As a school leader or staff member of a Christian school, I wonder how you might answer the following question:
What practices in Christian schools improve the overall flourishing of young people?
It is a deceptively simple question. One might instinctively answer by identifying practices used regularly. Christian schools are intrinsically formative places powerfully shaped by repeated practices. These practices shape what we know, what we value, what we love, what we imagine the good life to be, and the kind of persons we are becoming.
Schools powerfully shape through habits, dispositions, relationships, and desires. Yet if this effect is true, then a more searching question must follow:
How do you actually know which practices are effective, and what evidence justifies your response?
This second question is more demanding. We are challenged by this question to move beyond the stories we tell about ourselves and our practices anecdotally and publicly. Instead, we must present evidence of how and to what extent student flourishing is being enhanced by these practices.
This second question calls for gathering evidence that honestly responds to the following kinds of questions:
- To what degree are students flourishing?
- Are there associations between individual differences (e.g. age) and family factors, family structure (e.g. married, single parent), socioeconomic status, and key aspects of student flourishing?
- Which specific evidence-informed practices are associated with student flourishing?
- Which specific faith-based practices are associated with student flourishing?
These were the exact questions that a groundbreaking study sought to analyse and investigate. The project was a collaboration among Christian Schools Australia (CSA), the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and Research Schools International.
Student Flourishing in Australian Christian Schools Project
This study explored whether adolescents are flourishing in Australian Christian schools and, if so, which school-based practices were associated with higher student flourishing over time.
The inquiry used a two-wave longitudinal survey design that incorporated the Human Flourishing Program’s Adolescent Flourishing Measure, which includes the domains happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, social relationships, and safety and security.
A total of 22,092 secondary school students (12-18-year-olds) from across 57 Australian Christian schools participated in this project, making this inquiry one of the largest studies ever undertaken on adolescent flourishing in Christian schools.
The Survey
The level of student flourishing was quantified using the Adolescent Flourishing scale developed by the Human Flourishing Program team at Harvard. The results across these two waves of surveys were then analysed across the age range to highlight differences in the degree of flourishing by age, year level, gender, and socio-cultural factors.
To examine the relationship between practices and student flourishing, the research team at Harvard used a modified outcome-wide longitudinal design for causal inference. This method controls for prior levels of practice engagement and flourishing, along with prior sociodemographic characteristics.[1]
Based upon these analyses, the following six themes emerged regarding practices that support student flourishing in Australian Christian schools:
These six themes and the practices that support these priorities are unpacked in much greater detail in the full report titled “Student Flourishing in Australian Christian Schools,” which you can read here.
Evidence-based Practices That Reveal a Story of Flourishing
The findings evidenced across these six themes highlighted specific rhythms, habits, routines, and practices that reveal a story of enhanced adolescent flourishing. Whilst recognising that the responsibility for the flourishing of secondary students is part of wider personal, family, and church networks and is subject to a range of communal and socio-cultural influences, Christian schools play a significant role as person-forming ecosystems that promote the conditions and practices that enable our young people to flourish.
A significant finding arising from this study was that students who reported feeling loved “very much” by their parents or guardians had much higher flourishing scores than students who reported feeling loved “very little.” The findings also identified that flourishing scores were lower among students who reported higher levels of smartphone use. The data also revealed that students who reported more hours of sleep and practiced daily physical activity had significantly higher flourishing scores.
The importance of teacher-student and student-student relationships and a sense of belonging and connection also emerged as vital indicators of higher adolescent flourishing scores. Descriptive analyses revealed that student flourishing scores increased most when students engaged in laughing with other students daily. Moreover, longitudinal analyses of these findings revealed that practices that enabled students to laugh with peers at least once a month contributed to a staggering 22% increase in flourishing scores observed from Wave 1 to Wave 2.
Practices associated with increased flourishing scores also included practices that strengthened social relationships, teachers’ use of humour in class, and regular social interactions and connection with teachers and other school staff. Higher flourishing scores were also evidenced through the repeated practices of play in learning engagement, spiritual practices of prayer, daily Bible reading and corporate worship, service-learning, volunteering, and civic and social engagement.
The evidence of increased flourishing scores through these types of practices reinforce that adolescent flourishing is enhanced when every student is seen, known, and loved and where they are encouraged to flourish in every dimension of life—intellectually, socially, physically, and spiritually. The findings of this large-scale study highlight that these practices need to be intentionally cultivated within interdependent, relational, and socio-emotional networks and contexts.
Practices Take Root in a Storied Culture
It is important note that for these practices to be effective, sustainable, and transformative, the interdependent webs of these relationships within a student’s microsystem (peers, parents, teachers) and mesosystem (interactions of social relationships across these contexts) must also be actively and intentionally nurtured.
The findings underscore the critical link between staff flourishing and student flourishing within a Christian school. School cultures that prioritise the flourishing of their staff and their local communities significantly enhance the capacity for student flourishing to also occur.
This symbiotic reciprocity between thriving school cultures, thriving school staff, and thriving school students shows the importance of cultivating storied Christian school cultures. As VanderWeele and Hinton conclude, schools that are “well-run, with good leadership, good relationships, a positive school climate, cared-for teachers, and good facilities are far more conducive to student learning and flourishing than schools that are not.”[2]
Final Words
These findings confirm that flourishing Christian school cultures where evidence-based practices are intentionally implemented, celebrated, and reviewed reveal a story regarding how to promote and enhance the capacity for students to flourish. The findings and key themes identified through this study both validate and reinforce why student flourishing is such a critically important priority within the contemporary education discourse more broadly, and more specifically, within Christian schools.
It is hoped that the findings outlined in this landmark report stimulate further conversation, reflection, and analysis regarding the efficacy, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based practices that enhance and sustain student flourishing in Christian schools.
References
[1] VanderWeele, T.J., Mathur, M.B., & Chen, Y. (2020). Outcome-wide longitudinal designs for causal inference: A new template for empirical studies. Statistical Science 35, 437–466.
[2] VanderWeele, T.J., & Hinton, C. (2024). Metrics for Education for Flourishing: A Framework. OECD Publication. p.15.
