Enabling Self-Directed Academic and Personal Wellbeing Through Cognitive Education.

backgroundThe international crisis of declining learner wellbeing exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic with its devastating effects on physical health and wellbeing, impels the prioritization of initiatives for specifically enabling academic and personal wellbeing among school learners to ensure autonomous functioning and flourishing in academic and daily life. Research emphasizes the role of self-directed action in fostering wellbeing. However, there is limited research evidence of how self-directed action among school learners could be advanced.

aimWe explore the effectiveness of an intervention initiative that exposes teachers to foregrounding Cognitive Education - the explicit and purposeful teaching of thinking skills and dispositions to learners that would advance self-regulated action - to establish the latent potential of the intervention for assisting learners to develop self-regulating abilities that progressively inspires increased self-directed action.

methodWe illuminate the qualitative outcomes of an exploratory pilot study with a heterogeneous group of willing in-service teachers from two public primary schools (

resultsThe findings revealed that exposure to the intervention holds benefits for equipping teachers with teaching strategies to create classroom conditions that nurture the development of thinking skills and dispositions that are important for self-regulating, and ultimately self-directing academic and personal wellbeing.

conclusionCognitive Education is a form of strengths-based education that can play an indispensable role in enabling self-directed academic and personal wellbeing among school learners.