Metrics for education for flourishing: A framework

Abstract

The present paper puts forward a framework for the development, use, and selection of metrics concerning education for flourishing, intended to assist with the assessment of educational efforts to promote student flourishing. These metrics pertain to education policies and practices aimed at both traditional cognitive and epistemic aims and aspects of flourishing that extend beyond those aims, and to both present and subsequent flourishing. Various methodological considerations are discussed and three sets of individual and systems-level metrics are put forward. Both the individual and the systems-level metrics are structured around three broad, interrelated categories: (i) present flourishing; (ii) academic achievement; and (iii) social, emotional, and character-related capacities. We focus on metrics that are constitutive of and/or causally efficacious for present and subsequent flourishing and that also fall within the purview of what an educational system can reasonably alter. Discussion is given to the uses, implications, and limitations of this framework and how it might be helpful in advancing efforts at education for flourishing.