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Contribution to Book
Beyond Mindfulness Mondays: The Potential of Open Education to Support Whole School Wellbeing – A Case Study from Australia
Handbook for Online Learning Contexts: Digital, Mobile and Open (2021)
  • Anna Dabrowski, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
Abstract
Today, the teaching profession faces an unprecedented number of challenges in supporting and retaining high-quality teachers. Burnout, stress, and fatigue impact heavily on the engagement of educators, which in turn impacts on the quality of education students receive. Yet responding to teacher wellbeing remains an ongoing challenge particularly in relation to understanding mechanisms that can support wellbeing at a whole school level. The issue is made more problematic in a system that often prioritises student achievement over physical and mental health, and relationships, both in staff and student communities. There are now a number of initiatives that seek to augment the wellbeing of staff and students, yet little research has been undertaken into the impact of open education mechanisms on developing and enhancing wellbeing within the teaching profession. Thus, this chapter responds by providing a case study of one such open education initiative, the online Wellbeing Toolkit, that has now been undertaken by more than 7000 educators in Australian schools. Based on an extensive analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data sources, this chapter concludes that there are many opportunities for future open education initiatives to learn from the implementation of the Wellbeing Toolkit: an effective whole school intervention that successfully supports the wellbeing of schools regardless of location, resources, or access to funding. arts of this chapter formed a research report evaluating the impact of the NESLI Wellbeing Toolkit. Selected extracts have been reproduced with permission.
Keywords
  • Teaching,
  • Teacher Wellbeing,
  • School intervention,
  • Teaching profession,
  • Open resources,
  • evaluation
Publication Date
May 30, 2021
Editor
Marcus-Quinn A., & Hourigan T
Publisher
Springer
ISBN
978-3-030-67349-9
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67349-9_11
Citation Information
Dabrowski A. (2021) Beyond Mindfulness Mondays: The Potential of Open Education to Support Whole School Wellbeing – A Case Study from Australia. In: Marcus-Quinn A., Hourigan T. (eds) Handbook for Online Learning Contexts: Digital, Mobile and Open. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67349-9_11