A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
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How positive are you? Dr Barbara Fredrickson has designed a simple questionnaire to answer that question! Take it at: http://www.positivityratio.com/single.php Go on… it only takes 2 mins. Then come back to me. Done? OK. Are you close to the recommended 3:1 Positivity Ratio required to flourish? Does this surprise you? [...]
Dr Andrew Martin, Australian psychologist and one of the country's leading experts on student motivation, describes the key components of motivation as those that improve, those that restrict and those that reduce motivation. He refers to those students who have a natural belief in themselves and their capacity to achieve as 'boosters'; those who restrict [...]
In his book Fame Junkies, author Jake Halpern speaks of a survey he carried out with US school students. One of the questions on the survey was; “When you grow up, which of the following jobs would you most like to have?” There were five options to choose from: CEO of a major company like [...]
Last week I wrote asking, Who’s Looking After the Teachers? and the response was astounding. By far, it received more comments than any other column I’ve written for Generation Next – which leads me to think it struck a chord. As well as the overwhelming majority of comments agreeing that staff wellbeing needed to be [...]
I’ve written before about the importance of teacher wellbeing. Yes I know this is the Generation Next not the Generation Was Blog, but I think it is essential to appreciate that if we want our kids to flourish, then it is essential that the adults in their lives are doing likewise. A great deal [...]
According to Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald, “Stuffed toys that help children deal with ‘difficult emotions’ are being spruiked as a means to 'assist with the stress of NAPLAN.’” As an aside, it does seem ironic that the PR firm pushing these toys is called Evil Twin. Now, I understand that Year 12 students [...]
Last Friday I spent the day at the Student Wellbeing Action Network (SWAN) Symposium co-hosted by Wellbeing Australia and the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY). The day brought together policy makers, researchers, practitioners, teachers and – most importantly for me – students to talk about how approaches to wellbeing can be [...]
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of giving a talk to 40 fathers and their sons as part of the Cook for Good program run by the not-for-profit organization, Kids Giving Back. I have no affiliation with Kids Giving Back other than I occasionally mention them in talks I give. Kids [...]
If you’ve not heard of Danah Boyd, I’d highly recommend checking out her blog. She is a senior researcher for Microsoft and New York University, and is also a visiting adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales. It is fair to say that she is one of the world’s pre-eminent researchers and [...]
I’m currently in Denmark where I gave the keynote address at the Innovation in Education conference. As well the conference, I’ve been working with different schools and organisations around the concept of student (and staff) engagement. Whilst working with the Department of Pedagogy at the University of Aarhus, one researcher told me of [...]
