Training & Events

With the popularity and growing evidence base of positive psychology, positive education has emerged as an initiative to enable students to learn the skills of wellbeing - how to feel good, function well and do good. This is alongside other approaches of wellbeing education, including social and emotional learning, and the recent recognition by UNESCO, that human flourishing should be a primary aim of education. Professor Lindsay Oades and his team at the University of Melbourne, Australia, have developed the concept of wellbeing literacy - how we communicate about and for wellbeing.

This participatory workshop will provide the participant an opportunity to explore and gain answers to the following questions:

(1) What is wellbeing and flourishing?
(2) What is positive education?
(3) What is wellbeing literacy?
(4) How is wellbeing literacy relevant to my educational context?

Teachers report the highest level of occupational stress in many countries in the world, including Singapore. Navigating the multiple changes as a result of covid-19 has also left teachers feeling drained. Being able to self-care during this time is critical, as teachers cannot continue to function at their best when they are stretched. Join this workshop if you would like to learn how to better manage your stress, increase your energy and show up as your best.

Participants will:

• Learn about the importance of taking care of themselves (self-care)
• Explore the self-compassion framework, including mindfulness, common humanity and self-kindness
• Learn practical and effective strategies to take better care of themselves

Traditionally, discipline might have been to manage misbehaviour by meting out consequences. However, often there is no recourse for wrongdoing, or student end up feeling resentful or guilty. The premise of Positive Discipline, however, is "connection before correction" i.e. in order to empower young people to shift their behaviour, we first form a relationship and then empower them to take responsbility for their actions in a respectful, kind and firm way.

Participants will:

• Understand the 5 criteria of Positive Discipline
• Understand the mistaken goals of student behaviour
• Learn practical and effective tools to discipline more positively in their department and across the levels

Peer support is an important factor to support mental well-being in students. As peers would be going through similar pressures and challenges, students might feel more comforted and trust in them, compared to adult figures. As such, equipping selected students to listen and empathise can be a protective factor. Join this workshop if you would like to learn the skills that you can use to introduce peer support in your school.

Participants will:

• Understand more about the CHEERS model for Peer Support
• Learn practical skills and mindsets they need to have to empathise and support their students
• Be able to teach their students how to support each other using the CHEERS model

What is well-being? Why is it important? How can we improve well-being? The first part of the session will explicate what well-being is and how it is conceptualised across the lifespan. Key arguments for why it is important across different life stages will be presented. The second part will dive down into the speaker's research programme on student well-being. The different enablers and barriers to students' well-being will be elucidated. Furthermore, the speaker will also showcase his lab's latest research on Singapore students' well-being. This research draws on cutting-edge data science and classical statistical approaches and leverages on the public availability of international large-scale assessments such as PISA and TIMSS. The last part of the session will focus on the how of well-being and will delve into practical implications of well-being research in the Singapore and broader East Asian context.