What is Whole-Child Education?
What comes to mind when you hear the words “whole child”? Maybe you think of mental and physical health services or making sure children’s basic needs (like food and shelter) are met. Or, maybe you think of a program for classroom management or structures for intervention. But, whole-child education is not one singular framework, program, initiative or curricula.
Whole-child education is an approach that prioritizes the comprehensive development of students. It addresses their academic, social, emotional, physical, and cognitive needs, ensuring that every aspect of a child’s growth is supported. This approach is backed by the latest research from the science of learning and development (SoLD), integrating insights from neuroscience, psychology, and education.
A whole-child approach to education includes a set of essential components in students’ learning experiences:
- Whole-Child Purpose: In what ways is this work focused on students’ healthy development, learning and thriving?
- Developmental Relationships: In what ways is this work fostering trust, connection and belonging?
- Supportive Environments: In what ways is this work creating spaces that are physically, emotionally and identity safe, supportive and inclusive?
- Knowledge, Skills and Mindsets: In what ways is this work developing students’ social, emotional and cognitive knowledge, skills, and mindsets?
- Shared Leadership and Ownership: In what ways is this work engaging all community members in transformational change through capacity-building, inclusion, relationship-building, and collaboration?
A Blueprint for Transformational Change
Unlike prescriptive models and curricula, the Whole-Child Design Blueprint is meant to be used as a visioning tool—supporting educators to look through the lens of whole-child development and design and take action toward the change they seek.
The framework’s 5 components and 13 core practices together make up a way to think about, organize and integrate practices that are aligned with the ways the brain learns and how children develop.
The Science of Learning and Development
Whole-Child Education is grounded in the “emerging and growing body of knowledge illuminating how young people best learn and develop,” called the Science of Learning and Development (SoLD).
“[SoLD] brings together leading scientists and education experts from a variety of fields —including neuroscience, epigenetics, learning science, social and emotional learning, early childhood development, the science of adversity, and human development—to identify and articulate essential insights that can inform how best to transform education systems so that all young people thrive.”
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