Learning for well-being: creativity and inner diversity

Abstract

This article explores the perspective that well-being and creativity can be nurtured in children through understanding and addressing the diverse ways in which children learn, communicate, and develop (inner diversity). In particular, our working hypothesis is that focusing children’s and young people’s learning towards the realization of their well-being supports and enables creativity. But it also requires, firstly, addressing how children perceive, engage with, and express creativity in different ways and, secondly, nurturing the development of core capacities to, in turn, underpin their capacity to develop key competences and skills in formal and non-formal learning settings. In recommending that education systems take the well-being of children as their central purpose, we are suggesting that there are capacities, ranging from personal qualities to behavioural skills, which are necessary for the development of the personal resources to enable lifelong and life-wide learning.

Keywords:

• well-being
• diversity
• learning
• education
• creativity
• children
• competence
• core capacities

Notes

1. This discussion arose, for example, at the first OECD Child Well-being Expert Consultation organized jointly by the OECD, the European Commission and UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in May 2009.