Changing minds, changing hearts: how Dubai is making wellbeing the focus of education
It might seem like a daunting task to motivate private schools to support a shared vision for positive education, particularly when that sector is made up of 17 disparate curricula and students from 182 nationalities. Yet through the lens of wellbeing, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai is doing just that. Through this lens, the purpose of education has become to prepare students for the tests of life, rather than a life of tests. Through this lens, positive education is no longer just an optional extra, but the foundation of high quality teaching and learning.
KHDA’s latest projects – Dubai Student Wellbeing Census and the Adults@School Wellbeing Survey are further steps in a wellbeing journey that began more than five years ago. Together, these two initiatives measure the wellbeing of 120,000 students, teachers, principals and school administrators in Dubai, providing the world’s largest cross-cultural data set of wellbeing in education.
During this talk, Dr Abdulla will share what KHDA has learned in trying to institute behavioural change at scale, and how the most effective form of change is the type that we make to ourselves.