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New study will create plan for building hope and resilience
“Hope is that place, and those moments, when all is good and right with the world. To be hopeful, we have to imagine these treasured moments in time and then try to bend the arc of the universe toward them like a directional beacon. We all navigate darkness in the course of a human life; hope is our ally, with resilience as the means to bend the arc.”
— Phil McRae
THE IMPACT OF THE CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) pandemic on public education systems around the world has been profound. It has accelerated issues such as inequity, mental health challenges and the promises (and perils) of technology across societies. In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic is an amplifier of the chronic issues we have faced pre-pandemic in many of our schools. As we are about to confront the psychological, social and economic fallout during the recovery phase of the pandemic, expected to run from 2022 to 2024, we will be contending with acute challenges on chronic issues, a place where hope is perhaps difficult to find, and a challenge to maintain.
FEELING HOPELESS
As part of our ongoing ATA pandemic research studies into what teachers and school leaders are experiencing throughout the province, the Association designed a rapid response feedback tool known as a “pandemic pulse survey” for Alberta teachers and school leaders. These research studies are the only systematic documentation of the conditions and experiences of Alberta’s K–12 public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and, as such, form an important part of the historic record. In this research we gathered large data sets on our colleagues’ perspectives on hope.
In the most recent ATA pandemic rapid research studies (spring and fall 2021), using random stratified sampling of several thousand professionals, we found that 54 per cent of Alberta teachers and school leaders identified that they felt hopeless (Alberta Teachers’ Association 2021). This is a stunning and deeply concerning revelation, and one that has garnered serious attention.
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| The University of Alberta’s Hope Studies Central and its resources on “Strengths, Hope and Resourcefulness Program for School Mental Health” are available at https://sharp.wp.educ.ualberta.ca. |
HOPE IS ESSENTIAL
Hope is essential to the profession of teaching, and indeed education itself. Without hope we have difficulty imagining the future, which is why teachers teach. To be hopeful in education, we have to imagine the treasured moments in our professional lives and then try to bend the arc of the universe toward them like a directional beacon. While “hope floats,” it does need a lighthouse to navigate the often stormy seas and darker waters of life. We all navigate significant challenges in the course of our vocation (think emergency remote teaching), but hope must become our ally, with resilience as the means to bend the arc.
Of particular concern as we move into a recovery phase from this global pandemic will be to establish a new declaration of hope for our Alberta K–12 schools and, in so doing, draw on individual and collective resilience that will make hope the new contagion that may spread across our schools as a social epidemic. Think of hope as contagion.
HOPE AS CONTAGION
There are now several research studies that document social contagions, such as hope and happiness. For example, Dr. Nicholas Christakis and Dr. James Fowler (2008) analyzed data gathered between 1983 and 2003 from nearly 5,000 individuals that assessed happiness by asking people to respond to statements like “I felt hopeful about the future” and “I was happy.” What these researchers discovered across more than 53,000 social and family ties was fascinating.
When a person in this study reported being happy, their spouse had an eight per cent chance of becoming happy, with the effects lasting up to one year. The data further showed that the brothers and sisters of a happy sibling had a 14 per cent greater chance of virally catching the happiness bug. Further afield, friends of a happy person living up to a mile away increased their chance of becoming happy by 25 per cent, with next-door neighbours being the beneficiaries of a 34 per cent increased chance of becoming happy. This study also found that while having more friends certainly increased happiness, it was more important to have happy friends who were key influencers of the social network’s happiness.
The exact same contagion is needed for hope, where we have the potential as teachers to influence others who have up to three degrees of separation from us — a friend of a friend of a friend — and therefore positively impact people that you may have never met in the post-pandemic world. In schools this means that the viral spread of hope becomes a collective and rapidly spreading phenomenon and presents our schools as sites of opportunity to unlock a wider community’s chances of recovering and building resilience post-pandemic.
HOPE TO CHANGE
To energize this possibility in Alberta, the Association has embarked upon a research study that will bring together a partnership with University of Alberta researchers, led by Dr. Denise Larsen, to explore hope from both the health (specifically counselling psychology) and educational perspectives.
The researchers will develop a research plan and conduct a comprehensive environmental scan of the state of hope/hopelessness in Alberta schools coming out of the first phase (acute infection) of the global pandemic. They will then scope out a system-level research and programmatic plan that highlights opportunities for the practical application of hope (and resilience building) within the teaching profession, including a special dimensionality for school leaders and other education workers who provide caregiving interactions across Alberta schools on a daily basis.
Of note is the University of Alberta’s Hope Studies Central and its resources on “Strengths, Hope and Resourcefulness Program for School Mental Health” (https://sharp.wp.educ.ualberta.ca), along with a database of hope research literature (Hope Studies Central 2021) that contains more than 4,500 articles and books specifically focused on the notion of hope. In this research literature, hope can be found to
- sustain mental health and motivation,
- enhance academic and athletic achievement,
- enrich relationships,
- improve a healthy sense of self and community,
- maintain physical health and psychological adjustment,
- lower substance use in youth (alcohol/cannabis) and
- help to develop (and move toward) career goals.
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The viral spread of hope becomes a collective and rapidly spreading phenomenon and presents our schools as sites of opportunity to unlock a wider community’s chances of recovering and building resilience post-pandemic. |
References
Alberta Teachers’ Association. 2021. Reporting on the Third Acute Wave of COVID-19 in Alberta K-12 Schools (Spring 2021). https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/News%20and%20Info/Issues/COVID-19/Reporting-on-the-Third-Acute-Wave-of-COVID-19-in-Alberta-Schools-Spring-2021.pdf (accessed December 6, 2021). Boyles, S. 2008. “Happiness Is Contagious: Social Networks Affect Mood, Study Shows.” WebMD website. https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20081204/happiness-is-contagious#1 (accessed December 6, 2021).
Fowler J, and N Christakis. 2008. “Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a Large Social Network: Longitudinal Analysis over 20 Years in the Framingham Heart Study.” British Medical Journal 337: a2338. https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2338.full (accessed December 6, 2021).
Hope Studies Central. 2021. “Hope-Lit Database.” Hope Studies Central website. http://www.hope-lit.ualberta.ca/Hope-LitDatabase.html (accessed December 6, 2021).
