The Good Project Core Concepts: Engagement

by Shelby Clark

When you go to work, how do you feel? Consider the following questions: 

• At work, do you feel bursting with energy? 

• At work, do you feel full of meaning and purpose? 

• Does time fly when you are working?

• Are you enthusiastic about your job? 

• Does your job inspire you? 

• When you get up in the morning, do you want to go to work? 

If you answered yes to many of these questions, it’s likely that you feel very engaged by your work. Engagement can refer to how committed individuals feel towards their “work, team, and organization.” How happy and satisfied someone is at work is also often an element of worker engagement, perhaps why engagement and well-being efforts often go hand-in-hand. Commitment, happiness, satisfaction – these ideas of engagement are common. For example, students might be described as engaged in their school work if they show dedication and “stick-to-itiveness” or if they are consistently excited to show up to school each day.  

Here at The Good Project, the idea of engagement, in addition to ethics and excellence, serves as one of our 3 Es of “good work.” However, when The Good Project research originally began in the 1990s, this concept was not a part of the original “Es.” As Gardner described in Good Work: Theory and Practice, “To be sure, Excellence and Ethics emerged soon after Humane Creativity [the original Good Work study] had transmogrified into a study of the professions; but Engagement was added near the end of the empirical study.” 

The Good Work research study originally began with hundreds of interviews from a variety of different professions, including those such as genetics, journalism, law, and medicine. However, it was not until the research sample was later broadened to include more of the caring professions, such as teachers and nurses, that engagement was added to the “good work” model. These interviews indicated that without a clear commitment to and love of one’s work, those in these caring professions burnout or quickly leave the field. However, as other Good Project research has shown, too much engagement, or an overidentification with one’s work, can similarly lead to burnout. 

Lynn Barendsen described this phenomenon of engagement and over-engagement in The Good Project’s work with teachers over the past several years. These teachers, as Lynn noted, worked with The Good Project team on various research projects and have been “deeply committed to their students. Their work often went “above and beyond” - beyond regular hours and beyond “formal” commitments. The shared experiences between teachers and students can be positive experiences for both: teachers often describe learning from students, feeling a deep sense of meaning in their work; students identify teachers as role models for a lifetime. And yet teachers who give too much of themselves (especially in these days of remote learning) may well suffer from burnout and exhaustion.

Engagement as one of The Good Project’s 3 Es has been left open to some interpretation to fit a variety of contexts. In 2010, in line with Csikszentmihalyi’s original contributions to the Good Work project, we wrote that engagement means that the work “yields experiences of flow”. By 2015, engagement meant that a worker “likes to go to work, appreciates the institution in which she works, values her colleagues, and relishes the opportunity to practice her craft.” In 2021, we spoke of engaging work as being work that is “meaningful and purposeful for the worker.”

Figuring out how to create meaningful and purposeful work is not a new phenomenon (Cal Newport of The New Yorker asks us to remember the “follow your passion” hysteria of the 1990s parents of today’s Millennials). However, with the onset of Covid-19, the question of how to create and maintain one’s engagement in work became more important than ever, particularly in some spheres. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 44% of teachers felt burned out at work – significantly more than full time workers in any other industry. Moreover, only 35% of U.S. workers overall are considered “engaged” at work, and 61% of Gen Zers want a job that has a purpose beyond making a profit. 

At The Good Project, we’ve found that engagement overlaps with a variety of our other core concepts, such as missions, values, and responsibilities. A main finding from our work has been that having a common purpose or mission can often serve as a guidepost for employee engagement. As Lynn Barendsen explained, “Having a religious basis for work, or having colleagues that share the same mission, whether frankly religious or religious in spirit, can sometimes spell the difference between continuing and dropping out.” The Good Project has found that mission statements can help individuals to identify how their own values are in line with the mission of their organization. Indeed, missing statements have the power to “unify people around a common idea” and ask individuals to think about whether they agree with the kind of impact their organization is making in the world. 

Furthermore, The Good Project work has encouraged individuals to understand how their personal values contribute to their feelings of engagement. Individuals might do this by exploring their values via The Good Project Value Sort. That is, what is more important to them – acquiring wealth, acquiring fame, acquiring learning, or helping the community? Such rankings can help guide individuals to pursue work and activities that are more focused on their preferred values.

We know that more and more workers want to feel they are making a difference and are doing meaningful work. By using The Good Project’s Rings of Responsibility activity or exploring our impact framework, individuals can explore more what it means for them to make a difference in the world. Pursuing such work is another way for individuals to feel greater engagement.  

Consider the above definitions and suggestions. Would you consider yourself engaged at work? If yes, why? If not, why not? Might you be over-engaged? Burned out? Take stock of some of the suggestions recommended above. Do any of them resonate with your experience? Maybe your organization just needs to better articulate its mission and goals in order for you to feel a sense of direction. Or, rather, maybe your organization has a strong sense of mission, and you’re just not sure whether or not your values align because you haven’t had a chance to reflect on it systematically. Instead, perhaps you need to re-prioritize based on your overall goals for making a difference in your life. Or, maybe there is a conversation that could be started at your work regarding new goal setting or changing mindsets. 

Certainly, not every job will be engaging for every worker. But, hopefully, this blog helps offer some guidance for thinking about what engagement is and how and why one is or is not engaged in a variety of settings. 

Below are some resources you might use to explore engagement: 

A video describing the 3Es of The Good Project (Ethics, Excellence, & Engagement): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNqvhQUGPU&list=PL5sNbw1uznitpzLCwnv49tgumEAh1bcxG

What is my Mission? Activity 

https://www.thegoodproject.org/activities-database-blog/2020/8/12/interview-a-worker-9wg8s-xgzhs-k3prh-2g5k7-zewcz-d2bch?rq=engagement

“Tough Love” Dilemma

https://www.thegoodproject.org/activities-database-blog/2020/8/12/interview-a-worker-9wg8s-xgzhs-k3prh?rq=engagement

Picture Yourself as a… 

https://www.thegoodproject.org/activities-database-blog/2020/7/13/your-two-cents-lblty-b2854-y5xrs-b2jp4-zwkmk-6esn9-xdyny-fmwyf-p2rcr-92wa8?rq=engagement

Why Should Ethicists Care about Pre-School Classes?

by Howard Gardner

An Unexpected Focus

Why should we—researchers studying moral and ethical character in adolescents and young adults—be interested in how young children are treated as early as the pre-school years? To be sure: It’s been well established that the early years of life are critical for the healthy development of the individual. Accordingly, observations and findings about various approaches to early education may well be revealing.

A remarkable set of studies, carried out over the last forty years, has illuminated three distinctive approaches to early childhood education. In the early 1980s, educational anthropologist Joseph Tobin and his colleagues examined preschool education in Japan, China, and the United States. Two decades later, members of the research team returned to the same sites; they documented both continuities and changes in the trio of settings, sometimes with the same teachers. And then, yet again, during the most recent decade, the research team, now led by Tobin’s former student Akiko Hayashi, returned to the sites that had been earlier studied—this time focusing particularly on the way that teachers and teaching had changed over the decades.

The methods employed by the researchers were original and turned out to be surprisingly revealing. In addition to ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews, the team created short videos of classrooms in-operation in the three societies. Thereafter, they showed these videos to educators across the three cultures and gathered their observations, analyses, and critiques. This multi-faceted approach elicited reflections on pedagogical approaches in the teachers’ own society, as well as observations and critiques by observers drawn from the other two societies.

It hardly needs to be stated: with four books on the shelf, as well as numerous articles, presentations and symposia, one could create a lengthy summary—and still leave out much of importance. For present purposes, I have a single focus: how educators across the three societies handle conflict in the preschool class. The distinctive approaches reveal much about how adults—and particularly educators—conceptualize conflict; and these conceptualizations, in turn, may provide clues to, hints of, the moral and ethical landscape of the respective societies.

An Episode, Response by Teachers, and Diverse Interpretations across the Three Societies

At the Komatsudani preschool on the east side of Kyoto, four old Hiroki is misbehaving. He is hitting other children, hoarding toys, disrupting organized activities—and over the course of the day, his demeanor actually gets worse.

What happens in the Japanese classroom? Ostensibly, very little. The teachers stay largely in the background, wait for Hiroki to calm down, even ignore some attacks that might have mildly injured other children. The day finally ends at 6 PM when Hiroki’s father picks him up.

Watching the video, most Japanese educators find this an acceptable reaction. They believe that no serious injury is likely to occur. The students will learn about how to handle challenging situations as they seek to control or modulate Hiroki themselves—rather than relying on adult interventions; Hiroki will learn that little is to be gained by this anti-social behavior. Instead, he will be motivated to become an accepted member of the cohort… and this feeling of belonging is central to Japanese culture.

Not so for educators in the other societies who view a video of the episode. Most do not approve! They think that the teachers (knowledgeable and responsible authority figures) can and should intervene. The misbehaving child deserves it; he will draw an appropriate lesson from this adult intervention; the children who are being mistreated deserve to be protected and rescued. Indeed, in their passivity, the teachers may well be derelict. Moreover, the other students are absorbing the wrong message: misbehavior is to be tolerated–perhaps event tacitly encouraged–by authority figures.

To be sure: not every observer reflects this attitude. Certainly, some Japanese educators feel that the teachers are not fulfilling their educational roles appropriately; the adults in the room should directly address this anti-social behavior. And observers from the other societies also vary in the extent to which they critique teachers, though few would have permitted such disruptive and possible injurious behavior to proceed unchallenged for so long.

Follow-up

Societies are not static! China has gone through several changes—the mid-1980s and early 2000s were more permissive than earlier or more recent periods. The establishment of academic standards has become widely accepted, though the pendulum continually swings between progressive and conservative orientations. The United States has moved in the direction of greater accountability, including a focus on numeracy, literacy, and pre-literacy skills. Japan has more for-profit schools and has sought to incorporate lessons from other societies, such as the admired pre-schools of Northern Italy.

Still there seem to be some throughlines, some continuities:

In Japan, classes remain large—as many as 30 students for one teacher. (And some see advantages in classrooms of this size—students are more likely to realize that adults are not necessarily available to intervene). Teachers tend to remain in their previous niches or to take on more authority within their designated school. The “Three Rs” are not salient.

In China, the acquisition of study and work habits should start early. Individual differences in achievement are to be expected and should be acknowledged; but so is membership in the group, ranging from the class, to the school, to the wider Chinese society.

In the United States, schools are expected to engender independence, autonomy, and individuality. This characterization obtains for teachers as well—many continue to pursue their own education, typically at their own expense, and often will end up in different schools, in different roles, or even in a different occupation.

Stepping Back

What are we to make of all this? On the one hand, I’ve described but a single line of research—a few schools, for very young children. In most societies around the globe, including the three observed by the Tobin team, youngsters will have many additional years of schooling as well as decades of work and family life ahead of them. All of these experiences are likely to have an impact. Moreover, I’ve focused on only one classroom interaction—and others (for example, how teachers deal with events and encounters that occur in the school playground or in the neighborhood)—will doubtless have impact as well.

On the other hand, as scholars of education (as well as psychology and neuroscience), we have now accrued massive evidence of the importance of the early years of life. The brain develops (or fails to develop) in crucial ways. Social and emotional models are being observed, absorbed, emulated, (or, on occasion, rejected); and so have skills and attitudes toward work as well as play. To be sure, not everything is determined by the age of five,—nor (to riff off a once well-known book title) has all been learned by kindergarten (!) –but a great deal has been.

The traces laid down in early life can be overthrown if society changes radically; or if the preschools (or, for that matter, education at home) undergo a major reformulation and reconceptualization. But it’s naïve to think that moral and ethical standards can simply be flown in or imposed at the age of 10, 20, or later. A basis—what Germans term “anlage” —has been well established; —and if it remains or is reinforced in the succeeding decades, the results are powerful and enduring traits, behaviors, personalities. These cannot be easily changed! And so, as just one example, believing that one is part of a group, and should not assert one’s individuality too much, is far more characteristic of Japanese than American youth…hence the much-cited Image of Japan as a ‘shame’ rather than a ‘guilt’ culture.

Moreover, these patterns of thought and behavior in turn have an impact on the societies that struggle for dominance in our world. In 1945 the United States presumed as Number One; in 1980 Japan described as Number One (Vogel, 1979) and in our time, China asserting itself as Number One.

In future writings, my colleagues and I will focus on the ways in which schools around the world contribute to the ethical standards and mooring of the broader society.

The Good Starts Project is generously funded by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation.

For comments on earlier drafts, I thank researchers, Joseph Tobin and Akiko Hayashi, and also my colleagues, Lynn Barendsen and Shinri Furuzawa.

REFERENCES

Fulghum, R. (1989). Everything I ever really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten. Ballantine Books.

Hayashi, A. (2022). Teaching expertise in three countries: Japan, China, and the United States. University of Chicago Press.

Tobin, J., & Hayashi, A. (2015). Teaching Embodied: Cultural Practices in Japanese Preschools. University of Chicago Press.

Tobin, J. J., Hsueh, Y., & Karasawa, M. (2009). Preschool in three cultures revisited: China, Japan, and the United States. University Of Chicago Press.

Tobin, J., Wu, D., & Davidson, D. (1989). Preschool in three Cultures: Japan, China, and the United States. Yale University Press.

Does a Research Oath for Doctoral Students Make Sense?

by Howard Gardner

The French Office for Research Integrity recently announced a new policy. Going forward, all students who receive—as well as all who expect to receive—a doctorate in any field will be required to take an ethical oath. The wording: “I pledge to the greatest of my ability, to continue to maintain integrity in my relationship to knowledge, to my methods, and to my results.” On two occasions, these individuals need to affirm that, as holders of a doctoral degree, they will adhere in their work to the highest ethical standards.

The case for such a requirement is straightforward. In recent years, across the broad range of physical, natural, and social sciences, there have been numerous cases in which holders of doctorates have behaved in ways that disgrace their profession and may also damage human beings. Two cases that have recently received publicity:

1. Widespread claims that amyloid deposits cause dementia—and hence can be addressed by palliative drugs—have been based on faulty or ambiguous evidence.

2. Widespread claims that the blood thinner Xarelto can help to heal cardiac damage—it can actually have deleterious effects—have also been withdrawn because of data manipulation.

Moving beyond the medical sector, in my own field of psychology, the haphazard collection, misinterpretation, and fudging of data have been widespread. In response, all sorts of new requirements and checkpoints have been introduced—to what avail, remains to be seen. In light of such accumulating evidence of malfeasance, an oath is, so to speak, a no-brainer.

But it is almost as easy to make the case against such oaths. Numerous fields—ranging from those dating back to the time of Hippocrates to those new areas of work whose claim to be a profession are debatable—have ethical principles and/or oaths. These are easily accessible and sometimes administered solemnly. And yet, rarely does one hear of severe consequences for those who clearly have violated these precepts. Indeed (and this is not meant as a judgment), practitioners nowadays are far more likely to be penalized or chastised if they misbehave toward a colleague or make injudicious remarks than if they fail to honor the core strictures of their profession. And those whose malpractice has been confirmed at one institution all too often find a comparable position at other (though perhaps less prestigious) institutions.

As one who has held a doctorate for over a half century, I have a clear perspective on this matter. Far more important than any kind of oath, whenever and however administered, are the practices and norms that students witness in the course of their training. This immersion begins early in education (dating back well before matriculation at college or university) and reaches its apogee in the years of doctoral training. Particularly crucial are the standards, models, words, deeds of teachers, especially doctoral advisers; the values and ambitions of peers—other doctoral students in the cohort; and the atmosphere among young and senior professionals who work alongside the candidate in the lab, at the library, in class, or in the lunchroom.

Of course, there will always be exceptions. There will be graduates who, despite the positive models readily visible in their training, proceed to violate their professional oaths and norms. (I can think of colleagues who, lamentably, failed to learn from estimable role models). There will also be graduates who, despite a flawed adviser, lab atmosphere, and/or peer group, hold the highest standards for themselves and others. Bravo for them!

But we cannot and should not wait for outliers (or, if you prefer, out-liars!) We cannot count on physicians healing themselves or researchers reading and re-reading the oath that they have sworn to uphold. Instead, as teachers and mentors, we need to apply a critical lens to our own practices and models; and, if they are flawed in any way, we must strive to correct them. If future doctorates encounter positive models, we can rest assured that most of them will follow in the footsteps of their mentors. And then, should such an oath be required, it will serve—not as a prayer but as a celebration.

For helpful suggestions, I thank Courtney Bither and Ellen Winner

Top 5 Articles - Back To School

For many of us—including those in the US—a new school year has officially launched. While we hope that this is really the year that we “return to normal,” there are still some lingering effects from the last two years of pandemic that must be recognized and addressed. That said, the promise of a new start lends the opportunity for new tactics and strategies in the classroom. 

Take a look below to find some of the latest articles that our team has been reading and sharing as we kick off the new academic year. 

1. In this article, John Spencer argues that teachers need to be given the space to take creative risks with their teaching. Freedom gives teachers professional agency, which helps to bolster engagement in their craft. It also allows teachers to serve as role models for their students who are asked on a daily basis to take risks in their own learning. Spencer goes on to suggest 10 creative risks for teachers to try out this year. We hope this inspires some educators to test drive something new.

2. While schools are back in person, the effects of the pandemic and remote learning are still being felt. For some students, this can show itself through burn out. We’ve talked a lot over the last year about worker burnout, but how can teachers and schools turn their attention to this issue within their students? Miriam Plotinsky of Edutopia describes the problem space and offers some strategies for mitigating the effects of student burnout in her article here. 

3. In response to the rising number of students experiencing mental health issues, many teachers have added a mental health check-in with students to their daily routine. This article from NPR describes this new strategy and how school systems and professional care are working with educators to get resources to those students who need additional support. 

4. What do you know about Mastery Based Learning (MBL)? The Hechinger Report’s article gets into the nitty gritty of MBL and offers a rebuttal to some of the most common arguments from skeptics. Take a look and see if this might be the approach your students need to improve performance and deepen understanding.

5. Larry Cuban recently revisited his popular article on “classroom expectations” here. Cuban discusses not only how a teacher’s expectations of their students ultimately influence classroom outcomes, but also how students’ expectations of their teachers also play into the behaviors and academic achievements of the group.

8 Things We Learned About United World College's Mission-Based Education

by Shelby Clark and Danny Mucinskas

From 2017-2022, our team was involved in an investigation of international mission-driven schools, centered on the United World Colleges movement. A full report of findings was released in June 2022 and is available here.

A synthesis of major findings is presented in the slideshow below, which may be helpful for readers to understand the major takeaways that have come out of this original research.

Find an accessible version of these slides here [link].

For more information about the study overall, including appendices, background information, and the instruments used, please visit edimpactstudy.com [link].