Conference Agenda

What should post-pandemic schools look like? To address this question, we developed and evaluated a novel art-based intervention aimed at supporting school transition and socioemotional learning in young children. The Puppetry and Emotional Resilience programme (P&ER) has been motivated by the growing need for a holistic and learner-centred approach to wellbeing education, and for offering children and teachers appropriate tools and ecosystems to support their social and emotional needs, communication, and ultimately learning.

Globally, the educational landscape in a post-pandemic recovery is undergoing a radical transformation in order to respond to the emerging challenges of poverty, socio-economic inequalities, and climate emergency. In order to equip learners with tools for active citizenship, schools across the EU have begun to integrate social and emotional education across their curricula. The post-pandemic social and emotional landscape has also further highlighted the need for a balanced, but progressive and holistic approach to education, which addresses the academic, social, emotional and mental health needs of children, staff and the community (European Commission, 2021; UNESCO, 2021; WHO, 2021). Schools do this not only by offering a physical space where children can interact with their peers, share interests and negotiate differences, but perhaps more importantly, by providing a structured environment which enables them to practice communication and problem solving, and to develop friendship, self-confidence, and emotion regulation (Colao et al., 2020).

The question now posed by local and global policymakers and education researchers is the question that motivated this research; how can post-pandemic schools promote health and wellbeing education, respond to the needs of learners, and offer them experiences and foundations for lifelong success? There is an agreement that modern schools should be inclusive, adopt a holistic approach to learning, and offer more opportunities for cooperative learning and participatory activities relying on art or theatre (Colao, et al., 2020). UNESCO (2021) is also recognising the need for integrating health literacy into the school curriculum; this includes teaching children about wellbeing and emotions. To address this need, interventions that enhance social and emotional learning have been implemented worldwide (e.g. WHO, 2021). Their success, however, depends on how well the new skills and strategies are embedded within the wider school ethos, environment, and community (O’Toole & Simovska, 2022). Interventions based on art, storytelling and puppetry (e.g. Webster-Stratton & Reid, 2004) naturally offer such a rich and embodied experience for children, as they readily accept the fantasy world around them and the apparent magic they create (O’Hare, 2005). Theories of art education, (e.g. Romanski, 2019) and social cognition (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985) illustrate the mechanism underpinning this transformative power of puppetry, which allows children to innovate, build new representations, mentalise, and discover the complexities of social relations.

The P&ER programme was developed to support school transition and to promote socioemotional learning and wellbeing education in nursery and primary school children. Based on Zins et al. (Greenberg et al., 2017; Zins et al., 2007) framework for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), the programme utilised the power of puppetry and storytelling to promote five broad clusters of competencies in children: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and decision making. The strong environmental focus of this framework highlights that it is not sufficient to address individual skills development, but it is imperative to enhance the social ecosystem of the classroom, school and the community. This approach complements O’Toole & Simovska’s (2022) reimagined concept of Bildung, which notes the need to stress the mind-body-world connection in wellbeing initiatives in schools. Here, we evaluate the impact of the P&ER programme on the development of complex emotion and social competency skills in children.

Starting from the two concepts of resonance and resonance pedagogy the question to be discussed is, what a resonant education is and by which quality features it can be observed in school.

Resonance, a sociological concept, is criticizing the actual acceleration and disentanglement with the world (Rosa, 2019a, 2019b). This shift in paradigm seeks to redefine the quality of relationship in general and to the world, to redefine meaningfulness and the quality of life (Rosa, 2019a, 725).

It contains four characteristics: the moment of being touched, self efficacy, transformation and unavailability. A state is said to be resonant only when the first three characteristics are present - the counterpart is touched, responds self-efficaciously and is part of the change. Ultimately, the state of resonance cannot be forced, which is why resonance is always unavailable. It either happens or it doesn't (Rosa, 2019b). Resonance can be described as the "sociology of world relations". Resonance can also be well understood through his counter-concept of alienation. In the latter, subject and world are indifferently opposed to each other and "world transformation" fails. Nonetheless, resonance and alienation are not merely counter-concepts. Resonance is only possible when moments of alienation are experienced. Phases of alienation are always necessary again and again, so that new resonance relationships can emerge and stable axes of resonance can be established. Resonance as a fundamental critique of current world events (Rosa, 2019a, 725) and at the same time is a forward-looking and sustainable response to it. Resonance is not just a hype, but is confirmed by the fact, that resonance was mentioned in both the Future Report 2018 (Horx, 2018) and in the Future Report 2022 (Horx, 2022). According to this, the two concepts of "mindfulness and resonance" are key to establishing individual resilience (Horx, 2022, 150).

In the end, the concept is a description of the state that touches us, or rather, we hear it crackle.

Resonance pedagogy is the application of the resonance concept to the school setting. Rosa and Endres (2016, 16) consider the "crackling in the classroom" as an indicator of "resonance pedagogy" or "resonance in schools “. In resonance pedagogy, in addition to the four characteristics, the following stakeholders play a role in the resonance triangle: teachers, children and the content or the content or the subject (Rosa & Endres, 2016).

We rise the question of the meaning of resonance and resonance pedagogy, then outline resonant schools and resonant extended education and - based on the quality model of extended education schools according to Willems and Becker (2015, 51) - define central quality features of schools with resonance. In doing so, we prominently include the children's perspective, as the well-being of the child and the implementation of children's rights should be the guiding principles for the management of schools (Palsdottir, 2019).

In the global north, there is growing evidence of the increased vulnerability of children and young people to mental illness, which has become a notable public health concern (Campayo–Muñoz and Cabedo–Mas, 2017; Faulkner, 2022), and reflects the increasing prevalence of mental illness among children and young people globally (Hedemann and Frazier, 2017; Payne et al., 2020). As discussed in the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development Report, childhood is considered a critical stage in which to build interventions to support mental health and wellbeing (Patel et al., 2018). We argue music can, and should, be one of those support mechanisms.

Music is a ubiquitous means of expression and communication that span across all ages and cultures at a global level (Angel-Alvarado et al., 2022), and there is growing evidence from empirical and experimental studies that examines the impact of music on health and wellbeing, including psychological (emotional and cognitive), physical, social and social (McConkey and Kuebel, 2022). Despite this, there has been little research into the impact that music, specifically singing, may have on the health and wellbeing of children.

This paper therefore presents a qualitative case study within Scottish primary schools that examines the development and delivery of a pilot programme, Sing4Health, designed by the researcher in partnership with a choral conductor, to teach children and their teachers how to create music, focusing on group singing. This initiative was intended to enhance children’s wellbeing, while also establishing sustainable music education by non-specialists within primary schools.

The purpose of this study was therefore twofold: (i) to analyse the impact of theSing4Health programme on the wellbeing outcomes of the primary school children participating in the programme, and; (ii) to research the pedagogic process of implementing the programme within our partner schools, in order to draw out general pedagogical principles which can then be adapted for designing a self-sustaining training programme for non-specialist teachers.

The study asked:

1) Does singing improve children’s subjective sense of wellbeing?

2) Does participation in the Sing4Health programme help children effectively respond to situations they find difficult or challenging at school?

The secondary research objective was to examine the process of implementing the programme within our partner schools and identify underlying principles of the programme delivery. To do this, the study asked:

1) What is the professional music teacher doing when teaching singing for children?

2) Are there general instructive principles that non-specialists can learn to teach singing?

In conclusion, the aim of this study was to assess the outcomes among the children participating in the Sing4Health programme and identify whether there were underlying pedagogical principles of the delivery of the programme by the musical specialist leading it that could then be adapted to build a training programme for non-specialists, in order to create sustainable school wellbeing programme able to be delivered nationally and internationally as part of teacher training initiatives among pre-service or in-service teachers.

Initial findings suggest singing does positively impact on children and their sense of wellbeing, but further research is necessary to better understand how it does this, and how singing can be taught by non-specialists to promote children’s wellbeing.