EPISODE 24: Measuring Well-Being

On Thursday, October 8 at 4:00 pm US-EDT, we presented the 24st LIVE episode of the LearningRevolution.com weekly interview series, REINVENTING SCHOOL.

This week's episode continues our one-on-one interviews about Positive Psychology and Positive Education. Our guest is Peggy Kern, an associate professor at Centre for Positive Psychology within the University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education.

Please join us on Thursdays for our live shows, or visit www.reinventing.school for the recorded versions.

More about this week's guests:

Peggy Kern's research addresses the question of who thrives in life, why, and what enhances or hinders healthy life trajectories. My research involves several related foci: understanding and measuring healthy functioning across the lifespan; identifying individual and social factors that impact life trajectories; developing positive educational communities; and systems-based approaches to wellbeing. She incorporates a lifespan perspective, innovative methodologies, and interdisciplinary collaboration throughout my research. My work is collaborative in nature, and my studies draw on multiple fields of study and a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. Peggy is well-respected in the field, and notable for her excellent (and very useful) work in defining, measuring, and building well-being. (You can find several them here: https://www.peggykern.org/research-overview.html).

Howard Blumenthal created and produced the PBS television series, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? He is currently a Senior Scholar at The University of Pennsylvania, studying learning and the lives of 21st-century children and teenagers. He travels the world, visiting K-12 schools, lecturing at universities, and interviewing young people for Kids on Earth, a global platform containing nearly 1,000 interview segments from Kentucky, Brazil, Sweden, India, and many other countries. Previously, he was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist for The New York Times Syndicate, and United Features. He is the author of 24 books and several hundred articles about technology, learning, business, and human progress. As an executive, Howard was the CEO of a public television operation and several television production companies, and a state government official. Previously, he was a Senior Vice President for divisions of two large media companies, Hearst and Bertelsmann, and a consultant or project lead for Energizer, General Electric, American Express, CompuServe, Warner Communications, Merriam-Webster, Atari, and other companies.

Before the virus, more than a billion children and teenagers relied upon school for learning. After the virus (or, after the current wave of our current virus), basic assumptions about school and education are no longer reliable. School buildings may become unsafe for large numbers of students. The tax base may no longer support our current approach to school. Without the interaction provided by a formal school structure, students may follow their own curiosity. Many students now possess the technology to learn on their own. And many do not.

Reinventing.school is a new weekly web television series that considers what happens next week, next month, next school year, and the next five years. Hosted by University of Pennsylvania Senior Scholar Howard Blumenthal, Reinventing.school features interviews with teachers, principals, school district leadership, state and Federal government officials, ed-tech innovators, students, leading education professors, authors, realists and futurists from the United States and all over the world.

Each episode features 2-4 distinguished guests in conversation about high priority topics including, for example, the teaching of public health, long-term home schooling, technology access and its alternatives, the role of parents, friendship and social interaction, learning outside the curriculum, the future of testing and evaluation, interruption as part of the academic calendar, job security for teachers and support staff, setting (and rethinking) curriculum priorities, special needs, student perspectives on the job of school, the importance of play, the psychology of group dynamics and social interaction, preparing for future rounds of a virus (or cyberattack or impact of climate change, etc.), college readiness, higher education transformed, the higher education promise in an economically challenged world, and more. Clearly, there is much to discuss; nearly all of it ranks high on the list of priorities for raising the world’s children.

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EPISODE 24: Measuring Well-Being

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