Our Approach
Our Research Approach
We focus on three broad pillars of research:
- Children and their well-being
- Programming in education; health and social services; and parenting practices
- Policy, systems, and their national and local contexts.
Cross-cutting all of our work is a focus on the dynamics of influencing and expressing between the self, others, and the environments in which children live.
We deliver research outputs which generate context-specific, evidence-based advocacy, guidance and training for parenting, for practitioners, and for national child policy planning, with this in mind.
Our research follows a set of principles that align with our vision. These principles are designed to maximise the impact for as many children as possible, as we strive to build evidence which:
- Recognises the complexity of child development, inner diversity, and well-being achieved through unique potential;
- Focuses on the complex systemic influences that shape actions and actors salient to child development and well-being;
- Focuses primarily on long-term development goals, acknowledging, where possible, how short-term goals influence longer-term ambitions;
- Is generalisable across contexts and is global in outlook;
- Is primarily inductive, seeking to inform future actions, rather than assessing previous actions; and
- Is fully aligned with the principles of the L4WB Framework.
We dedicate a portion of our time to our sister organisation, the Learning for Well-Being Foundation. We conduct meaningful research in support of its vision of supportive and inclusive societies where everyone can fulfil their unique potential and contribute to a kinder world.
Therefore, we also strive to build evidence that the L4WB Foundation and its partners – including government partners – can implement or action, and which informs their strategy, advocacy, advisory, and programmatic roles.
The Learning for Well-Being Approach
Our research takes a learning for well-being (L4WB) approach – a human-centred and dynamic approach to human and social development – which recognises child development as a complex system, in its own right.
The L4WB framework is an ecological model that recognises how children and the system around them are interdependent and co-reliant, and that various actors are essential to build a child-friendly system. The framework holds that every child has unique potential that must be nurtured in the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual dimensions of well-being.
Holistic child well-being is achieved through a eudemonic process of development, whereby children meet their unique potential in each dimension of well-being.
The L4WB Framework
The L4WB framework acknowledges inner diversity, the intrinsic patterns of functioning that dictate everyone’s different way of being in the world, how we develop and how we learn.
This involves our core capacities – our most innate human abilities to relate to ourselves, others, and our environments. Our core capacities include relaxing, embodying, observing, sensing, reflecting, listening, enquiring, empathising, and discerning patterns.
Cultivating these capacities provides an opportunity for all children to nurture their inner diversity so they can better interact with and understand the world around them, and realise their unique potential.
In terms of skills development, core capacities do not actively promote economic, social or civic returns, but they help promote holistic child development and well-being, which in turn, has benefits in terms of social and human development.
