Wellbeing in Educational Contexts - Second Edition

Reviewed by Liz Watson, Associate Professor, Massachusetts Bay Community College on 5/29/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

If I could score a 3.5, I would. I feel like it’s missing thought on Maslows theories. It hit the mark understanding that individuals have different lives and challenges, in addition, should be viewed as the whole being.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

I did not see error, did a great job of editing

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

This can be adjusted to latest research easily.

Clarity rating: 5

Author did a great job organizing and aligning content in each chapter.

Consistency rating: 4

The text was dispersed by chapters while maintaining consistency with graphs and charts relevant to the area it is highlighting while providing activities to immediately implement an assessment or connection to theories presented.

Modularity rating: 5

Yes, this area is strong

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

Yes, organized and clear materials were presented

Interface rating: 5

The images and graphs were fantastic. Pictures also provided for visual of theories presented.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Editing was completed well.

Cultural Relevance rating: 1

This is an area that could be strengthened. In addition, any assessments should be reviewed to value culture and languages where could pose a challenge.

Comments

Would love to see Maslow implemented and in addition, plans of practice when barriers arrive.

Reviewed by Tasha Ford, Assistant Clinical Professor, Social Work, Bowling Green State University on 1/17/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

I found the text to be comprehensive in it’s layout of the index as it was consistent, making it easy to navigate to the topic one might want to read if they were opting to not read the entire text. The chapters covered the concept of wellbeing in a meaningful manner from beginning to end, making it easy to connect the concepts across disciplines or areas of interest. There are seven chapters to the text and they do a wonderful job of exploring wellbeing within their chapters in a way, that made their content relevant to anyone interested in pursuing wellness.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Their content was expressed in an accurate and unbiased manner. They did well to explore some universal ideals surrounding wellbeing while also including some challenges to how one would approach wellbeing. The information is presented accurately and does well to identify areas where both strengths and deficits exist in the quest to understand wellbeing. The authors also did well to model the types of dialogue that should take place when seeking to develop an understanding of wellbeing both personally and professionally.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The content of the text presents in a timeless fashion. The authors did well to discuss human behavior, cognitive and emotional processes and social constructs that are embedded into society that transcend time and location. They included theoretical and practice perspectives that will help both novice and seasoned clinicians, policy-makers and educators to engage with this concept. Without regard to when someone encounters this text, the content will be relevant to those who want to better understand happiness, wellness, health promotion, and how to approach it in a respectful and meaningful way.

Clarity rating: 5

The text is written in a clear and concise manner. They did well to use concepts that are easy to understand by people from all levels of education and they did just as well to define concepts that might not be as easily grasped by those new to the study of wellbeing. This text could easily be utilized from AP High School courses through graduate level education.

Consistency rating: 5

The text was written in a consistent manner as throughout the text they utilized the same terminology, pointing out various aspects of wellbeing and quests for life satisfaction. Their work focused on wellbeing from a holistic perspective from beginning to end and they did well to explore ways to help people flourish across life domains. They consistently introduced more seminal terminology within the field of wellness while also introducing new/different concepts that should be a part of the wellness dialogue.

Modularity rating: 5

This text could very easily be broken into a minimum of 12-15 modules to utilize over an entire semester/quarter. The content could easily be utilized to create projects, discussion questions and testing materials to deepen the students’ engagement with the concepts in the text. They include more than a sufficient amount of references to use to help broaden experiential learning activities. The content could also easily be evolved into assignments to review existing policies for the improvement of school systems as well as therapeutic settings.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The content of the text is well organized and consistent throughout. Their inclusion of key concepts at the beginning of each chapter, guiding questions, activity suggestions, and key questions allow for the use of reflection and self-awareness as relevant to the topic of the chapter. The flow of the chapters were well laid out and it makes it easy to work through the progression of the concepts.

Interface rating: 5

The text was easy to navigate through, the figures and tables were easy to read and flowed well with the layout of the content. It would have been helpful to have page numbers in the book along with the chapters so that if one wanted to assign a specific page they could do so. Otherwise, the text is user friendly.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

As a whole there were not a lot of grammatical errors. There were some spelling errors that slightly interrupted the flow of reading but not to an extent that made the text difficult to follow or understand. The text was well written overall.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The authors did a thorough job of emphasizing the importance of exploring wellbeing not just from the aspect of dominant culture, but to hear the voice of the people, students, or staff members one might seek to work with. They did well to highlight the importance of communicating clearly with individuals not just as one might personally conclude they need or want, but to take the time to understand multiple definitions of wellbeing to ensure inclusion is intentional and not an afterthought. They do a phenomenal job of expressing the importance of creating safe spaces for students, educators, and administrators to share their thoughts and emotions so that no one’s wellbeing is made a priority over anyone else’s as if collective wellbeing has to be a mutually exclusive endeavor.

Comments

As a Social Work professor, I am excited to use this text both in my courses as well as for my professional development workshops. Although the text was set to discuss wellbeing in the K-12 setting this is easily transferred into other settings where the quest is to improve wellbeing, personal and professional insight and self-efficacy.