A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
The Mental Stillness program is a simple strategy that is aimed at providing students with a secular, meditation-based skill to enhance resilience and wellbeing. The technique has undergone extensive scientific evaluation in Australia as part of the Meditation Research Programme (previously at the UNSW but now at Sydney University). We have now begun exploring formats [...]
Lovers of literature can rejoice: a new study combines the humanities and neuroscience to take a look at what effects reading a novel can have on the brain. Researchers say exploring a book can not only change your perspective, but also it can change your mind - at least for a few days. via Reading [...]
You’d be well aware that late last year, the OECD published the latest of their PISA tables. But did you know that as this article shows, the tests are not all about numeracy and literacy? As part of the tests, students were asked to agree or disagree with a whole range of statements. One of which was: [...]
“Something we now know, from doing dozens of studies, is that emotions can either enhance or hinder your ability to learn,” Marc Brackett, a senior research scientist in psychology at Yale University, told a crowd of educators at a conference last June. “They affect our attention and our memory. If you’re very anxious about something, [...]
I’ve had too many conversations with teachers who believe that the whole, “Pastoral care, touchy feely, emotional, welfare, wellbeing stuff” isn’t what they signed up for when they decided to become a teacher. As strange as you and or I – I’m assuming we’re on the same page given you subscribe to, or have [...]
Last year, I took twenty Year 11 students on a mountain biking camp. We rode through the Stromlo Forest in Canberra by day, and camped in sub zero temperatures by night. It’s only in the last couple of months that I’ve really appreciated some of the analogies I could draw between by experiences mountain biking [...]
Over the past 10 years, the research company Gallup have surveyed over a million US students with regard to their strengths, levels of hope and engagement and their wellbeing. Gallup recently published their Student Success Model in which they described some of the wellbeing factors that impact on success. 1. Strengths identification remains as simple as [...]
I believe that being genuinely engaged does wonders for your wellbeing. One of the determinants of engagement is a level of independence, or autonomy. Schools go to great lengths to give students (and teachers) the impression that they encourage independence. However, in the scheme of things, most of what occurs at school is prescribed for [...]
Throughout June I was involved in a project with channel nine to highlight the fact that if we are part of the digital world we already will most likely have a large amount of personal information online and if other users wish to gain access to that information, whether directly or indirectly, it's not a [...]
