Wellbeing and Involvement - Ferre Laevers

During my teacher training I focused on Primary Education and so had not heard of Ferre Laevers before embarking on my Forest School project. Here he is explaining the basic principles of his 'Experimental Education' and the need to practitioners to have indicators as to how well they are doing with the children they are working with.

Laever' theory is based around the principles of whether children learn or not depends on children's well-being and their involvement in the learning that they are doing. He has created scales for both of these aspects to enable practitioners to take a step back to observe indicators of: How are the children feeling (well-being)? and, How engaged are the children in their activities (involvement)?

Looking at this from the perspective of a Forest School where we are taking children into a different learning environment it is crucial that we are aware of each child's well-being. This could be as simple as making sure they are warm enough or making sure they feel confident in what they are doing. Within a Forest School programme children will need to have high well-being in order for them to develop and have memorable and meaningful learning. Having high well-being also allows children to understand and express their own feelings, which as practitioners we need to be aware of to adapt the environment, if the feelings are those of anger, anxiety or sadness - for example.

Leuven Scale for Well-being

Leuven Scale for Involvement

Using the Leuven Scale will allow me, as a practitioner, to constantly evaluate the needs of the children and adapt activities and learning accordingly.

An interesting afternoon of looking at scales and thinking about what I currently do within my teaching.