When St Peter’s College embraced Positive Psychology in 2012, it also embraced Professor Martin Seligman’s new framework for wellbeing, PERMA.
Positive emotions – Happiness, joy, love, gratitude, pride, success, etc.
Engagement – Being highly absorbed, emersed or experiencing flow while engaged in activity.
Relationships – Having the ability to establish and maintain positive relationships with others.
Meaning – The experience of being connected to or serving something other than the self.
Accomplishment – Experiencing success, a sense of mastery or achieving life/work goals.
In his book, Flourish*, Seligman suggested the five strands of PERMA “provided a base model for understanding the elements or building blocks that lead to positive wellbeing in life and at work.”
In 2013, PERMA shaped our first wellbeing curriculum – the first in SA – and the content of that curriculum for Years 8 and 10, has been evolving ever since.
In 2014, after great debate about the acronym, a + was added to PERMA to recognise the importance of Health factors for wellbeing (diet, exercise, sleep). Although PERMA+ made complete sense (“You don’t have anything, if you don’t have your health”), it immediately muddied the waters for schools and wellbeing programs. For decades before 2014, Health and Physical Education teachers had been teaching Health concepts such as Nutrition, benefits of exercise, growth And development, drugs and alcohol and sex education. Seligman’s Positive Psychology – ‘the Science of Wellbeing’ – was very different to Health Education and had introduced a specific focus upon emotional wellbeing. However, after the + was added, many schools began to refer to what had previously been the focus of Health lessons, as ‘Wellbeing’. At St Peter’s College we have always been clear about the difference between Health Education and Wellbeing Education, and that will continue to be the case. However, next year, we will see a marriage of the two concepts and both subjects, on the timetable.
We have decided to move Years 8 and 10 Wellbeing into the Health and PE Faculty and rename H&PE lessons as Wellbeing, Health and Physical Education (WHPE). The word ‘wellbeing’ is mentioned 136 times in the Australian Curriculum document for H&PE, so the subject of Wellbeing will sit very comfortably within the H&PE faculty. However, we will continue to clearly differentiate between Wellbeing and Health curriculum content and retain a full commitment to the positive psychology version of our 10-year-old wellbeing curriculum.
We are excited about this decision to combine the two subjects, as it will lead to some significant gains.
- The professional development of all H&PE staff in Wellbeing, will enable the consistent staffing of specialist Wellbeing, Health and PE teachers.
- We will create the first WH&PE faculty, which, both by its name and its curriculum content, explicitly delivers on its Australian Curriculum responsibilities for Wellbeing.
- We will identify even more specific ways in which our traditional PE program can create specific Wellbeing (PERMA) outcomes eg. Relationships = Social Intelligence & Humility in Teamwork.
Years 8 and Year 10 students will be informed in Week 1 of Term 1, exactly which of their WH&PE lessons will be dedicated to Wellbeing and that will be clearly defined on all Faculty documentation.
If parents have any questions about this development, please email me or Mr. Matthew French (Head of H&PE).
Mr Sean Inman
Head of Wellbeing Programs
*Seligman, M. E. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing. New York, NY. Simon and Schuster.
