Top 5 Articles - Spring 2022

by Kirsten McHugh

Over the last few weeks, there has been no shortage of provocative and interesting articles, books, and podcasts related to “good work”. As always, our team would like to share the Top 5 articles we have been reading with you all. We hope you enjoy these pieces, that they give you some “food for thought”, and that they contribute to your thinking about what it means to do “good work”.

1. In the latest Good Project Newsletter (link here), we highlight a few articles and tools for effective communication with those who hold beliefs or values different from your own. In keeping with the theme of encouraging respectful discourse, take a look at this article from The Ethics Centre’s Dr. Tom Dean, “How To Have A Conversation About Politics Without Losing Friends” (link here).

2. Ethics Unwrapped is well-known for their video series and case studies of ethical scandals. They also have a blog series in which they explore the behavioral ethics of scandals in current events. They recently released a third part in their series focused on the infamous “Varsity Blues” scandal (here), in response to the Sports Illustrated piece on Coach Center (here). This latest post by Robert Prentice takes a look at one of the central though perhaps less glamorous players in this story—a tennis coach who accepted a “marginally qualified” student in return for a bribe from the student’s wealthy parents. 

3. In a recent Slate Magazine article, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Hossein Taheri examine the barriers women face to fully participating in their careers and contributing to their fields. In their article “Women Have Been Disappearing From Science for As Long As They’ve Been Allowed to Study Science” (here), the authors compare the career trajectories of scientific heroines Madame Curie and Harriet Brooks, pointing out the differences in each of the women’s support networks, along with how that contributed to (or hindered) their ability to fully engage in their work. The authors draw parallels between the barriers that ultimately ended Brooks’s career and those that still affect many women today. 

4. Here at The Good Project, we encourage students to engage in respectful dialogue and deep reflection. Many of the lessons in our new curriculum (here), incorporate opportunities for students to discuss big issues, listen to the range of perspectives in their class, and identify what they personally find meaningful in their work as students and members of a community. A team from The Civic Engagement Research Group just published a new related study in the American Journal of Education. In “Is Responsiveness to Student Voice Related to Academic Outcomes? Strengthening the Rationale for Student Voice in School Reform”, Kahne et al. argue that strengthening student voice leads to academic benefits such as higher attendance rates and better grades. Access the article and a short summary here. 

5. Stateside, it seems like every conversation about work quickly leads to a discussion of “The Great Resignation”. There is a lot of “doom and gloom” talk by those who believe that Americans have abandoned their attachment to work and to their identities as professionals. However, Carolyn Chen argues in her recent article “What the Anti-work Discourse Gets Wrong”, published in The Atlantic (link here), that the work culture we see in places like Silicon Valley–where companies provide access to benefits such as meditation spaces and mindfulness retreats in an effort to foster “devotion to work”—is “not an outlier but a harbinger for American professionals.” Chen states that, despite the rhetoric, “...many professionals describe a good job with words such as calling, mission, and purpose—terms that were once reserved for religion.” 

   Our work highlights the 3 E’s of “good work”—excellence, ethics, and engagement. This framework came out of the original “Good Work” study of 1,700 professionals back in the mid-1990s. In that study, those participants who were doing what we would consider to be “good work” were very much finding purpose and meaning in their professions. Although the decades since that original study have seen many changes in the way we work, it appears that engagement holds steady as a central tenet of what Americans seek in their employment.

Winter Round Up: Five Articles Worth Sharing

The Good Project team has been sharing a lot of articles and tools with each other over the last few weeks. Below are our “Top 5” links for the last month–from bad actors to big laughs, well-being to future-thinking. We hope that you find something new here and that you enjoy them as much as we did!

1. We talk a lot about promoting “good work,” but we don’t always dedicate quite as much time to the flip-side. Examples of bad work can show us exactly what we don’t want to do in our own lives. Dr. Gardner has written about “bad work” here and “compromised work” here. For some additional examples of unethical behavior, check out this round-up by NPR featuring series and specials on professional bad behavior–from Theranos to Uber (here). 

2. Have you ever seen Michael Shurer’s The Good Place (available on NBC here and Netflix here)? A show about ethics and moral philosophy is admittedly not often a huge draw, but The Good Place, with its talented cast and hilarious writing, is the exception to the rule. Needless to say, we are fans! The show wrapped up a couple of years ago, but Shurer wasn’t yet done wrestling with these ideas. He’s just come out with a new book on moral philosophy here.

3. When considering our "rings of responsibility", most don't typically think about future generations. This piece by Sigal Samuel at Vox calls on readers to be  "good ancestors" in the face of climate change, AI, and pandemics (here).

4. Our colleagues at HGSE’s Making Caring Common recently released a survey developed through the Caring Schools Network to assess student well-being (here). This tool helps teachers to confidentially “take the temperature” of their class. Designed to be used either in-person or virtually, the current format in Google Forms is adaptable to your preferences–you can change or edit the questions and frequency to further customize the survey. 

5. Over the last few years, we began a concerted effort to broaden the stories and perspectives represented in our dilemma database (here). As always, the stories are based on real-life experiences and difficult decisions. We are still actively seeking new stories. If you have faced an ethical dilemma in school or work please consider sharing your story anonymously (here). 

What have you been reading and watching? Have you recently come across any new and inventive resources or tools? If so, please share in the comments!

Back to School: 5 Articles Worth Sharing

by Kirsten McHugh

The “back to school” season is always a busy time of year for teachers, parents, and students. The load seems particularly heavy this September. Many of us believed the pandemic would be subsiding by now, and yet the Delta variant has left us in much the same spot we were in at this time last year. 

Thankfully, there are a lot of amazing folks out there lending their professional wisdom and perspectives to support good work in education---and to help us push through the not-so-good things happening in the world. Take a look below for some particularly insightful resources and reads from the last few weeks. 

1. The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham in the UK is well known for their work on character. This fall, their team of researchers has put together two free workbooks on Character Education. One workbook is intended for primary schools, and the other for secondary (link here). You may also wish to listen to their podcast, “Conversations on Character” (link here). In particular, Series 2, Episode 6 focuses on going back to school. 

2. The discussion of mental health on college campuses is hardly new, but COVID restrictions and the threat of closures brings a new level of stress and anxiety. Last week, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece examining the impact of COVID on the mental health of college students (link here).

3. The mix of students teachers will welcome into their classrooms at the start of school is never entirely predictable, although experience gives seasoned educators a general sense of what to expect. However, due to the pandemic, students’ educational experiences over the last year and half are all over the map. How are teachers planning to assess their students’ progress and get everyone up to speed? The Atlantic explores this predicament and offers suggestions about how teachers might think about the topics they choose to cover, and which to let go of, as they move through this unprecedented academic year (link here). 

4. Without federal mandates in the US, states and school districts are left to make their own decisions about how to best manage COVID restrictions at school. Superintendents and school board members are finding themselves in the political crosshairs. Facing backlash and sometimes fearing for their safety, many are questioning whether they want to remain in these positions. NPR shares the experiences of board members in two recent articles (links here and here).

5. Many kids have missed out on key social interactions (and growth) due to COVID. It’s safe to say that, in going back to school and interacting with many more peers and adults, big and small mistakes will be made. Instead of resorting to punishment, how might we respond more effectively to difficult situations? Greater Good Science Center suggests a different approach (link here).

Announcing The Good Project Fundamental Lessons

We are excited to announce The Good Project Fundamental Lessons, which can be found on our website here. 

This set of 16 lessons organized into 4 units serves as an introduction to the core concepts of The Good Project. Adapted from our longer 45-minute lessons (here), each fundamental lesson is approximately 15-minutes long. They are designed for secondary school students but are adaptable to middle school, and some lessons may well work with younger audiences.

Similar to our longer curriculum, the Fundamental Lessons include introductory material to familiarize teachers with The Good Project’s approach and theory of change. Each individual lesson includes an overarching goal, lists the core concepts covered in the lesson, and indicates any prerequisite lessons. The lesson instructions are detailed and broken down into separate steps with recommended timing in order to help adhere to the 15-minute window. All necessary worksheets and reading materials are also included. 

While we wish all students had the opportunity to delve deeply into the ideas and frameworks related to “good work”, we realize classroom time is at a premium. Our hope is that this abbreviated curriculum sparks interest in both students and educators, and that it provides enough of an overview for students to begin to think about how they might view themselves as “good workers.”

We would like to thank The Argosy Foundation for providing the generous funding that made this work possible. The Good Project has also received significant support from The Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, The Endeavour Foundation, and additional anonymous funders. 

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to connect as you implement these lessons with your students. We are available via our “contact us” page, which can be found here.

June Wrap Up: 5 Articles Worth Sharing

It’s hard to believe that summer is already well underway and that we are about to celebrate the July 4th holiday in the United States. We hope that many of you are gearing up for a relaxing holiday weekend. 

We would like to share some of the articles that we’ve been circulating amongst our team over the past few weeks. We hope that you are able to check out some of these links as time permits and that you find them as interesting and thought provoking as we have. 

1. Cintia Hinojosa and Evan Nesterak explore “The Intersection of Behavioral Science and Advocacy” in their recent series in The Behavioral Scientist. Hinojosa and Nesterak reflect on the events of the past year and explore how to integrate personal values, responsibilities, and biases with professional roles as social scientists. How do the personal and the professional come together, and how does the interaction dictate advocacy actions? The pair put out a call to their fellow colleagues to gather data on these ideas. Read what they learned in the series on The Behavioral Scientist website (link here).  

2. It seems like everyone is talking about burnout at work, but is this a new phenomenon or just a natural part of being human? Read (or listen!) to Jill Lepore as she explores “modern burnout” in her piece from The New Yorker (link here). 

3. We know that social media creates “bubbles” and that we can get caught in these echo chambers of perspectives and opinions that mirror only our own thinking. George Packer takes a step back and explains what he sees at “the Four Americas,” and how the fault lines between these visions originated, in his latest article in The Atlantic (link here). 

4. Fields like education are more and more being “run like businesses,” but what about when business is being run like science? Learn how science and experimentation is making its way into the operation of businesses today in a recent piece by Elizabeth Tenney, Elaine Costa, and Ruchi Watson of The Harvard Business Review (link here). 

5. Are you on summer vacation right now and just want a good laugh? Check out this cartoon from The New Yorker on how to “expand your imagination” (link here).