What can we do to help students thrive in the classroom? How do we support the wellbeing of every student we teach? What practices or opportunities will help each one meet their potential? There are plenty of existing resources and toolkits available to help us answer these overarching questions. But there are two issues that need to be considered first, since they are crucial to embedding wellbeing into our practice.
- What do we mean by ‘wellbeing’? When we say we want to improve student wellbeing, are we all talking about the same thing? For some, it might mean helping anxious students overcome barriers to learning, but for others it might be improving student resilience and confidence more generally, or even establishing connections to the wider community. So, what are the aspects of wellbeing that can be addressed in our curricula?
- What does wellbeing in the curriculum look like in practice? Sometimes it can be hard to see how published tools and tips can be applied to teaching in our own subject areas. We need examples to help us see the possibilities and inspire us to try something different.
The aim of this Compendium is to highlight specific examples of how colleagues in the UK and beyond think they have improved student wellbeing through their teaching, and to explore their differing understandings of wellbeing.
Some set out to improve student wellbeing on purpose, and this is an explicit learning outcome of their modules; others have evidence that the approach, structure and assessment of their modules had an unintended and positive impact on the wellbeing of their students. Some of these modules are examples of university-wide initiatives with large-scale reach, but others have simply been introduced by individual lecturers into their subject areas.
Advance HE members can access the compendium below.
