Changing Behaviour in Schools

My latest article for Positive Psychology News Daily is a review of a new Positive Psychology-based book by ed psych and consultant Sue Roffey, called Changing Behaviour in Schools: Promoting Positive Relationships and Well-being.

One of the great strengths of this book is its breadth, not just in terms of aims but also its evidence base. It draws on quantitative research from more than a dozen areas including restorative approaches, school culture and leadership, mental health, and values education, not just positive psychology. Thus the suggested approaches have a multi-dimensional foundation.  Not surprisingly, there isn’t space in just over 200 pages to describe positive psychology theories or research in great depth.

Roffey makes use of most of the main positive psychology concepts, such as flow, strengths, resilience, optimism, positive emotions, and emotional intelligence, although with the exception of emotional intelligence, they aren’t described in detail. Depending on your expectations and your association with positive psychology, this might be a disappointment or a welcome relief! I particularly liked the chapter on Being and Becoming Emotionally Literate, with its 11 dimensions of social and emotional literacy, and numerous questions for personal development.

I love the core message, which is that school can be a positive transformational experience, and that building positive relationships and school connectedness lead to both improved learning and better behaviour for all students.

Despite its limitations, I think this is a fabulous resource book for anyone working in primary or secondary education. Dip into almost any page and you will find some gem of information, a question that will challenge your thinking, an activity, or an insightful case study. If you picked up this book expecting it to help you manage challenging student behaviour you may be in for a surprise. It does this exceeding well in my opinion, but it does much more than that.

This book sets out the expectation that everyone in an education role, every teacher, trainee, teaching assistant, support person, and early childhood practitioner, can be a role model of well-being. Changing behaviour is schools is based on the premise that a theoretical knowledge of the subject isn’t sufficient. Teachers have to be able to do well-being in order to teach well-being.

For the full review, click here.

Here’s a link to my posting to Positive Psychology News Daily this month, in which I discuss ways of applying Fredrickson’s “Broaden and Build” theory of positive emotions in ways that organisations will find acceptable, as well as useful.

Your comments and thoughts are welcome here, and on the PPND website.

Image: Thanks to Joe Shlabotnik

Positive psychology, well-being and business: Cutting-edge science for organisational success
Thursday 8 November at the University of East London, Docklands, with Professor Martin Seligman

UEL would like to invite you to a special one-day conference, Positive Psychology, Well-being and Business, featuring a keynote speech from world-renowned psychologist Professor Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology.

Positive Psychology – the scientific study of well-being – is increasingly recognised as having major, lasting benefits for business. Evidence shows that employees with higher levels of well-being are more focused and engaged with their work; are better team-players; have higher levels of motivation; have less illness and absenteeism; and perform better overall.

This new thinking explicitly challenges the conventional wisdom that fixing a weakness is essential to improving performance. Rather, positive psychology concentrates on what drives and motivates success. Globally, many major organisations are implementing the findings of positive psychology and strengths-based performance management in the workplace, helping them to grow and succeed. This conference will enable you to learn how to put these findings into practice in your own business or organisation.

Whether you are involved in business, human resources, social and corporate responsibility, communication, organisational development, marketing, executive coaching, training or business consultancy, this conference could make a valuable contribution to your operational and staff development.

For more details and to register, visit www.uel.ac.uk/positiveconference or contact Sue Meade on 020 8223 4428.

Do let me know if you plan to go, I’d be delighted to meet up with you there.

But does it have to be an either/or solution? It might be more effective if separate EI lessons aren’t added into the curriculum (which would mean that some other lessons have to be squeezed out) but if existing subjects, like English, Drama and History are adapted to focus on the relevant EI topics (like self-awareness and motivation). In this way, an EI approach becomes incorporated into the fabric of the school, and ultimately becomes ‘the way we do things round here’. It’s a bit like trying to change the culture in an organisation – it doesn’t work unless behaviours also change.

And there are a couple of interesting points which do need to be explored further in order to get parents and teachers on side with this. The first is whether or not EI can actually be measured – as with happiness and well-being assessments, much of it is subjective. Does that mean they are any less meaningful or useful? In a system so tied in to targets and league-tables, this may not be an easy one to resolve.

The second is whether EI can be increased through teaching or training. It is true that a greater number of EI assessments are being used in the business world today, to help enhance ones skill in recognising and understanding emotions, ultimately enabling them to be managed more effectively. What we don’t know is whether ones EI can be increased – even the experts behind the original EI theory, Mayer, Salovey and Caruso are unsure about this.

Most people working in the positive psychology field appear to welcome the introduction of EI into British schools. If we want it to be successful, however, there is one big caveat….DON’T create an EI league table!

The Times today reported that “lessons in happiness, well-being and good manners are to be introduced in all state secondary schools”.

It’s unfortunate that the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) programme is being labelled in this way by the media, because it instantly downgrades its importance, putting it firmly in the category of pink and fluffy fads which we’d be better off without.

What SEAL is actually for is to promote children’s social and emotional skills which underpin effective learning, positive behaviour and emotional health and well-being in schools. “So what?”, I hear you ask. Well, for many years now, various employment and business related organisations in the UK, such as the Confederation of British Industry, have been highly critical of employees’ lack of (so-called) soft-skills. In 2004/5, Sir Digby Jones, then Director-General of the CBI said of new graduates:

“A degree alone is not enough. Employers are looking for more than just technical skills and knowledge of a degree discipline. They particularly value skills such as communication, team working and problem solving. Job applicants who can demonstrate that they have developed these skills will have a real advantage”.

So you could say that the real point of the SEAL programme in schools is to start providing kids with the necessary tools to develop their self-awareness, empathy, motivation, social skills and ability to manage their emotions, so that ultimately they can become successful members of the community and successful in the workplace. Makes perfect sense now, doesn’t it?

Thanks to Bruce Stanley for the Times article.

1. Emotions are resources – so treat them as data; whether positive or negative the purpose of emotions is to tell you that action of some kind is required.

2. The 4 stage RUUM model (Recognise, Use, Understand, Manage) is an extremely useful model for applying EI at work. It is possible to have different EI scores for each stage of the model, so for example you can have a high score for recognising emotions and a low score for managing them. The model allows you to pinpoint which areas of your EI ability you can benefit from developing.

3. When it comes to managing emotions in the workplace, there are several short term and long term strategies you can use. Psychology research shows which are very effective strategies and which are not.

4. If you’re considering implementing an EI measurement tool at work, choose carefully. David claims that some well-known EI measurement tools actually measure personality, not EI.

5. Emotions provide useful data for business decision-making, because they underpin cognitive processes. Therefore, accept that there will be an element of ‘heart’ in all business decisions. Improving your ability to interpret your and others’ emotions at work can transform your decision-making ability.

I’ll be returning to the subject of EI , measurement tools and strategies for improving your workplace EI in a later post. In the meantime, you can find lots of useful information here.