Education for flourishing: A social contract for foundational competencies

Introduction

There is increasing recognition and consensus that present-day education systems need change. This is evident from the United Nations Secretary General’s Transforming Education Summit in New York in September 2022, which was itself preceded by UNESCO’s Pre-Summit in Paris in June 2022 where more than 130 member states committed to rebooting their education systems. However, it remains to be seen whether there will be radical change that shifts the purpose and goal of education or incremental change with little tweaks here and there to improve the efficiency, quality and equity of the existing system.

The purpose of education must be the quintessential question we ask ourselves before embarking on any revision of our education systems. Is it to improve the quality, efficiency and equitable delivery of skills needed for a productive economy as the present international discourse seems to be moving towards, reflected in the Report on the 2022 Transforming Education Summit (United Nations, 2023)? Or should it be a grander goal directed towards the development of the individual’s personality and well-being as articulated in Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Or should it even go beyond Article 26 and include societal and planetary well-being as the primary ‘end’ of education across the world irrespective of context, as advocated in the Summary for Decision Makers report of the International Science and Evidence based Education (ISEE) assessment (Duraiappah et al., 2021)?

Well-being in education: Finding consensus

The article by Curren and colleagues, ‘Finding consensus on well-being in education’ therefore comes at an opportune time. In an ever-evolving world, the pursuit of well-being and learner flourishing would seem to stand as an essential aspiration. However, well-being is complex, multidimensional, multidisciplinary and context specific (De Ruyter et al., 2022; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003: 71–83; VanderWeele, 2017). Moreover, the issue is further complicated with the concept well-being being used interchangeably with notions of flourishing, thriving and happiness and with each being given different definitions across different disciplines and ideologies. Many times the words are used interchangeably. This shows that trying to design an education system around such an ambiguous concept with no consensus can be daunting and problematic. In fact, this might be the reason why well-being and flourishing have never been given prominent positions as policy goals in the education sector. How do we measure and track progress? How do we know when to intervene and what remedial measures to take if progress is not at par with expectations? And more importantly, what should our expectations be? Last but not the least, we should be warned that decision makers normally demand frameworks which provide Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound (SMART) indicators that allow them to effectively measure and track progress towards specific goals and objectives (Doran, 1981). Yet, we want a scenario that allows us to measure what we value and not let ourselves be coerced into valuing what we measure.

Acknowledging this chaos and inherent lack of commonality in the use of the terms well-being and flourishing, Curren et al. use an analytical value-led and evidence-informed approach to make the argument that consensus on well-being in education can be reached without clearing or resolving the philosophical differences across the various definitions of well-being or the four main schools of thought concerning the promotion of flourishing (i.e. Aristotelian, liberalism, self-determination theory and positive psychology). Drawing on commonalities across the various approaches, the authors present a definition of flourishing as, ‘ongoing healthy growth and functioning involving fulfillment of potential that exhibits admirable qualities and is personally meaningful, satisfying and enjoyable’ (Curren et al., 2024: 123). Key terms that provide the consensus among the four schools of thought on flourishing for education are ‘potential’, ‘meaningful’, ‘satisfying’ and ‘enjoyable’ – in Sen’s terminology, ‘the ability to achieve a life one has reason to’ value (Robeyns, 2005). The authors then correctly justify why flourishing as defined should be the goal of education purely on ethical and social justice grounds.

Finding consensus: The utilitarian framework and the equivalence theorem

In this commentary, I suggest further strengthening the argument that no deeper conceptual or theoretical consensus is needed to establish well-being as the key objective for the education sector, by drawing on work done by economists on well-being with respect to the inclusive wealth of nations. I intentionally bring this literature to this commentary because it offers the possibility of developing SMART indicators that can counter some of the objections against using flourishing as the objective of education. Moreover, it further strengthens attempts to provide tangible and measurable indicators that educators could use when implementing the 12 recommendations suggested in the Curren et al. article.

Seminal work done by Dasgupta and Arrow (Arrow et al., 2012) shows that irrespective of how well-being is defined within a utilitarian framework, in order for general well-being to be positive, the inclusive wealth of the country invoking the equivalence theorem must always be positive. The inclusive wealth is defined as the sum total of the productive asset base defined as the amount of produced (e.g. roads, buildings, infrastructure), natural (e.g. forest, oceans, biodiversity) and human (e.g. education, health) capital (Dasgupta, 2021). The challenge involved in using this framework is in the accounting prices to be used in computing the monetary value of the inclusive wealth of a country. In some cases, market prices can be used as equivalent to accounting prices but in many cases, valuation methods need to be employed to compute these accounting or so-called shadow prices (Duraiappah and Munoz, 2012). This becomes a non-trivial task when it comes to pricing the assets linked with human capital.

The human capital valuation within the education sector presently focuses on educational attainment (Jorgenson and Fraumeni, 1992). However, we now know that educational attainment does not imply competency. Educational attainment is thus not a true indicator for human capital, but an indicator based on competencies might be more reflective of the true wealth of the country. Moreover, the ISEE assessment reports that for learning to happen, a number of foundational competencies are required. These go beyond the literacy and numeracy that the learning poverty indicator measures, and the ISEE assessment advocates a ‘whole brain’ approach that builds competencies across four main categories that are explained briefly below. The challenge then again is to compute accounting prices for these competencies (Belfield et al., 2015; Duraiappah and Sethi, 2020).

Recommendations: Making it real

This brings me the crux of the article – the recommendations. I would like to focus on exploring how to concretize these recommendations even further, which can directly help educators on the ground to measure, track and manage progress in promoting well-being. The 12 recommendations in the Curren et al. article offer a starting point but do not offer a blueprint for educators to implement an education for flourishing. For example, recommendation 1 of the Curren et al. article calls for learning environments to be need-supportive with respect to basic psychological needs and has broad and general suggestions to facilitate intrinsic motivation, offer agency and foster good teacher–student relationships. The quintessential question is how do we measure, monitor and manage this recommendation? The same goes for all the remaining 11 recommendations.

Research from the learning sciences which include neurosciences and cognitive sciences research, although relatively new and growing, has some very critical insights relevant to the discussion of well-being, flourishing, education and (potentially) indicators for measurement. Acknowledging that well-being can be trained is key to this debate, if well-being should be an aspiration for education (Dahl et al., 2020; Ryff, 2014). In this framework, a number of key competencies emerge as essential for well-being. Moreover, ‘competencies’ is a term that educators are familiar with against which teaching and learning strategies can be developed. This might explain why literacy and numeracy have been very popular within the educational decision-making community.

The ISEE assessment suggested a ‘whole brain’ approach towards an education for flourishing (Duraiappah et al., 2021). This entailed focusing on the four categories of Cognition, Academic, Social and Emotional (C.A.S.E) in all aspects of education. Therefore, the way subjects are taught, learned and evaluated towards flourishing should ideally have the cognition, social and emotional dimensions included with the traditional academic or subject knowledge acquisition.

Conclusion

If the objective of education is seen as flourishing, individual learning over the life course is an intrinsic part of education. An education system that focuses on flourishing will implicitly acknowledge individual and learning differences across each and every learner. It is a system that will automatically respect the rights of each learner and equips individuals with the tools to nurture self-awareness, critical thinking, emotional intelligence and civic engagement. By fostering a lifelong love of learning – emphasis on the word ‘love’ – education will enable individuals to thrive in a dynamic world and contribute positively to society.

As we recognize the profound impact of education on human flourishing, it becomes imperative to invest in educational systems that prioritize the development of the whole person using a ‘whole brain’ approach towards learning. Acknowledging the complexity of the human brain and respecting the need for a transdisciplinary science and evidence-based lens to educational policymaking is essential. I hope the additional literature from the sciences of learning and sustainability economics demonstrates why we must cast a wide net to benefit from the vast amount of knowledge available on well-being, flourishing, sustainability, education and learning.