Week 11 - School & Work Flashcards
School and Work
These two places help us understand the world as well as our own place in the world
We learn about our own strengths and weaknesses
positive schooling
an educational approach which includes care, trust, respect for diversity
Teachers develop individual goals for students
Teachers work with students to develop plans for reaching goals
Larger agendas include instilling hope and contributing to society
Sigmund Freud who first made the bold statement that a healthy life is one in which
a person has the ability to love and to work
“No Child Left Behind” and Beyond
Coleman Report (1966): Schools ineffective; they don’t make a difference in the outcomes of the students
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – An Act passed in USA in 2001 ◦
Emphasis on targeted learning and performance objectives
Teacher quality matters – this is crucial to better learner outcomes
Lack of Funding Hurts Students
Schools harmed by lack of funds – the US public is reluctant to increase taxes to pay for schools and teachers
This is also true in Ontario!
Consider the 2020 teachers’ strike:
Ontario teachers didn’t want class size increases and mandatory e-learning put into place.
School Climate
Includes the kinds of interactions teachers and students have in the classroom, expectations of standards, methods used in the classroom
General learning atmosphere in a school
Attitudes of students & staff, order & discipline, student participation
School Climate
Demandingness:
extent to which students are expected to perform up to their potential and show self-reliance and self-control
School Climate
Responsiveness:
extent to which teachers and staff respect students’ opinions and feelings
Optimum School Climate
Supportive teachers, involved with students, dedicated
Firm-but-fair discipline
High expectations for student performance and conduct
Higher attendance
Higher achievement scores
Lower rates of delinquency
The Components of Positive Schooling
Care, Trust, and Respect for Diversity
Social acceptance from teachers – teachers are role models
Developmental discipline – nonpunitive ways to prevent aggressive/controlling children from harming others – this is based on attachment theory (see chapter 12)
Cultivate sense of trust in classroom
Try to make students look good (save face)
Students must feel respected by their teacher in order to take risks
Cultural sensitivity is very important
Engagement & Achievement
Engagement: Being psychologically committed to learning
Research indicates that more and more, students are “physically present but psychologically absent” (Steinberg, 1996, p. 67)
How has “zoom learning” had an impact on engagement (now and then)?
The Components of Positive Schooling
Emphasize diversity in classroom – model cultural intelligence
Provide students with opportunities to learn about other cultures
Teach about differences as well as similarities
The Jigsaw Classroom
Small groups work on a common task
Group members move to new groups to share what they learned
The Components of Positive Schooling
Teachers should examine biases
All humans have inherent biases – we must work to recognize them
Teachers must help the children recognize their biases and correct automatic behaviours/thoughts
Compensatory programs for struggling students and for gifted students
The Components of Positive Schooling
Goals (Content) and Plans
Students who target stretch goals have good learning outcomes
This is where they seek a slightly more difficult goal (remember our discussion about growth mindsets?)
The Components of Positive Schooling
Material should be relevant to students – making sure that students can relate to the material allows for it to “stick” better
Make goals understandable and concrete
Take large goals and break them down in to smaller subgoals
This takes planning by the instructors
The Components of Positive Schooling
Motivation
Students need motivated teachers – an enthusiastic teacher projects energy to his/her students!
Teachers raise students’ motivational level when they take risks
Sometimes classroom exercises don’t work – the teacher needs to be able to laugh about it
The Components of Positive Schooling
Increase student accountability
– if students are aware that they will be asked about reading material, they are more likely to read it (ahem…weekly quizzes work this way too!)
Teachers should provide private praise to their students
Private, because students can feel uncomfortable when singled out
The Components of Positive Schooling
Hope
When teachers share their academic values, curiosities, and enthusiasm, students embrace those values themselves
Students who have had good teachers feel empowered and hopeful for the future
The Components of Positive Schooling
Societal Contributions
Finally, it’s important to teach young people how to be a member of society
E.g., multicultural competence, positive thinking, respect for others
Teaching as a Calling
Strong, enthusiastic teachers see their job as a calling
Intrinsically satisfying
Strong motivation
Love for teaching!
We can help our children’s teachers in a few ways:
Ask the teacher how you can reinforce and practice lessons at home
Teach your children to be respectful to others, especially those who come from different cultures
Ask the teacher if he/she requires supplies for the classroom, and buy them!
Express gratitude. These jobs are often difficult.
Gaining employment is work that is characterized by 9 benefits:
- Variety in duties performed
- A safe working environment
- Income for the family and oneself
- A purpose derived from providing a product or service
- Happiness and satisfaction
- Positive engagement and involvement
- A sense of performing well and meeting goals
- The companionship of and loyalty to coworkers, bosses, and companies
- A working environment that respects and appreciates diversity
If a person is happy at work, chances are that their overall satisfaction with life will be higher
Career self-efficacy
– personal confidence in our ability to handle workrelated goals (including career development)
Building career self-efficacy:
—student athletes -more support from various academic services felt more confident in making decisions about possible career choices
—students who have family members who contribute meaningfully (both financially and in terms of advice and help) to the career decision-making process develop higher levels of self-efficacy in the career arena
—-acculturation may positively affect development of feelings of self-efficacy with regard to career in Latino youth
—–Asian Americans and African Americans, programs designed to increase career self-efficacy were successful when they contained constructivist approaches—that is, when participants were able to make personal meaning out of various factors that influenced career choice and decisions
Performing well is due to clear goals – these goals should be clearly identified for workers
high-hope boss also can provide greater satisfaction at work. This sequence unfolds this way: The high-hope boss clearly identifies achievable work subgoals, which in turn increases workers’ motivation and the chances of reaching larger organizational goals
Employees feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction
Happiness is precursor to work success
The direction of the correlation between happiness and work success has been questioned, but work by Boehm and Lyubomirsky (2008) conducted a review and concluded that happiness comes first
Happy people are more likely to get a second interview (Burger & Caldwell, 2000)
Purpose
One’s work is an important potential source of purpose in life
Part of this might include feeling as though their presence and skills are valued at their place of work.
Hospital cleaners to share their experiences of being valued, it was clear that feeling valued helped these individuals to derive meaning from their work that provided positivity in their life
Engagement at work leads to satisfaction – are employees’ needs being meet?
Do employees know what is expected of them?
Do employees have what they need to do their work?
Do they have opportunities to develop social ties to coworkers?
Do they have chances to improve and develop?
The most engaging jobs have a good match between required activities and the skill of the employee.
This is similar to flow experiences. Those who feel commitment at work have higher levels of engagement and satisfaction
Variety in Job Duties
Cell manufacturing in industrial or tech settings is one way to alleviate boredom at work
Groups of workers are all trained on multiple pieces of manufacturing equipment and work together to create entire products from start to finish
presenteeism -
If an employee doesn’t have enough variety, it can lead to presenteeism
- employee may physically be at work, but because of the mental health problems that often result from aversive and repetitive work experiences, they is unproductive and unhappy
Effective ways to handle presenteeism:
Accommodate various working styles, encourage telecommuting, flexible schedules
Changes in life roles, Income for Family and Self
Changes in life roles, moving away from males = breadwinner and females = caregiver ◦
These roles are modelled for our children – what do we want them to see?
We should be modelling flexibility
Daughters in families who have mothers with less traditional and more prestigious careers gain more ideas about how to balance family and work early on in their developmental trajectory
making money has been rated as more important than
having a cohesive philosophy of life
People in the United States still may think of quality of life in terms of how much money they make.
Companionship and Loyalty to Coworkers and Bosses: Friends at Work
Another reason that work may be associated with happiness is seen in the case of people whose friendship networks are located entirely within the employment setting
chance to get out of the house and interact with others
Gallup researchers, presented in the book Vital Friends, confirmed that the sense of community at a given workplace is a contributing factor to happiness and satisfaction on the job
a—- best friend at work, you are likely to have fewer accidents, increased safety, more engaged customers, and increased achievement and productivity
“diversity management
using various management techniques that increase the positive outcomes associated with having more diversity in the workplace
organizations that use this type of management are proactive in attempting to address potential problems.
leaders are heterogeneous in their cultural backgrounds ensures that responsibility for important decisions is spread across several different types of individuals
engagement with diversity from the top level of management down is often the most effective approach
Having or Being a Good Boss
Supervisors who provide clear job definitions and duties and support to employees foster job satisfaction and production
Managers should focus on employee strengths, communicating clearly, and providing constructive feedback
Authentic bosses foster positive emotions and outcomes
encourages differing views and interacts collaboratively with workers.
authentic bosses value diversity in their employees and want to identify and build on employee talents and strengths
The authentic boss sets high standards for their own behavior and models integrity and honesty to employees
Top 10” Characteristics of the Best Bosses
- Provide clear goals and job duties
- Personal awareness of biases and power dynamics and strive toward cultural competency
- Genuine and authentic in their interactions with everyone
- They are ethical and demonstrate moral values
- They are honest and model integrity
- They find employee talents and strengths and build on them
- They trust workers and facilitate their employees’ trust in them
- They encourage diverse views from diverse employees and can take feedback about themselves
- They set high but reasonable standards
- They are not just friends to employees but can deliver corrective feedback so that it is heard
Clifton and Harter (2003), there are three stages in the strengths-based approach to gainful employment:
- Identification of talents
- Integration of talents into employee’s self-image
—the person learns to define himself or herself according to these talents - Behavioral change
—-learns to attribute any successes to their special talents.
Does It Work? In short, YES!
Related to better choices, productivity, self-confidence
Happiness strengths predict work success
Positive affect
Traditional economic capital
– an organization’s answer to the question “what do you have?”
Financial, tangible assets
Human capital
–what do you know refers to the employees
Experience, education, skills, knowledge, ideas
Social capital –
is the answer to the question “who do you know?”
Relationships, network, friends, diversity and inclusion
Positive psychological capital –
consists of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency
Confidence, hope, optimism, resiliency
Positive Psychological Capital
Positive psychological capital is linked to better organizational commitment, better motivation
Group interventions increase psychological capital
Positive leadership also increases psychological capital
Unique, measurable, developable, impactful on performance
good reasons for such diversity of social capital
enhance the overall level of energy and talent, thereby raising the problem-solving potential of the organization
equal opportunity; it is therefore ethically and morally right to enhance diversity among workers
cultural diversity raises the performance of all workers
legislation pertaining to equal pay, civil rights, pregnancy and age discrimination, and individuals with disabilities mandates diversity as a legal requirement
Lost Workaholics: Obsessed by work
Stay late, hard on others, perfectionists
Less pleasure in leisure
obsessed by their work—so much so that they cannot attend to the responsibilities of their friends and family
Greater conflict between work and family
Burnout:
: Tired, lack of reward from job
. Initially, the employee has a high level of energy, but this begins to wane over time.
The employee encounters severe time constraints in getting the work done, there are barriers to the work goals, and the bosses tend not to give rewards and yet ask more and more of the employee because she or he is getting things done.
Burnout Often due to: Exhaustion, cynicism, inefficacy
Factors which lower work stress: goal setting, problem resolution, time management, aerobic exercise, relaxation techniques, general coping
Losing your job has many psychological and physical effects
Unemployment linked to early death & suicide completion
What Can Be Done to Improve Your Work?
Making the Job Better
Identify changes that could be made – e.g., better office, longer or more frequent vacations, assistant, benefits
Consider factors of gainful employment – do you have variety? Safety? Sufficient income? Sense of purpose? Personal happiness? Positive engagement? Sense that you are performing well? Friendship? An environment which respects diversity?
Maximize fulfillment of needs – appreciation and savouring
Applying for a New Job
Remain flexible
Take a vocational/interest test
Conduct informational interviews
Negotiate factors of gainful employment (see previous slide)
If you have trouble finding work, use principles of positive psychology: hope, optimism, gratitude, resilience, self-efficacy
