Pervasive in the public consciousness that schools offer much more than just what is taught in the curriculum; They are places for students to socialize, to receive support from caring adults, and to learn how to be together. This has now become even clearer especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic when millions of students were sent home en-masse in 2020. When schools are not able to support students’ health and well-being — either closed or open but not conducive to safe, healthy learning environments —, we run the risk of traditionally organized schooling doing more harm than good for students’ long-term health and well-being.
No longer is it sufficient to think about education only in terms of teaching and learning — and it never was; Students’ health and well-being, be it cognitive, psychological, physical, or social is the no less determining factor of educational outcomes. This has been corroborated by this year’s Global Collection were the most used keyword was “Professional Development” tagged by one-third of the innovators in their submissions, which is in line with the 2022 UN Transforming Education Summit’s call #TeachersTransform. Teachers are viewed as being at the center of educational change — right at the heart of education innovations, in particular those having a significant impact on the health, well-being, and lives in general of over 95 million students worldwide.
An escalating trend has been observed not only in education innovations. There is a number of educational innovations that have been conceived to address students’ health and well-being, both directly and indirectly. In this year’s Collection, of particular note are education innovations that focus on student agency, which aim to assist students in finding their own voices, placing them at the center of the experience, and offering personalized learning where they can make choices about their education and how it will be assessed; and education innovations that focus on educational equity — from human rights, equality, and diversity, to inclusive access to education and special needs education —, which aim to embrace children of all backgrounds. These include children with disabilities, children from marginalized communities, including indigenous peoples, language, and racial minority groups and refugees, and children from groups with historically lower educational attainment.
Educational innovations that are motivated by students’ skill development have likewise shown a similar upward tendency. Nearly a quarter of the innovations in this year’s Collection is designed to assist students in developing 21st Century Skills — the skills to build a healthy and productive life and to adapt to a changing world, including those developed through social and emotional learning, global citizenship education, and entrepreneurship, with critical thinking and collaborative learning ranking at the top of this year’s Collection. This is the case because students do not develop these skills on their own, in isolation; Rather, it is through interactions with teachers and peers and within a setting where there is a strong coordinated and intentional commitment to student’s holistic development that these skills can be developed — and this is particularly relevant in the context of the post-COVID-19 world.
Source: https://cdn.hundred.org/uploads/report/file/168/hundred_global_collection_2023_digital.pdf
