Flourishing Schools Project
- Christina Hinton
- Apr 19
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
If you’re interested in working with us or learning more about this opportunity, please fill out this short form.
Schools aspire to support students character skills and wellbeing and yet often have only anecdotal evidence to show the effectiveness of their efforts. If schools and educational systems aim to contribute to student development in these areas, it is important for them to assess the progress that students are making in these other areas beyond traditional academic achievement measures. In work originally commissioned by the OECD, Tyler VanderWeele and Christina Hinton have put forward a three-pillar framework for assessment in Metrics for education for flourishing: A framework (2024).
These pillars are: 1) current flourishing, 2) academic attainment, and 3) social-emotional and character-based capacities. Each pillar can be assessed at the individual level, to see whether students and members of the educational community are flourishing individually and at the school or school system level to measure where there is adequate systems level support in these areas. To learn more about this work, see Dr VanderWeele's post on Education for Flourishing.
At the Human Flourishing Program, we have launched our Flourishing in Schools Survey, which includes measures for student flourishing, character skills, cognitive and epistemic virtues, community well-being, and questions about school support for these areas. This survey has been piloted in collaboration with Scots College in Sydney, Australia, and similar approaches were used previously in our work with Research Schools International. The results from the survey provide insights into each school’s strengths and areas for growth in supporting students’ character skills and flourishing. For example, it yields results on the groups that are flourishing or may need more support, what character skills are strong and those which have room for growth, and the degree to which each school is implementing evidence-based programming for fostering character skills and flourishing.
We invite networks of schools who wish to run the Flourishing in Schools Survey with their students to join the Flourishing Data Collaborative. Networks that participate in the survey will receive a report of their results and gain network and school-level insights about student character skills and flourishing. We encourage school networks to participate in the survey repeatedly to track and support students' character skills and flourishing over time.
Launch Webinar, May 2026
More information is also available in our Flourishing Schools Project brochure.
The best way to begin working with us is by filling out this short form. If you have a unique question, you can write to Dr. Christina Hinton at christina_hinton@g.harvard.edu or flourishingschools@fas.harvard.edu
VanderWeele, T. J., and Hinton, C. (2024). Metrics for education for flourishing: A framework. International Journal of Wellbeing, 14(1), 1–35.
Kristjánsson, K. and VanderWeele, T.J. (2025). The proper scope of education for flourishing. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 59:634-650.
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