July 19, 2019

Encouraging Thankfulness: A Q&A with Weilyn Chong

July 19, 2019

By Daniel Mucinskas

The Good Project recently connected with Weilyn Chong, a high school student in Hong Kong who started a program at her school called “Thankful Thursdays” to encourage thankfulness in her community.

Since Weilyn started the initiative three years ago, it has been adapted to different school environments and been offered in both Singapore and in Hong Kong.

We had the opportunity to ask Weilyn a few questions about why she started the program and her vision moving forward. Below, we are reproducing our Q&A.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the Thankful Thursdays program. How long has it been in existence? Can you describe the program for us?

Weilyn: Thankful Thursdays has been going on for around 3 years (this year will be its fourth)! Essentially, Thankful Thursdays is a curriculum designed in three different ways.

The first ever Thankful Thursdays program created was a 36-week program designed for my school. This program included short 10-20 minute activities that could be done weekly during homeroom. These activities would include writing cards to family members, emails to our administrators or even random visits to our cafeteria staff to show gratitude.

I then took the program and modified it to cater towards student interests. Every month the homeroom could pick a topic out of the list and create some sort of way to give thanks to that group or discuss that topic in depth.

The third variation of the program is one I designed for businesses to use in the workplace. The idea was to put thankful activities onto stacks of cards that could be placed randomly in offices to spark small movements of gratitude.

Q: What inspired you to start this program? Why is thankfulness important?

The program started out of two major inspirations. The first was less of a inspiration but more of a frustration I had with my school environment and myself. Every day hundreds of students would walk past the same cafeteria staff, guards, and cleaning staff, and not even say a word to these people. Whether it be because a student doesn’t really know what to say or they are in a rush, it probably made these people feel invisible in the school community.

It was this frustration that I came to terms with that made me want to start Thankful Thursdays as a platform for people to connect and give thanks to different groups in our community. I think, in any community, it is important to not make people invisible no matter how busy or how shy we are.

The second huge inspiration to me was my grandfather. My grandfather lives in Singapore and works in a small hawker center selling sodas, sugar cane juice, and ice coffees. Selling each drink for around $1-3 USD, he doesn’t see this as a barrier that stops him from helping the homeless or the needy. Every morning, he wakes up at 4-5AM to cook breakfast for the needy in the community and give them free drinks. I think that this hugely inspired my work because I saw him as one of many hard working people who go largely unnoticed in our community. I hoped that through Thankful Thursdays, my school could become more aware and grateful for all members of our community.

Thankfulness is almost like the glue to society. Whether news outlets, conversations, or social media get most of the attention, we tend to focus on the negative as a society, and giving thanks really serves as an outlet to positivity. A couple studies have been done in the field of gratitude that shed light on trends between people saying words of gratitude and not being able to think negative thoughts at the same time. I like to think about control a lot: who controls what, controlling ourselves and our actions, what we control. Although we can’t always control the things that happen to us, we can always control the perspective we bring to a situation. I think that being able to control whether we say thank you or not, which in some cases can really change someone’s day, is magical.

Three children kneel under a wall decorated with handmade paper leaves. Colorful letters say “Being thankful turns what we have into enough.”

Q: What are you hoping that people take away from participating? What do you want the outcome to be?

If I could get one thing across to people through Thankful Thursdays, it is to become more aware of those around them and take that one small step to getting to know a person or to let that person know they are appreciated. In terms of the growth of the program, I want it to reach a point of effectiveness where a school can implement it and, by the end of the year, students are giving thanks and showing gratitude without the program (more organically).

Q: Can you tell us about some of the more memorable Thankful Thursdays?

One of the most memorable Thankful Thursdays happened around Chinese New Year and was coined “Cookies, Conversations, and Connections.” I partnered up with a local organization known as Kely Support Group and managed to raise funds to buy all of our administrators, cleaning staff, and guards a box of Chinese New Year cookies and had a conversation with them as well, along with posts on our Wellbeing Board at school. We sat down with all the staff we could find and started a conversation to learn more about their family and lives outside of school. We then ended the conversation with our thank yous to them for their hard work in the community. To this day, some of the connections we made during the project have sparked students to address our staff by their name and create a more kind and giving culture.

Q: What is your vision for the future of Thankful Thursdays?

My vision for the future of Thankful Thursdays is to promote the program to schools around the world and spread a culture of gratitude. I am working on some exciting projects to make Thankful Thursdays even more meaningful. For one, I am working with Dr. Michael Lamport Commons on a project looking at where gratitude and caring stems from. I hope to be able to conduct more research to back up Thankful Thursdays and improve it to be the best program it can be. I am also working on a blog to document my work, hoping to inspire schools to take Thankful Thursdays on as a curriculum. I truly think that the mission behind Thankful Thursdays is one that should reach everyone, but I know there is a lot to work on till we get to that point.

Q: You’ll be heading off to college in a year. Do you imagine you’ll be doing some kind of similar work during your college years?

I really hope to continue researching gratitude through my college years and hopefully find a club passionate in spreading awareness about the importance of gratitude. I’d love to see if I can adapt Thankful Thursdays to fit the environment of college or to integrate it to a program the college already has. I hope I can pursue my passion for gratitude and spreading thankfulness through studying psychology and conducting research on the topic!

Kirsten McHugh

February 27, 2019

Q&A With Mary Katherine Duncan and Jennifer Johnson of the Bloomsburg University GoodWork Initiative

Kirsten McHugh

February 27, 2019

By Daniel Mucinskas

Welcome sign for Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania

At Bloomsburg University, one of the public institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania, colleagues have been spreading the message of “good work” since 2011. The Bloomsburg GoodWork Initiative involves a number of interrelated efforts, including an orientation activity for new students on “good work” defined by the three Es (excellence, ethics, and engagement), workshops, courses, and student research.

The Initiative is spearheaded by Mary Katherine Duncan, Joan and Fred Miller Distinguished Professor of Good Work, and Jennifer Johnson, Associate Professor, both in Bloomsburg’s Department of Psychology. Below, we ask them several questions about their projects, what led them to champion “good work,” and their challenges and successes.

We hope that others planning or working on similar pursuits can learn from their example.

Q: With the Bloomsburg University (BU) GoodWork Initiative now well-established, how has the program evolved over time?

Mary Katherine: We began the BU Good Work Initiative on a large scale with a campus-wide introduction to the concept of Good Work through guest lectures, faculty workshops, and a website. Then, we sought to embed the concept of Good Work into existing programming. For example, we used the three Es (excellence, ethics, and engagement) of Good Work to introduce incoming first-year students to the expectations of our academic community. Since 2011, we have designed, implemented, and assessed mandatory summer reading assignments, freshmen orientation workshops, and first year seminars. We are currently assessing a Good Work-inspired online module for all incoming first-year students.

Over the last few years, we have concentrated our efforts on examining factors that motivate and challenge psychology majors’ pursuit of excellent, ethical, and engaged academic work. Interestingly, our findings align with the American Psychological Association’s principles for a quality undergraduate education, as well as the national organization’s guidelines for implementing a distinguished undergraduate program in psychology.

Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to be able to share our successes (and lessons learned) through publications in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. In addition, we hope that these data will inform programmatic and curricular developments as we strive to offer undergraduates a distinguished program of study in psychology.

Jennifer: Thinking back on our efforts, I would say there has been an ebb and flow between promoting Good Work to a wide audience across campus and learning more about Good Work within our specific department of Psychology. I would say the Bloomsburg University Good Work initiative started as a university-wide effort; we wanted the Good Work message to reach as many students and faculty/staff members as possible. We worked through several years of revisions as we created an online Good Work-inspired module that incoming first-year students complete before coming to campus. I’m happy to say that the first-year module is now a permanent part of first-year orientation to BU. We also worked several years on creating an initiative website, with resources for students and faculty/staff members. As the initiative progressed, we found some of what we were doing to promote Good Work to a wide audience was difficult to sustain. We’ve had to cut back on some parts, such as organizing Good Work-inspired workshops for first-year students and offering presentations to our faculty/staff colleagues. That was when we started to focus our energy on researching factors that motivate and challenge Good Work in our Psychology majors. Now that we have that information, I think we might move our initiative back out to a broader audience now that we have new information to share.

Q: Can you share a memorable moment, story, or realization from your work over the years?

Mary Katherine: One of the most memorable moments on this journey occurred years ago when Jennifer and I attended a meeting with high-level administrators from the Office of Academic Affairs and the Office of Student Affairs. One of the administrators recognized that the broadly applicable concept of Good Work created a unique opportunity to bridge Academic Affairs and Student Affairs in higher education. It was an important “all in” moment.

Jennifer: I always get excited when I mention Good Work to students and they remember learning about it through the first-year online module. I specifically remember one time that Mary Katherine and I were getting coffee on campus: we were talking about Good Work, and a couple of students overheard us. The students recognized what we were talking about and told us how they found the Good Work message to be inspiring. We were thrilled!

Q: How does the GoodWork Initiative fit into your professional interests? Why does it resonate for you?

Mary Katherine: I have long held that the mission of higher education is to educate for purpose. I agree with Bill Damon that good workers are often people of purpose. To the extent that we are able to assist young men and women in identifying their aspirations and activities that align with their self-selected personal/professional/civic goals, we have achieved part of the mission of higher education. The mission, however, is not complete without also fostering an understanding of and competence in pursuing purpose vis-a-vis the three Es (excellence, ethics, engagement) of the Good Work model.

Jennifer: Ethics has always been important to me, and the Good Work model provides a great framework for conversations about ethical behavior. I hope to continue to find ways to increase ethical work on campus through the BU Good Work Initiative.

Q: How do you see students reacting to the GoodWork Initiative?

Mary Katherine: One of our mottos is, “No one rises to low expectations.” The three Es of the Good Work model, when explained in clear, concrete ways, as well as through case studies and students’ own anecdotes, sets the bar high. Undergraduates report being inspired by the challenge to pursue academic Good Work; empowered by having clear expectations for their performance as a member of our academic community, and grateful for the opportunity to reflect on the quality of their own academic work. About 2 years ago, our department, college, and university approved a Good Work-inspired upper-division psychology course which may be taken in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the psychology major or minor. A permanent addition to the University’s course catalog, PSYCH 327 Positive Psychology is offered at least one per year, and it enrolls up to 30 students per section. The students seem to have an insatiable desire to learn more about this topic, often commenting that they wish they had taken the course earlier in their academic careers.

Jennifer: Our research findings have shown time and again that students find value in learning about Good Work. However, I do worry that our students only have one guaranteed exposure to the Good Work message through the embedded online module for first-year orientation. It is a module that students complete in addition to many other modules and requirements before starting at Bloomsburg University. It would be easy for the Good Work message to be lost. Mary Katherine and I will be working this year to find ways to embed the Good Work message into other university-wide initiatives.

Q: What do you hope that students take away from their participation?

Mary Katherine: I hope that students develop a habit of reflection and an understanding of the importance of periodically considering anew what it means to do academic Good Work within their respective discipline. I want them to know that they have an obligation to look up from the path they are on and recognize that they can determine whether they continue walking down this path or pivot in a new direction. In terms of engagement, “What really matters to me and why? What brings me a sense of enjoyment or fulfillment?” In terms of excellence, “What do I know or do really well? How do I know that my work is exceptional?” In terms of ethics, “To what extent am I using my knowledge or skills to elevate others (family members, colleagues, neighbors) or to contribute in a meaningful way to institutions with which I am affiliated (my school or workplace) or to society as a whole? In other words, how does my work benefit the good?”

Jennifer: I hope they gain a framework for examining their own and others’ work. I also hope that students see the value of the Good Work message and infuse excellence, ethics, and engagement into their life-long personal and professional pursuits.

Q: What challenges or puzzles are you currently facing?

Mary Katherine: Our biggest challenge is how to embed the message more fully into curricular and extracurricular activities across the University. It is challenging to find a group of individuals to take the mantle and embed the message of Good Work into existing programming or daily practices. Unfortunately, the perpetuation of the message of Good Work is sometimes lost in the day-to-day business and business of University life. In addition, it has been challenging to preserve the integrity of the Good Work message. For example, the concept of Good Work is sometimes misinterpreted through different constituencies’ idiosyncratic translations of each of the Es or misrepresented through well-meaning attempts to inform undergraduates about this “heady” topic through edutainment (education + entertainment). One way to counter these challenges may be to regularly profile and showcase role models of Good Work at our University (e.g. current students, faculty, staff, or alumni). We fully understand the challenge of this task, as good workers tend not to seek or enjoy being in the spotlight.

Jennifer: Faculty members at our university have a heavy teaching load (4 courses per semester) and everyone (including us!) is so busy. It’s difficult to find the time to keep old initiatives going and even harder to find the time to get new initiatives started. We were able to build a team of Good Work advocates on campus in the first few years of the initiative, but it was challenging to maintain those relationships. We had hoped faculty members would embed Good Work messages into their courses but also understand that people may not have a lot of flexibility in terms of the content of their courses. It is also possible that faculty and staff on campus have infused the Good Work message into their courses, but we are unaware of it.

Q: Where do you see the GoodWork Initiative going in the next few years? What is your vision for the future?

Mary Katherine: I would like the work that we have done on identifying psychology majors’ motivators and challenges to academic good work to continue informing curricular and extracurricular programmatic developments in our department. Our first attempts at studying these motivators and challenges have left us with more questions than answers and a program of research for years to come. In addition, any programs that are designed and implemented as a result of these data would require assessment over the long term. Ultimately, I can imagine sharing our research methodology (measures, procedures, coding rubrics), findings, and research-informed developments with other departments at the University.

I also am in the process of taking the message of Good Work into the community vis-à-vis elementary school and middle school-based programming.

Jennifer: After spending the past few years researching factors that motivate and challenge Psychology majors’ pursuit of Good Work, I think we will move our focus outward to the campus community again.

Q: What makes the concept of “Good Work” attractive to an institution of higher education like Bloomsburg University?

Mary Katherine: In my opinion, the Good Work model is attractive because of its versatility. Whether a student subscribes to the transactional mission of higher education (i.e. prepare for the workplace) or the transformative mission of higher education (i.e. personal/civic development), the message of Good Work is relevant to and congruent with their goal of obtaining a baccalaureate degree.

I also think the concept of Good Work is attractive insofar as it helps students to more fully appreciate the expectations of the University’s constituents. That is, students who are admitted to Bloomsburg University have been “stamped for success” by all those who contribute to the operations of the institution. The Good Work message conveys to students that they are expected to work hard… not to obtain incentives, but to gain expertise and, with it, credibility. They are expected to make good choices… not to avoid trouble, but to elevate others. They are expected to get involved… not for a line on the resume, but to achieve a sense of fulfillment that comes with doing what you do best every day. Just as our students have every reason to believe that faculty, staff, and administrators are committed to pursuing Good Work, the University’s constituents have every right to expect that students will pursue Good Work for the good of the Good.

Q: What advice might you offer someone who might be interested in starting a similar initiative at their institution?

Mary Katherine: A bottoms-up approach (department-level) seems to be more manageable, productive, and fulfilling.

Jennifer: Find a small group of committed people to work with. Find high impact ways to reach as broad an audience as possible.

Howard Gardner

November 29, 2018

Keeping the Professions Alive and True to their Mission: Lessons from the Netherlands

Howard Gardner

November 29, 2018

By Howard Gardner and Daniel Mucinskas

For those of us who believe that the professions are a remarkable human creation, worth maintaining and even enhancing, these are depressing times.

On the one hand, so-called professionals, equipped with titles, prestige, and generous income, all too often behave in ways that are embarrassing, if not patently illegal. To mention just a few examples, we have recently seen medical researchers who hide support from drug companies from the public and then provide the results that the companies seek, and educators who falsify test scores in order to receive higher salaries.

On the other hand, powerful and “intelligent” digital applications perform many of the major tasks once handled by trained professionals, in ways that are quicker, more accurate, and far less expensive—and these trends are guaranteed to continue and intensify in the years ahead. “Intelligent” programs can now diagnose melanomas more accurately than physicians, and at least half of the routine work done by lawyers can now be done more efficiently and less costly by digital applications.

When Howard and his colleagues began a study of “good work” a quarter of a century ago, involving both traditional professions like law and medicine, semi-professions like journalism and education, and non-professions like theatre and philanthropy, we had already begun to sense these trends. In studying journalism, we already saw disruptive forces at work—and fully one third of the one hundred journalists whom we interviewed were ready, even eager, to leave the profession altogether. (We interviewed an equal number of researchers in genetics, and none of them even considered leaving their jobs). We also interviewed five kinds of lawyers and found that those in the developing arena of “cyber law” were among the most energized.

The purpose of our project was to understand how people do “good” on the job, what their values, motivations, and responsibilities were, and how they handled vexing situations as they arise. Researchers often heard interviewees talk about the supports or lack thereof within their professional domains and associations that supported or hindered their ability to carry out “good work.”

But members of the Good Work Project (which has now morphed into the more expansive initiative known as The Good Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education) were unprepared for the speed and decisiveness of the decline of the professions over the past two decades—at least in the United States, and, as we have learned from the writings of Richard and Daniel Susskind, in the United Kingdom as well. Since the appearance of the Susskinds’ important book The Future of the Professions in 2015, our team has made diligent efforts to voice our concerns and to seek partners, but on American soil we have had modest success. Still, we persevere and are grateful for our collaborators. For example, legal scholar John Bliss of the University of Denver has used our frameworks and tools with law students to explore their professional identities; and colleagues at several educational institutions over the years, such as tGELF in India, have used our GoodWork Toolkit as a part of professional development activities for teachers.

In one of our most fruitful associations, as early as 2009, we were in initial contact with a group of scholars and practitioners in the Netherlands. Led by Thijs Jansen of Tilburg University, members of this group shared our concerns and hopes for the professions today. They created the Professional Honor Foundation (PHF). This organization is dedicated to the study of the professions and professional identity and, to the extent possible, their revitalization in the current social, economic, political, and technological environment, all of which continue to rapidly change in the 21st century.

Over the years, thanks particularly to the efforts of Wiljan Hendrikx, we at The Good Project in Cambridge have kept in touch with the individuals who are spearheading the many activities of PHF. In addition to exchanging messages, papers, books, and regular updates, we also had a very useful gathering at Harvard in October 2016, bringing the two teams together face-to-face for an exchange of ideas and a reaffirmation of our common enterprise.

Recently, as part of our continuing contacts, Howard travelled to the city of Utrecht and spent several hours with Thijs, Wiljan, and a number of their colleagues, all of whom are studying and attempting to refashion for the better different areas of professional practice.

Howard’s visit came as the Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro had just won the 2018 election in his country, as the U.S. mid-term elections were a mere week away, and as worrying political trends were all too salient across much of the globe, from the Americas to Eastern Europe to East Asia.

Yet, within just a few hours, Howard’s spirits were lifted, and he felt a new surge of hopefulness.

Why this renewed optimism? Because on several fronts, PHF has made genuine inroads. To be specific, here are some of the promising developments:

-In work in the profession of accounting, their recommendations have been widely discussed and at least partially adopted in the Netherlands on a national level, with promising signs as well in the United Kingdom, customarily a bastion of neo-liberal thinking in the erstwhile professions.

-In the management of local municipalities, several teams of civil servants have met regularly to discuss the rights and responsibilities of those who need and should merit public trust. These teams have drawn on the Good Work Toolkit, which PHF has used and further developed over the past 7 years.

-Teams of medical workers—physicians, nurses, aides, and more—have convened to sort out their individual and joint responsibilities and to reconsider healthcare management practices. Some of the results are described in a book on the medical profession.

-Most dramatically, in education, our own field, a fledgling effort to raise the position and stature of educators around the world has picked up considerable support in several countries as a component of the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM). This movement started with the book Flip the System, published in 2015. As the title signals, this book put forth the radical notion of turning the education system upside down. In lieu of the top-down bureaucratic approach currently dominating the sector, this movement puts individual educators at the heart of good education. The particular foci in this case are decent salaries, respect for professional judgment, and popular support from the public.

Why, in comparison to the United States, have these efforts been crowned with more success? We can suggest a few possibilities.

First of all, while The Good Project is largely the effort of trained social scientists, PHF draws on several disciplines (e.g. philosophy, management) and on expertise in several professions (as noted, medicine, accounting, management, teaching). Rather than focusing on general processes and practices that ostensibly travel across the professions, most of the efforts of PHF have been directed at specific professions, and their work may therefore be more directly applicable.

Second, rather than depending largely on conceptualization, exhortation, and scholarly writing, PHF has devoted efforts to developing hands-on interventions with practitioners, which begin with the practitioners concerns and involve co-development over time of effective sessions, practices, and policies. A PHF-developed version of the Good Work Toolkit has been quite helpful in facilitating these interventions.

Third, the materials developed by PHF have been directed largely at specific professions—for example, attending (and even convening) conferences and authoring short pieces in profession-specific publications.

Our final “takeaway” is the most speculative. When individuals think of the professions, they typically envision law and medicine. That is understandable, because these are the best known and most attention-grabbing professions. But they may also be the most difficult for outsiders to influence; they are large, powerful, well-protected, and equipped with strong justifications and rationalizations for current practices and malpractices (consider the mammoth United States ABA and the AMA, basically lobbying organizations).

A possible lesson for The Good Project and others lies therein. Instead of focusing on trying to impact those more established professions that have been around in essentially their current form for centuries, begin instead with less visible and less powerful (and therefore less defensive) professions like accounting, K-12 teaching, and municipal management, leaving law and medicine for a later day.

Two possible candidates come to mind from the United States. First, the principles of good work are crucial in engineering. Our colleague Richard Miller, President of Olin College of Engineering, has been a champion in this respect, and to our knowledge, no one has had as much success in conveying the central role of ethics in the professions in the U.S. and abroad as Miller and colleagues, and their work has spilled over into higher education more generally.

Second, almost invisible to many of us, information technology professionals, who “serve” our computers, networks, and digital systems, have tremendous power, and we trust them to act in a professional way, even when we find out that this is not the case (as the recent firestorm of allegations against Facebook would indicate). Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if those whose work has done so much to disrupt the professions could end up serving as a model for professional behavior in the 21st century?

As The Good Project’s team looks ahead to the future and the opportunities we may have to influence professional practice in the United States, we see there is much inspiration to take from the dedicated work that PHF has done and continues to do in the Netherlands and beyond.