Education Division
Election 2018
Biography:
Gilda Scarfe is the CEO and Founder of Positive Action UK a leading and innovative company using research to develop, implement and evaluate mental toughness, wellbeing and resilience programmes in schools. With a degree in Philology, CPE in Law and Positive Psychology and over 15 years facilitating in business performance and education contexts, Gilda specialises in creating curriculums that are evidence based, meaningful and make a powerful impression. An expert in helping young people understand and effectively play to their character strengths.
She has worked with teams across the private and state funded schools to promote and imbed positive psychology in the PHSE curriculum. Her work has included strategic planning for designing, delivering and implementing wellbeing and mental toughness programmes in schools, framework redesign for primary and secondary schools, as well as strengths-based coaching using the VIA instrument. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in positive psychology. She has been responsible for the organisation and implementation of the Positive Psychology/Education strategy at several grammar school in the UK and has supported the strategic direction and implementation of Illuminate Education a non-profit organisation promoting Positive Education initiatives. She is an extrovert who enjoys hiking, reading, writing, travel, and pursuing life-long learning. Her dream is for every school in the UK to fully and seamlessly incorporate positive education into their curriculum and application for students, families, and staff. Passionate about improving wellbeing and mental toughness in education through innovative yet simple and clear interventions, Gilda is always keen to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners in making a practical and powerful impact to the world of education.
Statement of Interest:
My life’s goal is to ensure that positive psychology interventions become part of the school curriculum around the world. I want to empower young people, teachers and the entire education community to flourish and become the best version of themselves. It would be a privilege and an honour to support the division President in fulfilling the goals and objectives of the division.
I am very passionate about the application of positive psychology in education as well as my life’s daily practice. Whilst pregnant with my son and bedridden after several heart-breaking attempts to have a child I started evaluating my life and I found myself disillusioned about my job in law, being mainly driven by perfection, success and accolades. I realised that I have lost a part of myself, I lost my identity to a degree. Then a friend of mine brought me couple of books which changed my life. Those books were “Authentic Happiness” By Martin Seligman and “The Evolving Self Book” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I was always intrigued about human behaviour, what makes a person happy and how one achieves that.
Most of my childhood and early adulthood I spent it in a communist country, where the only drive was to find a way to get out and become successful in my own right to ensure a happy and fulfilled life. Little did I know that being successful doesn’t necessary mean being happy. So, that was the moment when I realised that my life is about to take a 360 degree turn, and that turn was to study positive psychology and see where that is going to take me. I left my job in pursuit of happiness!
In the meantime, my son was growing up fast and started school. I realised that what I wanted most in the world is for my son flourish.
Whilst volunteering for an education charity that delivered a range of services to empower young people to build the skills and confidence they need to move into sustainable education I was asked to provide a workshop in wellbeing. The workshop was a success with teachers wanting the same thing: to flourish and to live a life well balanced. That was my moment. From that point I started contacting every school in the area to talk about the importance of implementing positive psychology interventions. I read every research paper published, every book on positive psychology I could get. That drove me to start Positive Action UK in 2014. It was a very hard road to travel for few years, after leaving a very successful and well-paid job. Convincing headteachers the importance of wellbeing in a system driven mainly by test results and league tables was a very hard task. I embarked on educating teachers and headteachers about the importance of positive psychology interventions. I talked about Martin Seligman and PERMA, I talked about flourishing until finally I had a breakthrough. Several schools asked me if I can develop a bespoke programme based on positive psychology, so that’s how I developed my first positive psychology programme for secondary schools. The programme is now part of my PHD, we are in the 2nd year of evaluation and the results so far are very encouraging.
I am seeing the growing need, from the education community and from a rapidly growing research base in the learning sciences, to expand the meaning, purpose, and goals of education, and to holistically transform students learning experiences, motivations and outcomes. The world is changing ever more rapidly, and it is becoming clear that preparing children for today’s world. This young people will be graduating over a decade later into a very different world with very different challenges and opportunities.
Educational progress is falling behind the curve of technological progress, resulting in social unhappiness. I am seeking a holistic approach to make wellbeing part of the curriculum, by offering a complete framework found in positive psychology across the four dimensions of an education: knowledge, skills, character, and metacognition.
I work with teams across the private and state funded schools to promote and imbed positive psychology in the PHSE curriculum. My work includes strategic planning for designing, delivering and implementing wellbeing and mental toughness programmes in schools, framework redesign for primary and secondary schools, as well as strengths-based coaching using the VIA instrument.
I have been responsible for the organisation and implementation of the Positive Psychology/Education strategy at several grammar school in the UK and has supported the strategic direction and implementation of Illuminate Education a non-profit organisation promoting Positive Education initiatives.
I am an extrovert who enjoys hiking, reading, writing, travel, and pursuing life-long learning. My dream is for every school to fully and seamlessly incorporate positive education into their curriculum and application for students, families, and staff.
I am passionate about improving wellbeing and mental toughness in education through innovative, yet simple and clear interventions found in positive psychology and my intention is to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners in making a practical and powerful impact to the world of education.
I would very much love the opportunity and privilege of being considered as a valued member of the team and passionately contributing and supporting the IPPA community.
Hi Gilda,
1. Spanning the gulf between research and practice is central to the Division. What would a future where this gap is bridged look like? How can the Division help move us all there?
2. What has been your best experience with the Education Division so far? (Could be a program, event, exchange, etc.)
3. Can you give an example of a time where you lead a team that created a successful outcome?
Dear Jenny
thank you for your questions and I hope my answers will spark a further conversation and engagement from our members, as we need to move forward as an organization and make our mark.
1. I would argue that research needs to be timely and practice-focused, carried out in authentic contexts, disseminated using the language and media of practitioners, and conducted through partnerships between researchers and practitioners. One question most practitioners will ask “Where is the information when I need it?” Scholars are constantly researching, discovering and summarizing their findings, but, then they publish in the most “prestigious” outlet that will accept their work with little regard for whether that outlet is optimal for practitioner consumption of our research. Peer-reviewed publications are characteristically written for and read by other scholars, not practitioners. And although we know the value of our research and firmly believe that it can improve practices, the reality is that if we are not speaking in the practitioner’s terms and disseminating our research where the practitioners are likely to look for it, the gap will remain. In my opinion the gap between research/theory and practice can be mainly attributed to the different priorities of scholars and practitioners. Scholars want to be well-respected by their peers. Practitioners want answers and strategies to the issues that they face daily. In an ideal world, practitioners would read the same publications that scholars gain recognition, promotion, and tenure for publishing in. I think the Division is moving in that direction with the efforts of all its leaders who are making notable strides towards bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners. As an organization, placing an emphasis on consultants as middlemen and researchers. Consultants generate useful, practical answers to pressing problems that practitioners grapple with. They are really interested in picking up the latest research and getting it out in a more digestible way. We need to foster co-creation of ideas. Encourage researchers and practitioners to develop and partner in research and share their findings on the IPPA blog (platform) Establish conferences or think-tank sessions that bring them together. Encourage exchanges. Cross attendance does occur, but not in enough numbers to create a shared comfort zone, conferences as useful as they are they tend to be one-sided. Interactive education gathering to open and create dialog its very useful. We need to encourage our members to use the IPPA platform to share their experiences. IPPA has an amazing foundation, but we need to build on it regularly and openly.
2. The best experience I had was attending the 9th European Conference in Budapest and meeting researchers and practitioners from around the world. But what made the conference very special was meeting Prof. Lea Waters. Her passion, experience, and knowledge imparted so readily outside the conference agenda have not only inspired me, but it gave me hope that IPPA it’s not only about regurgitating knowledge but truly being inclusive, open, innovative in engaging its members.
3. a whole school approach. What made this endeavor successful was the initial reluctance of the schools to be involved in such initiative as it was seen too experimental. After 2 years working tirelessly researching, training staff in the science of wellbeing, observing every single lesson I designed and measuring the impact and outcomes yearly, with no financial gain whatsoever I have managed not only to change the headteacher, staff and other stakeholder’s attitude to wellbeing and its importance but to attract enough funding to create a hub to engage other schools less fortunate in implementing wellbeing as part of the curriculum. Both grammar schools have now a dedicated Wellbeing Faculty. I have created capacity within the school for the staff to have training in all domains of positive psychology to deepen their understanding and to enable them to apply the principles in any of their subjects. Only through evidence-based research and practice, we can make the non-believer believers. Also, through our research and practice we created a wellbeing hub – Positive Action School Research Initiative to prove to the policymakers that implementing wellbeing as part of the curriculum and creating a well-established wellbeing culture for the teachers and support staff we close the gap between academics and practitioners in making a practical and powerful impact to the world of education.
I wish my fellow candidates the very best of luck and I am honored to be named beside such well-established scholars.