Support for Flourishing: A Socio-Ecological Model
Over the last decade, teachers and leaders in education have made increasing efforts to support the complete well-being of children and young adults. Different models and approaches have appeared on the educational landscape, including resilience training, social emotional learning, restorative practices, social-relationship building, and trauma-informed education. Despite implementing these approaches and models, the well-being of youth and the individuals who work with them has reached a crisis point; the COVID-19 pandemic has further revealed underlying issues. As such, the United States must rethink the purpose of and its approach to supporting and preparing its citizens, especially children, for a world that is becoming increasingly unpredictable and unstable.
Human flourishing is not a new concept. Many philosophers have proposed this in the past, and though there is no agreed upon definition of flourishing, there is broad census that for an individual to flourish they must do well in the following five domains: (1) Mental and Physical Health (2) Meaning & Purpose (3) Close Social Relationships (4) Character & Virtue and (5) Happiness & Life Satisfaction(VanderWeele, 2017). Instead of addressing well-being issues after they arise, the pandemic has underscored the need for society to have the structures in place to proactively promote flourishing before deficits in well-being arise.
Flourishing is a state in which all aspects, i.e., domains of a person’s life are good. VanderWeele notes that each domain is generally viewed as an end in itself, and is nearly universally desired. Because, humans are social by nature, we cannot flourish in isolation. Individuals are connected to many in different ways. We interact with others within various communities, contexts and environments. And we do so throughout the developmental stages of our lives. These connections and environments support or prevent current flourishing, and the potential for future flourishing.
To account for the interrelatedness and interdependence of human flourishing, we must look at the entire social ecology of individuals in order to measure and support flourishing. As such, I propose the following socio-ecological framework for thinking, designing, and measuring flourishing.
Read more at…. https://www.flourishingassociates.com/post/flourishing-socioecological-model
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VanderWeele, T. J. (2017). On the promotion of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 114, 8148–8156. doi:10.1073/pnas.1702996114
The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University: Flourishing Measure. Available at https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/measuring-flourishing
