their strengths in action.

• Activity: An important part of accomplishment is achieving goals and taking manageable steps towards them. It can be very useful to work with students using SMART goals techniques. This refers to setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Breaking down long-term goals into SMART more proximal goals enhances the likelihood that students will achieve their goals but also, importantly for their motivation, that they are also able to feel a sense of progress. In terms of long-term goals, it can also help learners to develop a vision of themselves achieving whatever future goal (possibly L2 self) that they envisage and making this imagined future self as concrete and detailed as possible. They can then discuss what steps they can take to help them move closer to that vision of themselves in the future.

• Project: One long-term approach to help students feel a sense of accomplishment is to work with portfolios. Unfortunately, there is often a risk that these are left to the night before submission which defeats the purpose of developing a sense of progress and growth. Therefore, portfolios need to become a document of work the student is invested in and proud of over time. Ideally, it should be integrated into classroom life repeatedly at various points throughout the year, so students and teachers get to share their work at regular intervals. This enables teachers and learners to celebrate progress and positive achievements together. Enabling students to work on ‘passion projects’ within the context of a portfolio is an extremely valuable addition. This means letting learners work on a topic of their choice with guidelines but flexibility and choice in content, process, and form of output. These passion projects enable students to follow their interests and build on their strengths as well as develop their language skills.

Health

Physical and mental health are intricately intertwined. Many educational systems have introduced health literacy into their curricula with a focus on reflecting on and discussing healthy lifestyles as well as mental health (e.g., Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, and Tanzania among others). One aim is to deliberately focus on reducing stigma and facilitating open, sensitive, non-judgemental conversations on both topics. It is important in this area to avoid being prescriptive as learners have different home experiences, cultures, and current capabilities. This topic can be approached as sensitive awareness-raising bolstered by a sense of agency for setting personal future goals.

• Activity: Students can discuss the ‘health triangle’ which is comprised of mental/emotional health, social health, and physical health. They can reflect what contributes to a positive balance sheet in each of these categories considering what supports or damages the health of that category. If they wish, they can keep a diary of what positive things they do to care for each aspect of their own health triangle.

• Activity: Healthy living centres around three key areas: nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Students can collectively work in groups and do some research to create guidelines for good habits in each category which they could make into a poster or some other visual display for the classroom.

• Project: Students can conduct a project to examine what health messages and challenges to health exist in their school and local community such as considering what snacks are available, what sports facilities exist, what advertising is displayed near the school etc. They can come together and assess what positive contributions to good health are in their environment and what threats to health they notice. They can be encouraged as a group to identify an area for improvement and take steps collectively to advocate for change in this regard.

Dissemination

Learner well-being – It could be rewarding to work with learners and explore the notion of well-being together: Opening dialogue and seeing what they perceive as their needs, what they would want more time and support for, and how you can work together for more positive well-being in the English classroom. Naturally, engaging with learners as partners and ensuring they have a voice is empowering for them and can strengthen teacher-student relationships. Why not make well-being a topic you both work towards a better understanding of as research partners?

Teacher well-being – The term self-care often creates the notion that well-being is something done individually and alone. In fact, well-being is something that can be especially effective when done with a trusted colleague or team of colleagues who also wish to work on their well-being goals. Colleagues can support and motivate each other to make well-being goals easier to attain and remain committed to. How might you and a colleague work together to nurture your well-being as teachers and as a staff community?

Key Terms

positive psychology – a branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of what goes well in life and what contributes to human flourishing

well-being – refers to an individual’s satisfaction, contentment, and sense of meaning in their lives. It emerges from the interaction of psychological, social, and contextual factors

Recommended Reading

Mercer, S. (2021). Focus Paper on Student Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/expert.

Mercer, S. (2021). Student Well-Being: Short paper. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mercer, S., & Gregersen, T. (2020). Teacher Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morris, I. (2015). Teaching Happiness and Well-Being in Schools. London: Bloomsbury.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. New York, NY: Atria Books.

Williams, M., Puchta, H., & Mercer, S. Positive Psychology in Practice. Helbling.