Well-being In The Workplace V Economic Well-being?
16 November 2009
Professor Dennis Hayes, below, is involved in the ESRC-funded seminar series this week.
Could concentrating on well-being in the workplace hinder the UK's economic and creative drive to beat the current recession?
That's a key theme education expert Professor Dennis Hayes will debate when he delivers a paper on emotional well-being in the workplace as part of a national ESRC-funded seminar series this week.
He is one of the organisers of the series and the next session takes place on Thursday and Friday at the National College of School Leadership in Nottingham. The event will explore the multi-disciplinary approach to emotional well-being in education.
Professor Hayes is Professor of Education at the University of Derby and joined earlier this year as its Head of the Research Centre for Education and Career Development. He is Honorary Secretary of the Standing Committee for the Education and Training of Teachers (SCETT) and was the first president of the University and College Union in 2006-7.
Academic experts from a number of universities and other organisations are attending the invitation-only event entitled: Emotional well-being in education: implications for policy, pedagogy and purposes.
Dennis will argue that: "Much of what happens in business and the public sector today, including consultancy, management meetings, staff appraisals, and even trade union activities are being transformed into 'therapy at work'.
"Failure to recognise this change is particularly dangerous at present", he argues, "because management and union practices that focus on emotional well-being may undermine creativity and the productive drive that is necessary to take Britain's economy out of recession."
Dennis's paper 'emotional well-being in the workplace', will then face a respondent, a paper from Dr Vanessa Pupavac, Co-Director of the Centre for Social and Global Justice, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, who is currently researching the changing international workplace.
Elsewhere during the two-day event, delegates will discuss the following: An overriding question is whether education can and should attempt to develop emotional wellbeing as a response to deep-seated social problems.
"This has significant implications for educational goals, practices and outcomes and for professional roles and the knowledge skills and practices they require.
Further, organisers suggest that policy and practice in this area have influenced ideas about what education is for, the content of the curriculum, teaching and assessment methods, and the roles of teachers and a growing array of professionals working alongside them.
The fields of behavioural and social psychology are currently of great interest to policy makers across a range of public policy arenas, including well-being.
There will be a series of discussions over the two days and other speakers include representatives from the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham, Nottingham and London; the Centre for Policy Studies, the Institute of Education and the Dartington Trust.
For more details visit: www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/education/esrc/index.html.
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