Next Level Flourishing in Education: A Case Study of ‘Wholebeing’

This chapter describes a case study of a mid-sized all-girl independent school, in Melbourne, Australia. With an appetite for more than mainstream positive education, school leaders were equally interested in how they could address rising ill-being (mental ill-health) concerns in their staff and student population. Looking towards the future, they were attracted to systems informed, proactive, and preventative approaches that would build well-being, enable potential, and better position their school for future stressors. With such a brief, the authors along with school stakeholders co-designed a tailored whole school sustainable strategy, adopting a systems perspective to jointly focus on well-being, ill-being (mental ill-health), and resilience. Our ‘wholebeing’ approach specifically considers how well-being, ill-being, and resilience interact towards building positive mental health and sustainable flourishing in this school’s education system. Across the school context, primary outcomes included increases in well-being, decreases in ill-being, and greater resilience. Secondary outcomes included improved physical health and increased learning, academic engagement, and performance. This case study presents details of this transilient journey, from inception (e.g. initial meetings with key stakeholders), to development (e.g. key activities such as forming an internal champion group, an Appreciative Inquiry Summit, whole staff meetings, and in-depth interviews and observations with staff and students of all ages at all levels), to the delivery of the school’s co-designed strategic focus on wholebeing less than 1 year later. We share our lessons learned and detail our approach and underlying rationale so others may learn from our experiences. We see this work as the next level in sophistication of systems informed positive education design, delivery, and implementation; wholebeing.