Lessons learned from a decade of wellbeing in education

Many wellbeing programmes came and went, causing wellbeing to be dismissed by some as another passing fad. Some of the most important contributions to wellbeing in education come from fields outside positive psychology but have been embraced within schools. In parallel with growing awareness of the importance of professional learning for sustainable wellbeing change, schools have also identified the many opportunities to support wellbeing beyond explicit teaching. The chapter explores the process and impact of building whole-school wellbeing from multiple and diverse perspectives – educators, wellbeing practitioners, psychologists and other researchers. The value of collecting baseline wellbeing data and ongoing comparative data is an important element of any whole-school approach to wellbeing. Leadership is vital to the development of whole school wellbeing. The majority of school-based wellbeing programmes have been built on psychological therapies designed for individuals and individual understandings of wellbeing.