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Personal and Social Education
LEARNING PROGRAMME: PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EDUCATION
The Personal and Social Education (PSE) programme helps to ensure that students feel secure and valued. In turn, this provides an effective base that encourages their learning, growth and social development. PSE underpins our entire programme, and is informed by both our mission and our Singapore context. It supports our international student community so that they feel truly valued by the adults who are leading their learning. The intent is that they can continue to grow in self-awareness, gaining an understanding of themselves and how they interact with those around them so as to develop effective and open-minded responses to personal and cultural differences. Time is dedicated each week for the intentional delivery of this important part of the student experience. However, student welfare is not limited to the allocated PSE time with their classroom teacher/mentor. Student welfare is also encompassed by safeguarding, learning support, wellness centre and counselling support, university advising, Heads of Grade, Vice Principals and Principals in supporting social and emotional needs of students. While all members of staff have a responsibility for the wellbeing of students, the learning support and wellness and counselling teams are central and work closely with teachers to ensure that students are supported both within and outside of the classroom.
The PSE curriculum content is classified in three overarching concepts: 1. individual wellbeing 2.relationships and community (interpersonal wellbeing) 3.student ability to engage with global issues (global wellbeing)
In 2019/2020, UWCSEA embarked on a three-year project to build teacher capacity to assist students based on their individualised learning styles. Aligned with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strand in the UWCSEA Strategy, the programme examines how behaviours in the classroom can be linked to differences in how students think and process information. By deconstructing the behaviour they observe in class, teachers can gain an understanding of how best to support the student’s neuro-developmental needs and preferences. For example, a student with an auditory processing issue (who may present as forgetful or disinterested) may need to have instructions written down, in a step-by-step list, rather than receiving instructions verbally or looking at them on a computer screen. Or a student with memory retention challenges (who often forgets their homework), may be helped by using tactile mediums to take notes or remember deadlines.
In Term 1 of 2019/2020, an initial pilot group, selected from Head of Departments across the High School, were identified. In partnership with Learning Support in the Dover High School, a professional learning plan was developed. This group identified goals and training plans to implement while working with a core group of students. While COVID-19, and in particular the circuit breaker (lockdown), interrupted the launch to the initial group, it created an opportunity for ongoing virtual training with experienced specialist educator Sylvia Leck, Academic Director of Foundations for Learning, which will continue into 2020/2021. By the end of the 2020/2021 year, the pilot group and High School Heads of Department will have completed core training modules. Initial positive feedback has supported the continued plans to implement the programme across the next two years throughout the High School, which will be funded through donations to the UWCSEA Foundation. The work is linked to a simultaneous project examining mental health and wellbeing in the High School.
OPERATIONAL RESPONSE: SUPPORTING OUR BOARDING COMMUNITY THROUGH REMOTE LEARNING
The period from early February, which saw travel restrictions and increasingly restricted access to campus was particularly felt in the boarding houses. Significant changes in operations were required to continue to support students throughout the period: from the introduction of stay at home notices and quarantining as boarding students returned from their Chinese New Year break, to the closure of borders for international travel meaning that students could no longer travel home during the break—or could not return to Singapore if they chose, understandably, to return home. For these students, a remote learning programme was implemented in tandem with the High School timetable, even before the period of circuit breaker and full remote learning for all students once the campuses closed in early April. While their academic timetable continued, during these periods of remote learning and into circuit breaker, boarding students were provided additional support through a specific focus on their wellbeing by creating opportunities for connection and additional support for mental health.
UWCSEA STORIES
Personal and Social Education
in action
The College’s strategic commitment to wellbeing is woven throughout the five elements of our learning programme. A strong central pillar of this is the focus on enhancing personal growth and resilience of our students and our school community. Whether this is through the PSE curriculum, via individualised counselling and peer support, or awareness-building events and activities that the College participates in or initiates, its effects ripple out to our students, staff and parents. In 2019/2020, the effects of the move to a full remote learning model on student wellbeing was a key focus as we responded to the challenges of the pandemic. Carla Marschall, Director of Teaching and Learning on East Campus, outlines some of the findings from a community survey on the impact of remote learning which was conducted several weeks into the circuit breaker. The results demonstrate how we might balance some of the challenges that technology and remote learning brings, with some of the approaches that can be beneficial for our teaching and learning and in supporting student wellbeing.
The key function of the school as a place of social connection and belonging was underlined in the feedback from a survey with 1,600 respondents (representing our Grade 4–12 students and K–12 parents) which reported trends in student wellbeing during the time of remote learning. Survey questions were built around our UWCSEA wellbeing principles; autonomy, connectedness and competence. Key messages from this feedback included that remote learning supports student autonomy, but that (perhaps rather obviously) it also requires social emotional competencies and executive functioning skills such as self-regulation and self-management. For this reason, older learners fared far better than our youngest learners. (Being the mother of a K1 student at the time, I can attest to that firsthand.) Any transformation of learning in future will need to go hand in hand with an awareness of different needs within our community. Schools as physical environments promote identity development, and create opportunities for positive social interactions, which students missed during remote learning. This role of the school, in supporting healthy self-concept and the development of friendships and pro-social behaviors, is crucial. From our period of remote learning, we also saw how important it is to match tasks and purpose, and to have a balance of offline and online tasks. Across all three sections of our school; primary, middle and high, students asked for more offline tasks; eyestrain, neck and back pain, and the monotony of tasks were all issues reported during remote learning. Agency, which is about acting rather than being acted upon, shaping rather than being shaped and making responsible decisions and choices rather than accepting those determined by others, was one of the benefits that technology brought during remote learning. Across the K–12 continuum, students reported that the ability to self-pace their learning, and the high degree of choice this offered (including being able to take breaks when they needed to), were very helpful for their learning and wellbeing. We are continuing to consider ways we can create developmentally appropriate opportunities for student agency enhanced, in part, by technology. This also brings together the possibility for technology to support both student agency and personalised learning. Remote learning opens possibilities that are not as much about the digitisation of learning (moving resources and delivery online) as they are about personalisation. Where is the student and how are we bringing the curriculum to them? How can we personalise our learning programme based on our students’ identities, whether racial, cultural, linguistic, national or based on their passions, interests, and talents. This is directly concerned with some of our strategic work, such as our current focus on DEI, our development of interdisciplinary learning which bridges disciplines and our elements, and an enhanced focus on our experiential learning programmes such as through the planned development of our hyper-local campus adventure outdoor education programme, where students will come to know and experience more about their immediate Singapore context. Finally, digital competence is an essential literacy. Students require the skills to learn through technology, as well as essential knowledge about how technology functions. As we move towards our intentional use of digital learning to promote student agency, personalisation of our curriculum, and the ability to enact the mission through competencies, we are examining how we can weave technologies into a complex tapestry that puts the student at the centre—and where technology might somewhat disappear. Of course, students and considerations of their wellbeing will be part of shaping this future.
