In my October Positive Psychology News Daily posting, I look at the application of positive psychology in today’s economic climate. It’s not as if British people like discussing emotions at the best of times, so it’s no wonder they don’t like talking about ‘happiness” when the world (the financial one at least) appears to be collapsing around their ears.

But I think there’s huge potential for PP to increase resilience and flexibity in times of unparalled change. It just needs to be used sensitively, with less emphasis on the sickening yellow Smileys and more on down-to-earth, practical applications.

More reports from the BBC on the lot of UK teachers, referring to the impending measurement of well-being in schools.

On the one hand, measuring well-being could be seen as no more than an extension of the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy, which looks at health, safety, educational achievement, contribution to society and economic well-being. On the other hand, the article mentions that schools will now have to to do opinion surveys of pupils and parents to find out how they think the school is doing on their well-being measures. Good grief. As if teachers don’t have enough to do….

Baker sums it up in the last four paragraphs of this article when he says that measuring in schools is becoming too mechanistic. When pay and benefits are linked to targets, people focus obsessively on achieving them, forgetting that the targets are there to ensure that the right things gets done.

…Now, if you could measure inspirational and creative teaching, that would be a different matter!