In recent years, positive psychology has become a popular topic of conversation within the business world, with many organisations considering how they could use scientific findings surrounding the link between wellbeing, culture and high-performing companies.

It’s a trend that schools have not ignored either - after all, if staff and students are happy, motivated and content their ability to teach well and learn well is going to be vastly approved.

Of course, though, it’s one thing to be aware of such concepts and their benefits and quite another to embed them in a school in a meaningful, structured and impactful way.

Bringing the model to life

This was why, three years ago when we embarked on this journey to embed this in our international school in Dubai, we as the senior leadership team set about ensuring we learned and understood the science underpinning this strategy.

Our first project was a focus on the science behind building relationships, the ‘R’ from the PERMA model (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment) that underpins this concept.

To do this, each member of the SLT was tasked with exploring a different element of positive relationships such as vulnerability, emotional and cognitive empathy, autonomy and trust.

The brief was to use any platform we preferred for our exploration, which meant the research presented came from a variety of sources - TED talks, book reviews, research papers, articles from the Harvard Business Review, the EEF and personal experiences.

Each member then presented on their element of this topic, drawing on what they had learned. We then spent time considering how we could apply these learnings to how we behaved as leaders.

Learning lessons

In light of these lessons, many things changed among our team. For example, our teaching and learning strategies were adapted, ensuring dedicated time was allowed for building trusting relationships before any observation commenced.

Time was also given to meetings between the observer and observed, discussing what lines of enquiry to look for, and what specific strategies the teacher was looking to have feedback on. 

Importance was given to how the teacher felt about the process and with what structure they would prefer the feedback to be given. 

With more trusting relationships, the levels of anxiety are reduced and we found staff were more able to engage with feedback and therefore able to learn and develop more as a result.

Furthermore, CPD programmes were revised to include a focus on feedback and the importance of vulnerability, embracing mistakes, and always focusing on learning rather than showcasing best practice.

Leadership reflection meetings were created in replacement of our usual line management meetings, with a clear focus on building trust between two parties, sharing challenges and talking through solutions within a safe space.

Having done this, we concluded our learning should also be shared with middle leadership so they could take on the lessons we had learned about the value of dedicating professional development time to fully understand the impact of positive relationships in an organisation. 

Giving time for teachers to learn

To do this we devised an optional CPD programme for middle leaders that ran over four weeks, focused on building positive teams.

While the training was optional, the majority of middle leaders signed up. The training itself spanned four weeks and involved four 1.5-hour sessions, with dedicated time given to reflection on their learning within their personal and professional lives. 

The modules covered emotional and cognitive empathy, the anatomy of trust, vulnerability and impact vs intention.  

So how did this help? Well, there was little doubting the impact it had and we noticed many ways in which it cascaded back to classroom teachers. 

For example, we noticed our leaders spending more time listening to and understanding their teams, being empathetic to different perspectives, and building their understanding into their approaches to feedback and teaching observations.   

As a school that already had an open and supportive culture, this new way of working further enabled a deep level of trust that existed between colleagues, where staff had a true sense of professional safety. 

Staff were able to take risks in their teaching, with the intent of developing new and innovative methods - in full knowledge they would be celebrated for trying something new, even if it didn’t have the positive impact it intended.

Safeguarding impact

Perhaps the biggest impact though was around our safeguarding systems.

Because we had worked to embed psychological safety into our culture - which is a key element of the PERMA model - it ensured the school had the best possible setup for safeguarding systems to thrive. 

Staff are confident to communicate with leadership, share worries and concerns, and ask for advice and help if needed.

Over time we noticed an increase in staff reporting mistakes and/or completing self-report forms, particularly support staff. 

With reduced levels of anxiety about talking about mistakes, seeing the benefits of discussing what we can learn from errors and knowing that this was welcomed and wanted, staff felt even safer to openly communicate with leaders.  

In turn, this importance of trusting relationships has been modelled to the children, who have multiple opportunities to talk, with the confidence to share worries and concerns in a safe space. 

Space for students

The students have been given multiple opportunities to talk anonymously through worry boxes and wellbeing surveys or with the class teachers.

In Year 6, the class teachers facilitate an individual wellbeing check-in with each student every two weeks while further down the school circle times are used daily. 

These include discussions about how we feel, why we might feel this and what we can do to help ourselves. 

The zones of regulation is a method used across the school to discuss feelings. In schools with highly effective safeguarding cultures, children feel confident to talk to a trusted adult in the school, they are open and feel safe to share something that might be a concern or a worry for them, ideally before a situation can deteriorate for them.

Ultimately, from being curious three years ago about the science behind wellbeing, the journey we went on as a school has certainly enabled the whole school community to thrive and is reaping rewards beyond academics. 

Now, as an education adviser for a family of schools in the region, I have the privilege of sharing this working knowledge more widely, enabling our schools to flourish further.

Lizzie Varley is regional education adviser for Cognita Schools on safeguarding, inclusion and wellbeing. She will be expanding on this topic at this year’s World Education Summit. Tes is the official media partner for the event. Find out more and book your place at worldedsummit.com