The social and moral ecology of education for flourishing

ABSTRACT

Educational institutions exist in reciprocal relations with broader social and moral ecologies. These ecologies involve interactions of networks of individuals and groups with wider aspects of culture, and are therefore broadly social, and they contain explicit or implicit content with regard to right and wrong, and are therefore moral. There is growing recognition that educational institutions could do more to promote full flourishing for students, teachers, staff, society, and planet, but there has been relatively little attention to the role played by such social and moral ecologies in fostering this desired change. This paper argues that ecosystem stewards can inspire and lead educational institutions in this direction by loving more fully into being a cultural climate that promotes morally good forms of ecosystem-wide flourishing. This includes an exploration of a systems perspective in order to encourage a more intentional and skillful integration of healthy social and moral influences.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral ecology
• education
• flourishing
• ecosystem steward
• love

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the many vital conversations I have had with the educational thought leaders in the Flourishing Network hosted by the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. I also appreciate the helpful comments provided by the editor and reviewers. This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation under Grant ID# 62731. The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation [62731].

Notes on contributors

Matthew T. Lee

Matthew T. Lee, Ph.D., is Professor of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is also Director of the Flourishing Network at the Human Flourishing Program in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, where he is appointed as a Research Associate. He serves as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Health, Flourishing, and Positive Psychology at Stony Brook University’s Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics and also as a Visiting Scholar at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. His most recent books are Measuring Well-Being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Transcending Crisis by Attending to Care, Emotions, and Flourishing (Routledge, 2023).