Promoting and prioritising wellbeing
Posted on 15th Jan 2025 in School News, International Education, International Schools, WellbeingChristine Rowlands, Wellbeing Leader at The International School of Western Australia, on becoming a Visible Wellbeing School and the crucial role it plays in supporting the whole school community.
At the International School of Western Australia (ISWA) we are committed to our Visible Wellbeing (VWB) whole school partnership; student wellbeing is a fundamental tenant of our philosophy. We are gratified that, once again this academic year, wellbeing has continued to be preeminent in all thinking and action. This is evident in the strategic plan, the commitment to ongoing professional development in the VWB programme, in the interpersonal relationships, the taught curriculum and the co-curricular offerings which are varied, and abundant, for all students.
Partnerships such as ours typically extend across a two-year period and they are structured around the full S.E.A.R.C.H. framework. Strengths, Emotional management, Attention & awareness, Relationships, Coping, Habits & goals.
Designed by Professor Lea Waters, VWB combines her three areas of expertise – positive psychology, education and organisational psychology – to create a sustainable wellbeing approach to:
- Help students, teachers and staff more clearly see their own and other’s wellbeing using VWB practices.
- Assist everyone in the community to systematically build wellbeing using the S.E.A.R.C.H framework.
- Facilitate learning through the VWB classroom processes.
- Turn wellbeing policy into practice.
The S.E.A.R.C.H. framework was developed from Waters’ longitudinal research incorporating more than 16,000 psychology papers and includes six pathways. It is an evidence-based framework which is continually refined through her collaboration with schools across the world.
Wellbeing is also 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). It combines the science of wellbeing with the science of learning to underpin organisational and cultural change predicated upon positive education.
VWB is not a curriculum. It is a set of flexible practices which can be applied across any subject, and in all educational contexts; it interweaves academic learning and wellbeing. Wellbeing is a condition of flourishing where we thrive in various ways. It’s not simply striving for happiness. It encompasses many
elements, such as forging reciprocal relationships, enacting our strengths, being purposeful and contributing to our wider community. Robust wellbeing underpins sound mental health, ensures we stay resilient and that we can realise our potential. Of course, the pursuit of wellbeing is centuries old, and it has always been a foundational tenet of everything that occurs at ISWA. Our ‘Purpose and Commitments’ are testament to our beliefs.
Staff at ISWA embrace all facets of VWB. It is now woven into the fabric of our school. Our VWB Implementation Team role model initiatives and take the lead at planning engaging and age-appropriate strategies. Whole staff PD days have been dedicated to ongoing learning and led by Lea Waters, in conjunction with her team of consultants. Our formal training is now completed so that everyone is conversant with the language of wellbeing. There is ready access for staff to the innumerable resources and strategies accessible to us as a VWB school. Anyone visiting our classrooms would see tangible evidence of these lenses through which we continue to explicitly plan and enact this essential aspect of schooling.
Articles written for our weekly ISWA Newsletter reiterate the primacy of place wellbeing continues to hold within our community. This publication, in conjunction with what is shared on all social media, cannot encapsulate everything that occurs in an average week. They are, however, a testament to the creativity, energy and spirit at our school where our belief in the myriad ways every individual can thrive is at the core of our work. We begin each Monday staff briefing with a wellbeing ‘Tip of the Week’.
Curriculum leaders ensure that wellbeing is a standing item on meeting agendas and secondary Home Room teachers use their dedicated weekly lesson to reinforce all elements of wellbeing. Posters, student work and learning materials in classrooms reflect the interests, cultures and experiences of learners making it explicit that students are valued, they belong and there is a collective sense of purpose. Teachers connect their lessons to real world issues reinforcing not only the IB Learner Profile and the Approaches to learning (ATL) – skills designed to enable students to “learn how to learn – but also the S.E.A.R.C.H. pathways from VWB. Strength spotting has proliferated and is now everyday practice as witnessed at primary assemblies, staff briefings, at break times and within the formal learning contexts. Differentiated lessons, adapted to individual student needs, with input from the Student Support Team, are predicated upon the desire that all students flourish, not only academically, but also socially and emotionally.
Our designated wellbeing space continues to be a safe, welcoming zone. Students feel confident to utilise this, and the counselling expertise on offer, when necessary. Here they are encouraged to come to a greater understanding of themselves and others, but also to fill their ‘toolboxes’ with appropriate strategies which can inure them against unexpected setbacks. They benefit from undivided attention and the emphasis on problem solving builds their resilience. Students regularly see us in their lessons and know we are in partnership with their teachers.
Our consultations with teachers and parents are invaluable alliances in the service of our students.
Our fledgling Student Wellbeing Team work collaboratively to represent the student perspective on VWB. Projects thus far have included production of a video to not only welcome but inform incoming students about VWB. Student leaders have creatively and successfully led a raft of activities and events, participating wholeheartedly in such things are charity cancer walks, inter-house competitions, clothing appeals, food drives and environmental campaigns – all of which are inherently linked to wellbeing. Students are continually emboldened to look outside themselves for the benefit of those less fortunate which they are taught is a fundamental tenant of the IB philosophy and a key component of their wellbeing.
Our team is currently focused on the most effective ways we can continue to build upon our journey to date. We have embarked upon projects which will come to fruition in the next academic year about which we are enthusiastic and optimistic.
There is unequivocal evidence that student wellbeing is crucial to academic achievement. The IBO explains wellbeing as ‘comprising four important elements that are intrinsically connected and influence each other: feeling good; functioning well; accomplishing; and flourishing’. This organisation also reports that ‘In the past few years, new empirical research and data suggest that personality traits and socioemotional skills development programmes embedded in education have a catalytic effect on increasing academic achievement, health, behaviour and prospects in life, including overall well-being of students’ (www.ibo.org/research/wellbeing-research/what-is-well-being)
At ISWA we continue our wellbeing odyssey. We’re making commendable progress.
This article first appeared in the 2024/25 edition of John Catt's Guide to International Schools, which you can read here: