Well-being and happiness through learning

The ongoing Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning has published another Thematic paper. This one, written by John Field from the Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning at the University of Stirling. It is a really timely case for standing back and asking more about what education is for.

You can get the full report from the IFFL website click here.

The report ends with 13 key points. In summary, (with author's italics) these are:

1. Well-being is of growing significance in policy circles and in wider public debate, and adult learning makes a small but significant, measurable positive contribution to well-being.

2. adult learning is likely to be particularly effective in enhancing the wellbeing of our most vulnerable citizens.
   

3. Professionals in adult learning may need to align themselves with other services and campaigning bodies that are concerned with well-being.

4. We need to tackle the persistent gap between medical and other approaches to  wellbeing and we need much closer alignment between interventions designed to cure or limit the damages of mental ill-health, and those designed to promote positive flourishing throughout life
   

5. There are important examples of public health bodies that acknowledge the important role of learning in improving health outcomes, including mental health outcomes.

6. Organisations providing adult learning should consider how to promote well-being more effectively.
   

7. Teaching approaches should actively seek to promote well-being. While this may involve therapeutic interventions for those who are most vulnerable to poor mental  health, it must also involve taking account of the ways in which adults’ biographies interact with learning environments.

8. Work plays a central role in most people’s lives, and is critical to their well-being. The entire workforce requires skills, resilience and flexibility to cope and thrive in the changing landscape of work.

9. there is a strong case for looking at a new learning life balance for employees
   

10. Organisations providing adult learning also need to consider the well-being of their workers.

11. Learning providers and policy-makers need to develop agreed approaches to Measurement of well being

12. a lifelong learning system that takes well-being as its primarypurpose is likely to differ significantly from present models.
    

13. Governments, employers and public institutions on their own can make individual action possible, but individual behaviour is also required – and indeed can, if duplicated across entire societies, help to shift the priorities and goals of the other actors.