Good Work Toolkit for Civil Servants

by Gerard Van Nunen

Martin is a 35 year old civil servant in the office of Migration and Asylum at the Ministry of Safety and Justice in The Netherlands. After he finished his masters in ‘Policy and Management in Multicultural Society,’ Martin specialized in migration issues because he wanted to help people seeking safety and shelter in a new environment. Human dignity and human rights are very important values for Martin.

A few years ago Martin collaborated on a vision and mission statement for the Ministry. He believes he contributed to a just immigration and naturalization policy. This work gave Martin personal and professional satisfaction. Further, managers and other policy makers see Martin as loyal and competent.

But times have changed. Martin finds that the political tone in government has hardened. Politicians and fellow civil servants frequently speak of immigrants in terms of ‘problems’ or ‘costs.’ The Secretary of State wants to rewrite the vision and mission statement and has asked Martin to be involved in the process. The new statement must focus on the rapid return of immigrants, stricter eligibility requirements for immigration, and cost reduction. On the one hand, Martin is flattered that he has been approached to rewrite the statement. On the other hand, he has serious professional and moral doubts about the new policies he has to express in the statement. What should Martin do?

For years, civil servants have faced growing challenges in their work. Professional expertise is increasingly undervalued, and their work seems to be obstructed by a tangle of rules and unwieldy structures. These developments adversely impact the intrinsic motivations of these workers. The Dutch Professional Honor Foundation promotes professionalism across different fields. In cooperation with the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Professional Honor Foundation has organized a ‘Good Work Pilot’ for civil servants working at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. This initiative is part of a larger national project called ‘Better Work in Public Administration’ (Beter Werken in het Openbaar Bestuur), which strives to improve the work done within the public sector. Inspired by the Good Work Toolkit, the Professional Honor Foundation developed a toolkit specifically aimed at civil servants and their complex professional environment, which is characterized by political, societal and organizational demands and by conflicting professional standards. The Good Work Toolkit for Civil Servants provides workers the opportunity to revisit what professionalism means to them and to explore the tensions happening within the profession. The Toolkit poses the following question: How can inherent tensions within the profession of government/public policy be dealt with in such a way that makes Good Work possible? The concrete case of Martin’s professional dilemma above, taken from the Toolkit, shows that Good Work in public policy is not easy or clear-cut. The question about what is ‘Good’ in the Civil Service profession is open to discussion.

The Good Work Toolkit for Civil Servants consists of narratives, assignments and reflection questions that deal with and analyze the practical reality of civil servants. All materials are based on real-life experiences. With the help of this toolkit, professionals are encouraged to discuss their own work and to learn from each other.

The toolkit for Dutch civil servants is structured into four sessions. The introductory session discusses the concept of ‘Good Work’ and asks ‘what is good?’ with regard to civil service. After the introductory session, three substantive meetings follow, each addressing one of the three E’s. For Excellence – which we have translated into the Dutch word for ‘craftsmanship’ – participants learn that its interpretation depends upon personal, institutional and societal standards. With Ethics, the participants take a closer look at the concept of ‘responsibility’ and how it pertains to their role as civil servants, asking the question, “what are consequences of my work for others?” The last session revolves around Engagement as an essential part of Good Work. Civil servants are invited to discuss the personal meaningfulness and importance of their work.

Sample cases, like Martin’s dilemma, facilitate the discussion of important issues, ideas and conflicting values within the profession of civil servants. This is done in a non-threatening and open environment. During the sessions, participants reflect on the experiences of others, enabling them to reflect on their own experiences, and discuss the overall profession with each other. In this way, useful strategies are developed to make Good Work possible, despite the hierarchical structure of the organization in which civil servants inevitably find themselves.

The Good Work Toolkit for Civil Servants is not a ‘course’ or ‘training’ and does not intend to form any professional code of conduct or list of competencies. The goal of the sessions is, through dialogue, to strengthen civil servants’ abilities to analyze different types of problems from their daily professional practice. The toolkit encourages participants to think for themselves and to exchange experiences in a group, so that they may discover and make explicit the core values and responsibilities of the civil servants’ profession. In this way, the toolkit is a constructive contribution to the quality of civil service and professional pride.

Combating Social Isolation Across Generations

by Jennifer Tu

Since 1994, people of all ages, from children and teens to veteran professionals, have contributed their voices to the Good Project’s body of knowledge and experience. I first met Dr. Howard Gardner over dinner at the Aspen Institute, and though I learned who he was only after our conversation, I was deeply impressed by his gentle wisdom and ability to bring out the best in others. This focus on others, rather than one’s own ambitions, reminded me of the elderly whom I volunteer for. After learning about the Good Project, I also found that its promotion of responsibility, community, and empathy resonated with one of my big ideas: intergenerational integration.

“I may forget your name. I may forget what you look like. But I’ll never forget what you mean to me.” This quote from a ninety-year-old woman, whom I’ve visited every weekend through the Harvard College Alzheimer’s Buddies (HCAB), reminds me of the gravity of not only the neurologic disease itself but also the social isolation associated with it that debilitates millions of people worldwide. Seniors increasingly lack a sense of belonging, are disengaged from others, and have shrinking numbers of fulfilling relationships as they deal with losing loved ones over time. In nursing homes and hospices, the only human touch that many receive is to force them to do something, whether to take a pill, eat their meal, get a shot, or move out of a chair. From personal experiences working in the nursing homes of New Orleans and Boston, I believe that there is a feasible, effective way to improve the quality of life of the ever-expanding elderly population. As dementia and associated issues are increasingly medicalized, I propose that social innovation can build on existing programs by integrating high school youth with the elderly for intergenerational interaction. Specifically, early exposure of high school students to nursing home communities can be a productive solution that mutually benefits both parties. While many college organizations exist to help elderly communities, I believe that young people need to have this kind of experience this earlier.

Intergenerational interaction can address many pressing concerns of the elderly. When I say goodbye to my Alzheimer’s Buddy every week, I have learned to avoid using “have a great week” to wish her well, because she would respond with a despondent sigh. Without a sense of belonging or value from another person, it is not surprising that social isolation has been statistically linked with increased risk for depression, dementia, falls, re-hospitalization, and even all-cause mortality. In the face of these grim consequences, all is not lost. Expedient, cost-effective, and mutually beneficial partnerships between senior care programs and youth organizations present a positive opportunity for preventing social isolation and preparing for America’s “Silver Tsunami.”

In high school, I started Generation to Generations (GEN2GENS, at www.gen2gens.weebly.com), a program that taps into something most people take for granted. Rather than view the growing elderly population as a burden in today’s economy, we view elders as a treasure trove of wisdom that can be passed on to young adults and improve their outcomes. The interaction between older and younger generations not only empowers the elderly to impact youth, but also provides additional opportunities to complete their legacies, and in the process, find renewed purpose. Imagine high school jazz ensembles, cheerleading squads, and chamber musicians going all out, sharing their talents in nursing homes. Now, imagine nursing home residents giving feedback and sharing life stories. Entering its third year in New Orleans, GEN2GENS makes this reality. Once my peers saw how much the elderly loved to see them, they engaged in learning that can’t be replicated in the classroom. The GEN2GENS team at my high school has continued for three years, organizing year-round talent shows, conversational visits, and an annual Generations Festival at several local nursing homes.

Currently, I serve as co-director of two college organizations with similar missions: Harvard-Radcliffe’s Music in Hospitals and Nursing Homes Using Entertainment as Therapy (MIHNUET, at www.hcs.harvard.edu/mihnuet/), which brings undergraduate performers to nursing homes in Boston every weekend, and the Harvard College Alzheimer’s Buddies (HCAB, at www.alzbuddies.weebly.com), which matches college students with Alzheimer’s patients at a local hospice on an individual basis for weekly visits. Each organization has its unique strengths. HCAB specializes in matching college students with Alzheimer’s patients at a local hospice on an individual basis for weekly visits. One patient summed up her feelings by telling us, “your smile, the way you talk, having you here is much better than a pill.” As a volunteer, I can testify to the longitudinal relationships that we build between Buddies, the emotional investment both parties make, and the lessons that students learn about dealing with loss. On the other hand, MIHNUET works on a broader scale by bringing undergraduate musicians to more than twelve senior care sites every weekend. A recent post on the MIHNUET blog by a hospital recreational therapist reads, “They brought life to the room and helped our patients and family members relax, forget their surroundings and enjoy an hour of live music. The room was packed and you could hear their voices filling the halls with lyrics to everyone’s favorite songs.” These two programs offer exemplary models for facilitating intergenerational interaction.

By combining both “vertical” integration through the in-depth relationships of HCAB and “horizontal” integration through the breadth of connections of MIHNUET, I envision a “diagonal” model for intergenerational programs that can be implemented by organizations at an earlier age. By tapping into the diversity and flexibility of high school students’ interests and talents, programs for intergenerational integration can both address the immediate needs of America’s elderly and provide youth with personal experiences in service and advocacy, generating awareness of growing concerns in the aging population. Thus, meaningful relationships on a local scale can provide a starting point for national or even global action, providing a solid foundation for elderly care in the future. By taking the time to bridge generations and combat social isolation, anyone can take a step towards a good world, where everyone is connected.

Good Participation: Exploring Civic Engagement in the Digital Age

by Carrie James

When the militant group, Boko Haram, abducted hundreds of Nigerian school girls last month, the major news outlets began to report the story. Yet worldwide awareness of the crisis didn’t reach a tipping point until the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls began to circulate across Twitter and Facebook. As of May 13, the hashtag was used 3.3 million times on Twitter alone. While some skeptics question whether “hashtag activism” can lead to real world impact, the potential of social media to shine a spotlight on an urgent issue seems clear.

The growing use of social media sites to call attention to political crises and broader social issues is a current area of research for the Good Project. Our research team is part of the MacArthur Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) research network, an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners who are exploring how digital life affords new modes of participation with civic and political issues.

The YPP network has identified five core “participatory practices” which, while not new in and of themselves, are facilitated in new ways by the digital technologies, social media, and other aspects of the internet. These practices include:

– investigation: researching social issues in order to become more informed
– production: producing content that contains a civic or political message
– circulation: sharing civically- or politically-oriented content created by others
– dialogue and feedback: engaging in discussion of social issues and giving feedback to powerholders
– mobilization: inciting others to take action on behalf of a cause

As part of the YPP network, our Good Participation research team has been conducting qualitative interview studies with civically active youth focused on how they engage these practices online. For instance, we’ve spoken with youth who produce videos or blog posts in which they seek to inform others about issues such as child sex trafficking. We’ve looked at how youth leverage sites like Change.org to mobilize people to sign petitions. We’ve explored how civic youth use Facebook to circulate words or images that signal their beliefs about issues such as gun control, environmental issues, or marriage equality. We’ve found that civically engaged youth are excited by the potentials of digital media for action in the world. Yet, we also find that expressing the civic voice in the digital space – especially given its public, networked nature – can pose challenges and dilemmas, including unintended audiences, uncivil dialogue, and even backlash.

Our work on these issues is being shared in different forms. Researcher Emily Weinstein published an article in the International Journal of Communication about how civic youth manage dilemmas of voice online. Margaret Rundle is the lead author of a forthcoming paper about different approaches youth take to digital civics. In my forthcoming book, Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap, I point to broader moral and ethical dilemmas in digital life that are relevant to civic uses of the web as well.

Finally, in an educational initiative called Educating for Participatory Politics, our team is working with Facing History and Ourselves to develop classroom materials that address both the opportunities and challenges for civic participation posed by digital life. We look forward to sharing these materials with our educator community in the near future.

If you are excited to learn more, consider joining us at Project Zero’s San Francisco conference, October 10-12, 2014. The implications of growing up in the digital age for civic education will be a featured theme.

A Reflective Space, A Just Space: Good Work in Extracurricular Activities

A guest post by Jia Wen He

Jia Wen He is a high school teacher in Singapore. She is a 2013-2014 Foreign Fulbright Student and currently pursuing a Master in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Jia Wen is interested in educational psychology and evidence-based pedagogy.

In Fall 2013, I was part of Howard Gardner’s HSGE course ‘Good Work in Education’. Among the topics we explored, I was especially interested in how good work is manifested in education and the professions. In this blog, I discuss the sharing of Good Work.

I have taught high school in Singapore for seven years, a time when students are on the cusp of college and professional training. I wondered about the intersection between school and the workplace: how schools cultivated in students the work ethics they will employ in the future.

 Pressures at work, pressures in school

The principal investigators of The Good Work Project noted that most workers want to do good work, but formidable obstacles make it difficult to do so. Pressures from the market, from the field, from peers, from juggling multiple commitments, make it tempting to cut corners.

The pressures on working professionals are similar to what students experience in schools. In an age of high-stakes testing and diversifying curricular programs, schooling can seem like a blur of demands competing for students’ attention. The school day is portioned out in subjects and programs—often for logistical rather than pedagogical reasons—and it can be challenging for students to see a more coherent “why” of their education.

However, developing healthy work habits requires sustained opportunities for reflection. Piaget and Dewey believe that learning and growth are essentially dependent on activity – from doing something, thinking about the doing, and doing it again. Hence, if we hope for students to do good work in the future, habits of contemplation need to be cultivated in school. 

The ECA effect

School-based extracurricular activities (ECAs) are rich spaces for students to experiment with the “how” of doing good work. All schools offer a range of activities from waterpolo, choir, drama club, to student government bodies – and most students devote up to ten hours each week to their chosen ECA. Through membership, students go through a constant cycle of acting and reflecting on their behavior, their motivations and their relations with others. ECAs make powerful engines for development, since learning is based on observation and activity, quite different from the classroom’s more top-down instruction.

Using the Good Work framework, I set out to study how ECAs could develop student capacities for excellent, ethical, and engaging work. I interviewed young alumni from a Singapore high school about their ECA experiences. All were committed members who spend up to ten hours a week in their ECAs.

We spoke at length about how these activities years ago had impacted them. A theme that emerged from the conversations was how vital teachers and coaches were as designers of ECA experiences that could promote Good Work.

First, ECA teachers and coaches who created regular opportunities for reflection maximized the impact of learning. Whatever form or duration these reflections were, the consistent space to think led students to retain very nuanced impressions of their ECAs. Zoe spoke of how the supervising teacher held 10-minute reflection sessions after every practice. “She made me able to put my experience into words. Simply because she forced us everyday to think about what we were doing and tell it to the teammates.” Reflection led to connection building between the experience and the students’ developing work ethic.

Second, adult mentors who ensured fairness, and arbitrated in unfair situations, created a necessary condition for learning to occur. High schoolers might have greater autonomy in their ECAs, but a fair environment is one aspect they have limited control over. Kegan had a particularly vivid memory of stepping up to finish a project for an irresponsible student member: “I don’t feel the supervising teachers were a source of support or advice. They could have played a bigger role when people were not pulling their weight. They could actually intervene.”

Interestingly, those who experienced unfairness without teacher intervention went on to express disillusionment with colleagues – Kegan admits how his experience “in some ways broke my trust in people’s capability.” On the other hand, those who experienced fair and nurturing ECA environments developed a strong sense of trust. Although fairness in the workplace cannot be guaranteed, the latter group had the foundation to buffer them from minor slights. 

Teachers as designers

We know what happens when adult mentors encourage limited or flawed definitions of success – the worst iterations can be found in some elite youth sport where winning is encouraged at all costs.

Yet a less considered but no less essential concern are inattentive mentors: these adults leave much of the ECA design to students, especially if students are competent and old enough to handle the running of the group. Schools do pay attention to ECA quality, but in reality, academic programs are prioritized. ECA mentors are only accountable for the most basic of guidelines for the legal running of the groups.

At this point, I wish to flip the table on the accountability conversation. Teacher accountability is important, but the discussion tends to place teachers on the receiving and passive end of the spectrum. This research made me think about how teachers can take ownership and run personal, simple, and low-stakes accountability tests – following up with the students we had taught.

Well-designed learning experiences should be more than “good-to-haves”. If we want students to learn to do good work, and if ECAs are precious avenues to practice good habits, we need to become dedicated mentors, collecting our data and designing experiences mindfully.

Do Students Really Remember What They Learn in School? Life and Career after Exposure to the Good Work Course

by Daniel Mucinskas and Victoria Nichols

At the end of a typical university semester, professors will hand out evaluations to students with the hope of garnering insightful and constructive feedback about a course. Unfortunately, professors will typically distribute these evaluations in the final moments of class or in conjunction with an examination. As such, students will frequently dismiss the questions, providing vague or incomplete responses as they aren’t allowed the time necessary to produce thoughtful answers. Moreover, students are almost never given time to pause and reflect on their experiences before providing an evaluation; rather, the process is sudden and soon over. By requesting responses immediately upon the termination of a course, professors are limiting the scope of student surveys. If instructors were to administer surveys years after students complete a course, the answers would conceivably provide insight into the long-term personal and professional impact of the material. With this in mind, Dr. Howard Gardner, along with a team of Harvard University researchers, set out to investigate the long-term effects of a course on Good Work by surveying a wide range of former students.

At the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), Gardner has been teaching a course for 15 years on “Good Work in Education: When Excellence, Ethics, and Engagement Meet.” The course is an overview of the Good Work Project with two major components: in-class discussions of topical events through a Good Work lens and an extensive research paper on a Good Work-related topic. In the fall of 2013, a survey of eight questions was sent via email to 101 former H-175 students, soliciting their feedback on the course. The questions prompted the recipients to recall the most memorable course content and to discuss whether H-175 had changed how they approached situations in their professional and/or personal lives. A total of 47 substantive responses were received. Two graders (the authors of this blog) then scored all answers on a 0-to-3 point scale for five separate measures: assignments/readings/discussions; research paper; professional influence; personal influence; and Good Work concepts. As newly tuned social scientists, we had a crash course in achieving reliability. And, indeed, after many rounds of independent scoring, we eventually reached agreement.

Once scoring was completed, the highest-scored responses were ultimately analyzed for overarching thematic concepts. Detailed coding revealed significant and positive trends amongst former students, with 79% of responses at least mentioning, and many illustrating in anecdotes, how the course has been professionally and/or personally influential. The most rewarding part of the experience was seeing the number of former students who felt as though the course was a key part of their graduate education and that it had given them tools with which to navigate particular situations in their later lives. For example, one former student described using the Good Work framework as a part of her job while selecting recipients of grants, while another alum discussed reevaluating what it means to be personally and professionally successful and where those two realms overlap. As one student said, “My participation in the Good Work course helped me to begin to understand the complexities of ethics and ethical action.” Moreover, 45% of students stated that the final research paper was a powerful experience.

This method of assessment, however, does have limitations. While evaluating a class from the perspective of several months or years after completion appears to provide unique and helpful insights, there is the possibility that participants’ memories may be inaccurate, flawed, or incomplete. It should also be noted that not all students who have taken H-175 were emailed; moreover, not all former students who were contacted responded. In turn, there may have been a participant bias in that those who responded to the survey may have also been those who had the most profound and beneficial experiences in the course.

Nonetheless, student responses revealed that H-175 had a lasting impact on the majority of students’ lives and career. Upon reviewing the results from this survey, Gardner plans to make changes in the H175 course. Educators at all levels would undoubtedly also find it useful to engage in long-term assessment of former students in order to evaluate the effects of assignments and curricula over time. This is particularly true of a course like Good Work. Since the material is practical and adaptable across a wide variety of situations, assessment and evaluation are best done from a vantage of several years By that point, former students can assess whether, and if so, how they have employed the Good Work framework in their lives as a whole.