Sustaining

Sustaining refers to maintaining balance and continuity over time. It is important as it can foster well-being and hence health, whilst also promoting a more considered understanding of our place in nature and the wider environment. 

It is often framed through three elements of sustainability,

 

  1. Environmental: protecting the natural environment and biodiversity.
  2. Social: promoting equity, justice and community well-being.
  3. Economic: long-term financial stability and responsible growth, or even degrowth.

 

In terms of how sustainability can improve human life, it includes healthier living, social equity, economic resilience and mental well-being. 

In the context of educational settings, sustaining focuses on the aspects of ensuring that the work involved in education is both positive and fulfilling. It focuses on the sustainability of workload and hence considers work-life balance and impacts on mental and physical health.

Sustainable workloads are a thing of the past in some countries, and in England in particular there is plenty of evidence of teachers working well beyond their contracted hours (Wood, 2017) and being under constant stress due to unreasonable expectations and the ever present potential impact of Ofsted (the schools inspectorate). But enabling sustainable workloads is not about making life easy for teachers, it is about fostering environments where professionals can provide a quality of provision, a provision which includes a great deal of emotional labour and complex work. Sustainable workloads encompass:

 

  • Recovery time: ensuring teachers have time, not just in their holidays, to recover so as to ensure they can wholly engage with children and young people when they are with them.
  • Workload design: Creation of realistic expectations, clear priorities (which should always begin with helping children and young people thrive) and flexibility.
  • Team collaboration: ensuring ways of working which gives autonomy for organisation and sharing of tasks to lighten the load.  

 

One way of beginning to meet these aims is to consider how they relate to a better work-life balance. This can include meaningful flexible working so that teachers and others can manage personal responsibilities without feeling pressured or without being penalised. It also encompasses the creation of boundaries to work, including explicit, agreed limits to allow for the chance to 'unplug' from work, as well as encouraging breaks and the taking of holidays as holidays. 

To create sustainable work environments requires a supportive culture developed by leaders, including psychological safety, a respect for personal lives and the fostering of healthy environments for both adults and children/young people.

 

One of the best ways of creating such sustainable environments, other than the ideas above, is to foster the other pillars of the promotive approach, i.e. belonging, thriving and fulfiling.