The vital importance of helping students cultivate a sense of happiness and well-being, so they can thrive in school and in life

Microsoft has releasir4dnew global research on the topic of “Emotion and Cognition in the Age of AI.” Conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and supported by Microsoft, the research explores what educators and school systems can do to help students thrive in our rapidly changing world, and how technology can help.

The findings spotlight the vital importance of helping students cultivate a sense of happiness and well-being, so they can thrive in school and in life. The rsearchers listened to more than 760 educators in 15 countries, interviewed leading experts and reviewed 90 pieces of original research.

There are currently 1.5 billion students around the world. Educating them is one of society’s most urgent priorities. At the same time, the world is changing faster than ever, which has a massive impact on the skills that students will need when they graduate into the professional world.

In our work on the Class of 2030, we heard from educators and experts that the future of education will be profoundly personalized, socially embedded and amplified by technology.

Higher-order cognitive skills will remain vital, but advanced social-emotional skills are increasingly critical. Social-emotional skills are fundamental to well-being, which we know is a key predictor of academic and employment success.

In this latest research, 80% of educators confirmed that well-being is critical for academic success and developing essential communication and collaboration skills.

The educators said that three areas of technology are particularly important: immersive experiences, which can help students develop empathy by experiencing the world from someone else’s perspective; collaboration tools that enable students to work together and with their teachers in new ways; and data and analytics that can help schools better understand students’ needs and how to support them.

Theresearch suggests that countries in Latin America. are leading the way with approaches to well-being, with more teachers fully incorporating the development of emotional literacy in classrooms.
 
The researchers also studied schools where well-being is especially strong in order to look for common threads. They heard that these “leader schools” tend to:

• Have a formal plan to promote well-being
• Measure and monitor well-being as well as academic achievement
• Support inclusive classroom practices that amplify student voices
• Engage purposefully with the community
• Take a whole-school approach to professional learning