Hero photograph
 
Photo by Leoni Combrink

Positive Education New Zealand Conference

Emma Lumb —

This time last year five Hagley staff attended the inaugural Positive Education New Zealand Conference held at Christ’s College.

Positive Education is the evidence-based combination of positive psychology with best-practice education. You may be familiar with some of the strategies we use through the Kōkiri Hauora Tahi Promoting Wellbeing Together information, or the Year 11 Wellbeing pilot programme running this year.

Having already begun to explore and use Positive Education approaches in some College programmes, we were inspired and encouraged by the ideas and evidence presented by the range of local and international speakers. We also presented some of the positive education initiatives that were part of Tertiary Pathways programmes in the UC@Hagley Certificate in University Preparation and Catch Up College.

Since last year’s conference, Rowan Milburn and I have developed some bilingual resources to support the use of Positive Education strategies in the classroom. While there are many excellent wellbeing resources available, we were unable to find many that included use of Te Reo Māori, which is so important in a New Zealand context. The series of resources currently includes Ngā Pūkenga o te Tangata Character Strengths posters, cards and wall tiles, a Seligman’s PERMA Model of Wellbeing Hauora poster, two Dweck’s Growth Mindset Waiaro Whakatipu posters, and an online audio guide to the reo Māori pronunciation. We will be presenting them at the Resource Showcase at the 2018 conference this weekend.

Many thanks to those who have been involved at various stages of the project – Aimee Mahuta, Regan Stokes, Grace Uivel, Ian Cormack, Julia Scarf, and Leoni Combrink.