LOOKING AT WELLBEING THROUGH THE LENSES OF EMPOWERMENT & AGENCY: THE ROLE OF CRITICAL

PEDAGOGY

Dr Kaz Stuart, Kaz Stuart Ltd.Dr Lucy Maynard, Brathay Research Hub

1. WELLBEING & SOCIAL JUSTICE

2. ALEX’S STORY

3. STRUCTURE

4. AGENCY

5. CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

6. EMPOWERMENT

7. HOW TO PLAN A CRITICALLY

PEDAGOGICAL SESSION

WELLBEING

How do you define wellbeing?

5 minutes.

WELLBEING

Holistic sense of physical, emotional and mental well-being

(Henderson, et al., 2007).

The ability to develop psychologically, socially, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually

(Margo & Sodha, 2007:8).

WELLBEING

Subjective measures of wellbeing focus on how someone perceives their wellbeing (or aspects of it) – they are internal measures.

Objective measures of wellbeing, such as household income, educational resources, and health status – can be measured externally.

Emerging consensus that wellbeing is multidimensional (physical, emotional and social), short and long term and subjective and objective (Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre, 2010: 12-16).

WELLBEING

Feeling good and functioning well. (Aked et al., 2008)

WELLBEING

Personal wellbeing measures people’s experiences of their positive and negative emotions, satisfaction, vitality, resilience and self-esteem and sense of positive functioning in the world.

Social wellbeing measures people’s experiences of supportive relationships and sense of trust and belonging with others

(Michaelson, et al., 2009:4).

* Why are people so interested in wellbeing?

Belief that when people are given the chance and treated as if they are capable, they tend to find they know what is best for themselves and can fix their own problems and hence efforts to get more people working together to run their own affairs locally

(Coote, 2010)

When people have control over what is happening in their lives, their health and well-being improves.

(Ledwith, 2011)

* So what?

Increased wellbeing contributes to social justice.

Social justice refers to the just distribution of wealth, opportunities and privileges within a society.

In what ways does the work you do contribute to wellbeing?

In what ways does the work you do contribute to social justice?

How do the two link with your practice?

5 mins

* Alex’s story

STRUCTURE

Structuralist view that people are controlled and created by society – they merely occupy roles

(Durkheim, 1982)

Structure as in: norms, rules, laws, discourses, and the cultures of; nations, areas, places, organisations, social groups.

* Nested in nature

List some structures that operate on you.

List some of the structures that affect the people who you work with.

* Examples of enabling and constraining structures / discourses

Enabling discourses Constraining discourses

Listen to young people Versus

Centralised planning

Youth voice and experience

Versus

Objective evidence

Needs led services Versus

Predetermined outcomes

Young responsible citizens

Versus

Deficit youth and a culture of fearing young people

Adultification Versus

Paternalism

Rescue us Versus

You're to blame

AGENCY

To intentionally make things happen by one's actions.

To make their way successfully through a complex world full of challenges and hazards, people have to make good judgments about their capabilities, anticipate probable effects of different events and courses of action, size up sociocultural opportunities and constraints, and regulate behaviour accordingly... Enabling them to achieve desired outcomes and avoid unwanted ones

Bandura (2001:3)

STRUCTURE & AGENCY

People are 'acted on' by society, structures and rules shape who they are and what they can do.

Society and structures and rules are created by people who say what the structures are and what they do.

Structure and agency are therefore interdependent, a dualism rather than a duality. As long as the person has agency.... If they don't have agency then they are done to.

Or…

Where do you use your agency?

What signs do the young people you work with show of having agency?

5 mins

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

Freire (1973) argued that people need to become aware of their own oppression.

Freire defined this as ‘intransitive thought’, where people are naïve rather than critically conscious.

At this stage, people lack insight into the way in which their social conditions undermine their well-being and so do not see their own actions as capable of changing their conditions

(Campbell and MacPhail, 2002)

CRITICAL Critical in this sense is used in opposition to terms like objective, detached, disinterested, pragmatic, formalistic, and abstract.

A critical view is sceptical of objectivity, seeks to uncover the construction of reality that is prevalent and powerful with regard to knowledge, institutions, laws, relationships, governance etc.

It means becoming aware of self, of issues, and of how self related to issues in terms of being subjected to them, and in terms of being able to change them, using their agency.

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY TEACHING

Banking education = the teacher as the knowledge holder depositing information into the students heads

Problem posing education = the teacher in dialogue about issues that are important to the students drawing from their experiences, working with them as co-inquirers (not problem solving)

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY CRITIQUE

• Teachers that use this method will often bias the class towards an anti-status quo position

• Abstract intellectualist approach• Encourages detrimental disdain for tradition and

hierarchy (such as parental control over children)• Many people involved in critical pedagogy have

never been involved in serious struggles• Rather than "liberating" student thought, teachers

replace a cultural bias with their own bias

In what ways can you facilitate the awareness, choices and actions of the people you work with?

15 mins

A CRITICAL PEDAGOGICAL PLANNING PROCESS

QUESTIONS

Does working in a critical pedagogical way contribute anything to your session planning?Has anything changed for you (awareness, choice, actions)?Are you doing it anyway?To what extent do you think that critical pedagogical outcomes contribute to social justice and wellbeing?Which of your stakeholders will value these additional outcomes / reframing of existing outcomes?Who will benefit from you working in this way?What might block or aid you working in this way?Did we model critical pedagogy?

REFERENCES Aked, J., Marks, N., Cordon, C., & Thompson, S. (2008). Five ways to wellbeing: The evidence. London: nef.

Archer, M. (1995) Realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bandura, A. (2001) Social cognitive theory: an agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 51:1-26.

Campbell, C., & MacPhail, C. (2002). Peer education, gender and the development of critical consciousness: participatory HIV prevention by South African youth. Social Science and Medicine, 55(2), 331-345.

Coote, A. (2010) Ten big questions about the Big Society and ten ways to make the best of it. London: nef.

Durkheim, E. (1982) The rules of sociological method. New York: Free Press.

Freire, P. (1973). Education for a critical consciousness. New York: Seabury Press.

Giddens, A. (1994) Beyond the left and the right, the future of radical politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Henderson, S., Holland, J., McGrellis, S., Sharpe, S., & Thomson, R. (2007). Inventing adulthoods. A biographical approach to youth transitions. London: Sage Publications.

Ledwith, M. (2007). Reclaiming the radical agenda: A critical approach to community development. Concept, 17(2), 8-12. Reproduced in The encyclopaedia of informal education. Retrieved 1st January 2011 from, www.infed.org/community/critical_community_development.htm.

Margo, J., & Sodha, S. (2007). Get happy: children and young people's emotional wellbeing. London: NCH.

Michaelson, J., Abdallah, S., Steuer, N., Thompson, S., & Marks, N. (2009). National accounts of well-being: bringing real wealth onto the balance sheet. London: nef.

Statham, J., Chase, E. (2010) Childhood Wellbeing: A brief introduction. London: The Thildhood Wellbeing Research Centre