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This conference will be hosted by Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching at the University of Bristol.
This conference is for anyone interested in enhancing the experiences of staff working in higher education – both academic and professional staff – through the application of innovative practices at all levels in higher education. At the conference you will have the opportunity to hear current research and good practice regarding the wellbeing of staff in higher education and connect with like-minded colleagues/change agents wishing to address the question of how can we support staff wellbeing.
Key speakers include: Professor Gail Kinman- University of Bedfordshire; Fabienne Vailes- University of Bristol and Vida Douglas- University of Hertfordshire. To be confirmed: UUK(TBC) and Dr Diana Beech, Policy Advisor to the Minister of State of Innovation, Science, Research and Innovation (TBC)
The conference will be split across the following themes: 1) Good practice to support staff wellbeing; 2) Research to enhance understanding of staff wellbeing; 3) Practical session to build flourishing communities in HE
We are seeking conference submission(presentation/workshops) for the above themes. Deadlines for your expression of interest (Abstract of 300 words max) is 29th May 2019 and you can access the form via the following linkhttps://forms.gle/fJ2s7bgj7EmQM2Z2A
Feedback on your submissions will be provided by 3rd June 2019. If you would like to contribute to this conference, please don’t forget to submit your abstract expression of interest here
Draft Programme
10.00-10.30 Conference Registration
10.30-10.45 Conference Aim and Purpose: TBA and member from conference planning group
10.45- 11.15 Enabling Flourishing communities and institutions in HE: Fabienne Vailes
11.15-11.45 Staff wellbeing in higher education and how can it be supported? A model for wellbeing in HE: Vida Douglas
11.45- 12.00 Comfort break
12.00- 1.00 Parallel Sessions- Presentations/Workshops covering three themes: 1) Good practice to support staff wellbeing; 2) Research to enhance understanding of staff wellbeing; 3) Practical session to build flourishing communities in HE
1.00-2.00 Lunch (Grab a bag)- posters, networking, mindful walking in gardens
2.00-2.40 Keynote presentations x 2 – Gail Kinman and another speaker (TBC)
2.45-3.45 Parallel Sessions- Presentations/Workshops covering three themes: 1) Good practice to support staff wellbeing; 2) Research to enhance understanding of staff wellbeing; 3) Practical session to build flourishing communities in HE
3.50- 4.30 Final Session (plenary) – Panel (Main Speakers and Rapporteurs) = main themes from the conference, next steps: Panel Chair TBC.
4.30 End
The conference has been supported by a planning committee, consisting of colleagues from Universities and Organisations supporting higher education. The conference convener is Vida Douglas, Professional Lead Social work at University of Hertfordshire.
Please contact Vida Douglas for more information about the event or to discuss any of the above.
The following post was written by Fabienne Vailes, Language Director for French at the University of Bristol, holder of a University Teaching Fellowship, BILT Associate and author of ‘The Flourishing Student’.
Mental health issues and
problems in students have been regularly highlighted by the press and the media. The
Guardian has a whole section called ‘mental health: a university crisis’. And more
recently came reports that academics in Higher Education are not immune to this
stress and suffer from an ‘epidemic of poor mental health’[1].
When we know that our stress
is not just contagious but that it alters the brain of others[2],
it’s hardly surprising, is it?
As students are focused on
their end of year exams or finals and staff are working equally as hard to mark
their work or to process their marks, now seems like a good time to reflect on all
this and explain why building a flourishing institution which lays the
foundations and provides the framework and environment for all its participants
to not just survive but flourish is vital.
A flourishing institution that
bucks the ‘mental health crisis trend, provides opportunities and resources that
enable everyone to utilise their talents fully, develop positive and nurturing relationships,
and where a sense of community, support and social justice are the norm. Impossible,
given the current climate? Let’s see…
WHY ARE STUDENTS AND STAFF SO STRESSED?
In recent interviews, students
reported that their main sources of stress are academic workload and pressure,
social media, fear for the future, financial worries, fear of not finding a
job, relationship issues, difficulties in transitioning from secondary school
to HE.
Staff talked about ‘excessive
workloads, lack of job security, lack
of support and pressure from managers’ to name but a few.
Although the source of stress might
seem different, what students and staff currently have in common is that they
all experience the consequences of the current external environment which is becoming ever more volatile
and challenging. This, it would appear increases their level of stress and
‘isolates and spotlights individuals’[3].
It also generates a ‘survival mindset’, a fear which motivates individuals to
become perfectionists and competitive and in turn afraid of failure. This would
explain the ‘cut-throat’, ‘lack of camaraderie and collegiality’ mentioned in
the press articles.
Our
environment can clearly have an impact on our level of wellbeing and Maslow was
right when he said that if our physiological, safety and security needs are not
fulfilled it affects us deeply[4]
Some like Michael Ungar argue that it is the most important factor.[5]
But
what about all this talk about building resilient staff and students?
WELLBEING
IN EDUCATION- A HOLISTIC APPROACH
Building resilience in staff and
students has often been used as ‘the solution’ to ‘the mental health crisis’.
The truth is that we would all like to find a magic solution that would suit
every single person, but the reality is that just as we are all unique
individuals, so too are the solutions that will help us manage and improve our
wellbeing. There is no once size fits all, no magic wand or silver bullet.
Instead of focusing on
resilience, we need to create a workplace culture that encourages compassion to
oneself, where self-care is normalised. This requires a more holistic approach
to our wellbeing which focuses on caring for and managing not just our mental
health but also on social, physical, emotional and spiritual health.
What if the black-and-white
thinking used in recent years (either blaming the environment or the lack of
student’s or staff’s resilience) was not the only way forward?
WE ARE
ALL PART OF THE PROBLEM… AND THE SOLUTIONS
Seligman said that student wellbeing is a condition (or
pre-requisite) for effective learning [6]
But he forgot to add that so is staff wellbeing. One cannot
happen without the other. I would also add a third element in the mix. Our
environment plays an important role in our wellbeing.
None of the above elements are more important than the
other.
We can either look at the current
situation in Higher Education and choose the simple cause and effect thinking
which suggests that for example university life or that the increased workload
are causing students and staff to become more and more stressed or we can choose to look at it from the lens
of Systems Thinking.
Systems Thinking brings a balance
between ‘holistic thinking’ versus ‘reductionist thinking’. It shows how any
set of distinct parts that interact with each other form a complex whole and
how the parts are intimately interconnected and highly interdependent. It does
not consider the parts in isolation and looks at how the various parts of the
system interact with each other and through a web of interrelated actions
produce behaviours and results and lead to effects on each other.
Senge defines it as a ‘the
ability to see the consequences of our own action. It points out to the
connections in any situations because very often we are reacting to an
immediate situation and we fail to see how things that we did or happened in
the past might have contributed to it and how things have unfolded over time.’ [7]
If we integrate this idea of
Systems thinking, we recognise that all participants in a system are part of
the problem and part of the solution. It encourages us to look at the issues
experienced, try to understand how they have arisen and to gain more
understanding and perspective to discover ways to deal with things differently.
Senge adds that to do this, it is
important to have a very deep and persistent commitment to learning and we must
be prepared to be wrong. For him, if it was obvious what we ought to be doing,
then we would already be doing it.
HOW TO CREATE A FLOURISHING INSTITUTION WITH FLOURISHING
STUDENTS AND STAFF?
We all know that our environment
is getting tougher. Everyone is expected to do more at a higher quality with
less resources. It’s not about incremental changes anymore but all about
quantum innovation. All actors in HE face more complex and bigger challenges.
We all respond to these
challenges differently. Some of us tend to focus on the things we can change
and some of us on the things we cannot change. It is not right or wrong, that’s
the way it is but the first step forward is to recognise what is true for us.
As mentioned previously, fear
triggers a ‘survival mindset’ which encourages us to focus on our own needs and
to protect ourselves. It’s completely normal and part of our make-up. Survival
of the fittest anyone?
If we are honest, we might even
be willing to admit that regardless of what part we play in the system, we have
mainly been focused on our individual aims and outcomes. Students just want a
good degree in the next 3 or 4 years to get a good job ; many staff just want
to focus on their research, on publishing papers, on just teaching their topic,
to get the promotion ; senior leaders are focused on finding ways to ‘future
proof’ HE. How can a system work when most of its parts are focused on their individualistic approach?
Through Systems thinking, it may
be time for Higher Education to take a hard look at how all the relationships
between all the actors, stakeholders and external factors (which include
parents, employers, secondary schools, government, policy makers etc) affect
each other rather than treating each part in isolation.
It will help us not only see but
understand how an improvement in one area of a system (i.e focus on student well-being
or student experience) can inadvertently aversively affect another area of the
system (staff well-being).
We can then start promoting real
organizational communication at all levels to avoid silos and to improve
interactions between the elements that compose the system that is an HE
institution (and any system for that matter).
This is what is increasingly
happening in the big global organisations (google, facebook, etc).
If we can create a community
which fosters diversity, inclusion, a sense of autonomy, the development of abilities
and strengths to create positive relationships and partnerships then we can all
start flourishing, and this will in turn lead to a flourishing institution.
This is what is truly needed for the next 10-20 years.
When we start our reflection on
how to create a flourishing institution – all participants in the system need
to think about what is within their locus of control and what they choose and
want to focus on. We also all need to reflect on how we are part of the system,
part of the problem and of the solution.
Once we have done this, we might
also want to look at the Canadian’s approach to ‘positive mental health’[8]
(see image below) and to consider how we can foster wellbeing in education
through a caring and compassionate environment and how each one of us can
influence:
at an individual level?
At the family level (our
team)?
At community (school/Faculty)?
At the institutional level?
At society level?
Emerging evidence confirms that
student wellbeing can be cultivated and supported through intentional
curriculum design. .[9]
And I believe that it would benefit not
only students but also staff.
But only when we have focused on
a systemic approach and started managing relationships across the different
silos of our institutions, can we start looking at how we can embed wellbeing
in the curriculum, develop a flourishing institution so that all actors cannot
merely survive but flourish and succeed in Higher Education, whatever their
goals are.
And yes, this may seem like a
utopia and I most certainly won’t pretend I have THE answer. What I believe
though, as Gandhi said is that ‘we need to be the change we want to see in the
world’ and that it starts with each one of us.
Sometimes this might involve
simple things such as access to a staff room or a place to get together with
others to talk and debrief, the ability to refuse some of the accepted
workplace culture (i.e. to work long hours or answer emails in the evening or
over the weekend, to come to work when ill or not to take all of our annual
leave, particularly when staffing is under-resourced) or simply to take the
time to have a proper lunch break or to say ‘thank you’.
So, what will YOU do today to start this new movement toward a flourishing education?
[2] Toni-Lee Sterley, Dinara Baimoukhametova, Tamás Füzesi, Agnieszka A.
Zurek, Nuria Daviu, Neilen P. Rasiah, David Rosenegger, Jaideep S. Bains. Social
transmission and buffering of synaptic changes after stress. Nature
Neuroscience, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41593-017-0044-6
[4]
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50,
370–396. Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.
[6] Seligman,
M.E (2012) Chapter 1: What is well-being? Flourish@ A visionary New
understanding of Happiness and well-being (p.5-29). New York: Simon &
Schuster.
[9] Slavin,
S.J., Schindler, D. L. & Chibnall, J.T. (2014). Medical student mental
health 3:0: improving student wellness through curricular changes. Academic
Medicine, 89(4), 573-577.
Tang, S & Ferguson, A (2014). The possibility of
wellbeing: Preliminary results from surveys of Australian professional legal
education students. QUT Law Review, 14(1): 27-51
The following post was written by Fabienne Vailes, the Language Director for French and holder of a University Teaching Fellowship.
There were the Millennials (Generation Y – born in the 1980s and 1990s), children of Baby Boomers and now Generation Z or Gen Z. Gen Z have been the source of a lot of debate in the media with Psychology professor and author Jean Twenge calling them iGen or Generation M and Stein ‘the Me Me Me Generation’ in his 2013 article.
At the end of October, Jeremy Vine sparked an online debate after posting a video on his Twitter account stating that baby boomers are the real snowflakes and that they ‘should get off youngsters – 20 something’s back’.
Whether we agree or not with the above, younger people clearly generate a lot of discussions amongst parents, educators and society in general. And our students seem to struggle to ‘get us’.
What if instead of talking about ‘generational differences’, we used a different approach?
The issue with a focus on generational differences
The danger with the constant analysis of behavioural differences between generations, between baby boomers and ‘millennials’ in this instance is that it can lead us to ‘other’ as defined by Merriam Webster dictionary ‘to treat or consider ‘young people’ as alien to oneself or one’s group (because of different racial, sexual, or cultural characteristics). It creates a divide and a notion of ‘them’ and ‘us’.
We seem to apply this ‘othering’ to Gen Z and Gen Z to us. ‘The other’ becomes misunderstood which is brought about by a lack of effective communication. Poor communication and understanding meaning that ‘the other’ feels ‘we do not get them’. This leads to an inability to understand ‘others’ from their perspective.
Nirmala (2013:1)[i] explains that in general the “other” is anyone who is separate from one’s self. The existence of the others is crucial in defining what is “normal” and in locating one’s own place in the world. The other is perceived as lacking the essential characteristics possessed by a group and hence is considered to be a lesser or inferior being and therefore is treated accordingly.
But when we act this way, this is likely to affect our relationships with ‘the other’ and to create a separation. This might in turn create a sense of loneliness and social isolation.
Loneliness is often divided into two elements according to the theories of Weiss (1973): emotional loneliness, which is caused by a lack of close and intimate social relations, and social loneliness, which is caused by a lack of wider social contacts[ii] .
Social isolation is generally agreed in the literature to be more objective than loneliness and relates to the extent to which an individual is isolated from social contacts including friends, family members, neighbours or the wider community.[iii]
Whether it is loneliness or social isolation, both have been linked with numerous physical health problems such as depression (Wang et al, 2018)[iv], dementia (Holwerda et al 2014)[v], suicidal ideation (Stickley et al 2016)[vi] and an overall increased risk of dying earlier[vii]
But what if there was a different and more positive approach to this?
Young people as ‘a new evolving culture’
Herbig[viii] said that culture can be defined as the sum of a way of life, including expected behaviour, beliefs, values, language and living practices shared by members of a society. It consists of both explicit and implicit rules through which experience is interpreted”. Hofstede refers to culture as a “programming of the mind”[ix].
Isn’t it this specific concept of culture that the media is referring to when they look how young people behave differently from their parents and grandparents?
What would happen if instead of using generational differences we were inspired by Intercultural Communication and started looking at our children and students as ‘a new evolving culture’? We could adopt the approach that culturally agile expats take when encountering a ‘foreign culture’ which shares different rules or views from theirs. They observe their natural reaction to thee foreigners’ thoughts, feelings or behaviours, particularly if they are extremely different from their own.
They also become more tolerant and understanding towards them. They even are a bit curious and start wondering what beliefs the foreign culture holds to behave in that specific way.
I believe we could try to use and develop these same skills or what Deardoff[x] calls intercultural competence or the ability to develop over time the targeted knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to visible behaviour and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions. These skills adapted from Byram[xi] (1997)’s work on Intercultural competence include “Knowledge of others; knowledge of self; skills to interpret and relate; skills to discover and/or to interact; valuing others’ values, beliefs, and behaviours; and relativizing one’s self.
This intercultural expertise is relevant to everyone.
Of course, all actors in education (learners, staff and parents) are concerned by this notion of intercultural competence and we could all benefit from improving the aptitudes advocated by experts.
So, next time any of us (Gen Z or older) is tempted to use words that encourage ‘othering’ and ‘generational comparisons’, why not pause, consider this concept of a new evolving culture and become much more curious about the recipients’ ‘programming of the mind’? This is likely to lead to far less ‘separation’ and far more ‘attempts at ‘understanding’ and a development of ‘empathy’ which decades of work[xii] suggest fosters and maintains close relationships in particular. This is of significant importance as supportive relationships buffer people from stress and its detrimental effects on health by providing positive affect, a sense of predictability and stability in one’s situation, and a recognition of self-worth (1985:311).[xiii]. The opposite results of loneliness and social isolation in fact!!!!
[i] Nirmala, S The idea of othering in J.M Coetzee’s waiting for the Barbarian New Academia (Print ISSN 2277-3967) (Online ISSN 2347-2073) Vol. II Issue IV, Oct. 2013
[ii] iii De Jong Gierveld and Van Tilburg (2006) ‘A 6-Item Scale for Overall, Emotional, and Social Loneliness’ Research on Aging 28 (5) pp. 582-598; Victor, Scambler and Bond (2009) (p.584)
[iii] Victor, Christina, Bowling, Ann, Bond, John and Scambler, Sasha (2003) ‘Loneliness, Social Isolation and Living Alone in Later Life’ Research Findings: 17 from the Growing Older Programme
[iv]Wang J, Mann F, Lloyd-Evans B, Ma R, Johnson S (2018) Associations between loneliness and perceived social support and outcomes of mental health problems: a systematic review. BMC Psychiatry. 29;18(1):156. doi: 10.1186/s12888-018-1736-5.
[vii] Perissinotto, Carla, Cenzer, Irena Stijacic and Covinsky, Kenneth (2012) ‘Loneliness in Older Persons: A Predictor of Functional Decline and Death’ Archive of Internal Medicine 172 (14) pp. 1078-1083 lv Perissinotto, Cenzer and Covinsky (2012) (as above) p. 1081 lvi Berkman, Lisa, Melchior, Maria, Chastang, Jean-François, Niedhammer, Isabelle, Lecierc, Annette and Goldberg, Marcel (2004) ‘Social Integration and Mortality: A Prospective Study of French Employees of Electricity of France – Gas of France’ American Journal of Epidemiology 159 (2) pp. 167-174
[viii] Herbig, P. (1998) Handbook of Cross-Cultural Marketing, New York: The Haworth Press
[ix] Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, London: Sage
[x] Deardorff, D. K. (2006), The Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization at Institutions of Higher Education in the United States, Journal of Studies in International Education 10:241-266
[xi] Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters
[xii] Davis, MH, Oathout HA (1987) Maintenance of satisfaction in romantic relationships: Empathy and relational competence. Journal of Personality Social Psychology: 53(2):397-410
Morelli, SA, Lieberman MD, Zaki J (2015) The emerging study of positive empathy. Soc Personal Psychol Compass 9:57-68.
[xii] Cohen, S, Wills TA (1985) Stress, social support and the buffering hypothesis. Psychol Bulletin 98: 310-357
