Living the Flourish Question: Positivity as an Orientation for the Preparation of Teacher Candidates

Abstract

In this article, the authors unpack taken-for-granted elements in a question central to their research and teaching: “What if the primary role of teachers is to learn how to thrive as educators and, in so doing, to continually co-explore and facilitate all means by which everyone in their learning communities flourishes most of the time?” As they explore a positive orientation to teaching and research, they work to understand the potential for generative and positive growth in themselves and school communities. Their article focuses upon seeking to create and sustain personal and professional flourishing at the heart of educational practice and consider how flourishing may be central to what it means to become a teacher. 1 Cherkowski and Walker: Living the Flourish Question: Positivity as an Orientation for th Published by PDXScholar, 2013 81 Northwest Journal of Teacher Education Introduction Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. (Rainer Maria Rilke) Recently, teacher educators and educational researchers have been attempting to live a certain kind of question. The question has not been readily taken up in educational research, and yet stepping into this kind of inquiry provides an interesting and fruitful shift in thinking, being, and practicing as scholars and teacher educators. This question, which has prompted this paper, is “What if we imagine that the primary role of teachers is to learn how to thrive as educators and, in so doing, continually co-explore and facilitate all means by which everyone in their learning communities flourishes most of the time?” This “what if” question appears simple and even attractive. The question makes teachers’ personal and professional well-being the foundation from which educators then figure out, with others, how the well-being of everyone in their communities might, likewise, thrive. Life is hard, it is unfair, it can be ugly, it is unevenly experienced. No amount of “pie-in-the sky” idealism, wishful thinking, or optimism significantly alters the realities that place us and those we care about on the spectra of happiness and despair or thriving and suffering. Leadership advisor, Max DePree, championed his view that although the first task of a leader may be to define reality, the last task of a leader is to say, “Thank you.” This statement encourages the focus on gratitude, compassion and other human capacities that may have mistakenly been imputed with the reputation of being soft and without substance. In our work, we are aiming to provide teacher candidates with evidence-based and researchattuned exposure to concepts such as compassion, hope and trust. The human spirit is complex and we suggest that fundamental questions of personhood, identity and attention to what gives life (and what depletes it) are crucial to our work as educators. We have endeavored to unpack the taken-for-granted elements that constitute the infrastructure of the question to better understand its potential for generative and positive growth in ourselves 2 Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 11, Iss. 2 [2013], Art. 5 https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/nwjte/vol11/iss2/5 DOI: 10.15760/nwjte.2013.11.2.5 Fall 2013, Volume 11, Number 2 82 and the school communities that we all seek to create and sustain. In this article, we share how we have been living this question in our research and our teaching. We describe the literature that informs our inquiry, outline a conceptual model that has emerged from this literature and provide several stories of our experiences as teachers in university settings and with our research participants. We aim to shed light on the potential for teacher development that focuses on the use of positive psychology and organizational studies perspectives. Ultimately, we invite readers to think with us about the potential of living attuned and aligned to this provocative question inside and beyond the education domain. Using Positive Research to Conceptualize Flourishing in Schools We locate our research in the fields of school development, positive psychology (Carr, 2004; Seligman, 2011) and positive organizational scholarship (Cameron et al., 2003) linked to our ongoing research within learning community theory (Cherkowski, 2012; Cherkowski & Walker, 2011; Sackney & Walker, 2007). We support recent suggestions by established scholars in educational administration (e.g., Hoy & Tartar, 2011) to incorporate dimensions of positive psychology in educational research. Positive psychological practices encourage the development of positive outlooks, habits, and mental models and focuses on describing and building positive qualities in individuals rather than trying to repair the negative and destructive ones (Achor, 2011; Ben-Shahar, 2008; Seligman, 2002). It is the study of the conditions, strengths, and virtue—the study of what goes right in life—that enable individuals and communities to thrive (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008; Keyes, Frederickson, & Park, 2012). In general, traditional views have focused on “deficit models;” whereas positive psychology applies a “strengths-based” lens (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). As we have said elsewhere (Cherkowski & Walker, in press a), effective schools are characterized as communities of learners where, as Mitchell and Sackney (2009) stated, “real, joyful, human learning is at the centre of educational activity” (p. 2). If we think of schools as living systems that embrace their humanity to become life-enhancing rather than life-destroying, then one way to understand learning communities is as living systems, vibrant and growing communities of learners (Capra, 2002; Mitchell & Sackney, 2009). Where schools are organized around the principles of living systems, the work to increase 3 Cherkowski and Walker: Living the Flourish Question: Positivity as an Orientation for th Published by PDXScholar, 2013 83 Northwest Journal of Teacher Education capacities results in synergy for new skills and knowledge, enhanced and focused resources, and focused commitments (Sackney, 2007, p. 172). Schools, as learning communities, generate hallmarks that include a sense of belonging, compassion for all, loyalty, trust, mutual attachments, hopefulness and shared concerns (Strike, 2004, 2007). Such communities of learners foster mutual cooperation, emotional support and personal growth, and produce a synergy of effort to improve learning for all (Hord & Sommers, 2008). The re-framing and re-culturing of schools as true communities of flourishing learners forms the foundations for the building of the personal cognitive, psychological, emotional and physical resources that transforms people for the better, enabling them to thrive. As teacher educators, we want to focus our energies on efforts that foster educators’ selfflourishing, as well as helping them to develop life-giving learning communities within which students, their families and the entire learning community will also thrive. Recently, the focus on children’s social emotional learning in schools (Cohen, 2001; Elias & Arnold, 2006; Greenberg et al., 2003), moral development through character education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005), and even more prescriptively, learning how to develop empathy among school children (c.f., Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy program) are examples of research and program development which contribute to our understandings. Although the role of teachers is highlighted as a key element that ensures the success of these initiatives for developing students’ capacities and capabilities (Zins et al., 2004), research has yet to sufficiently focus on cultivating and nurturing educators’ abilities to deepen their own human capacities and capabilities within the learning community model. Given the antecedent role of educators to foster well-being in their students’ lives, we think this is a significant gap in our field of study. A growing discipline of positive psychology is committed to uncovering the varied ways that humans can tap into a greater sense of well-being in their lives through attending to personal strengths and positive growth towards a sense of flourishing (Seligman, 2011). People who flourish experience the opposite of languishing, yearning for more, or feelings of being stuck in a rut (Keyes & Lopez, 2002). People who flourish are more resilient and come closer to self-fulfillment, contentment, and happiness (Haybron, 2008; Martin & Marsh, 2006; Rassmussen, 1999). 4 Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 11, Iss. 2 [2013], Art. 5 https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/nwjte/vol11/iss2/5 DOI: 10.15760/nwjte.2013.11.2.5 Fall 2013, Volume 11, Number 2 84 Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) emerged from the discipline of positive organizational psychology (Carr, 2004) and continues to contribute theory on positive human capacity development in organizations and communities. POS research focuses on “the dynamics leading to the development of human strength, producing resilience and restoration, fostering vitality, and cultivating extraordinary individual and organizational performance” (Cameron & Caza, 2004, p. 3); where an emphasis is placed on the ideas of goodness and human potential, meaningfulness, and high quality relationships for all. In our research we use a positive organization lens to view the learning community and the people within it. This perspective in educational research may offer innovative ways of enhancing the teaching and learning that goes on in schools (Hoy & Tartar, 2011) and offers an alternative to rational technical, high stake performativity models for school improvement and accountability. We have drawn from the positive psychology and PO