Keynote 3

 9.10am Friday 12 April

Wellbeing Literacy: A Capability for Students to Thrive

ABSTRACT:  The school education system represents possibly the best lever there is to create generational change in how we all think about and experience wellbeing. The other pervasive lever we have is language itself, which not only describes but also shapes our possible realities and relationships. Hence, developing wellbeing literacy- how we communicate about and for wellbeing is central: how we read and write about and for wellbeing; how we speak and listen about and for wellbeing, how we view symbols about and for wellbeing and how we create images and stories about and for wellbeing. Professor Lindsay Oades (PhD) will argue that by focussing on what students learn, rather than wellbeing itself we place positive education in a learning discourse rather than a health and illness discourse. Importantly, we escape the negativity bias trap of seeing positive education only as illness prevention. Wellbeing literacy liberates us from thinking that positive education is another program to add to a crowded curriculum. Rather it is a generalised capability towards which many of us are already working.