MATHEW A. WHITE

Mathew A. White PhD is employed as Director of Wellbeing & Positive Education at St Peter's College - Adelaide and has served on the School's Senior Leadership Team since 2011. He is also an Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne. Mathew has lectured at the post-graduate level on international education, policy and wellbeing since 2006. He is a Research Affiliate of the Well-being Institute at Cambridge University and also an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Education at The University of Adelaide.

Mathew brings a unique combination of a deep academic background in wellbeing with executive level leadership experience across education, public and social sectors. At St Peter's College Mathew directs the whole school strategy for wellbeing and leads a team of teachers who have taught over 8,500 students seven evidence-based positive education programs since 2011. Before this Mathew was the inaugural Director of Leadership and Training at Teach For Australia and held positions of academic and pastoral leadership at Geelong Grammar School for over a decade. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators in 2016. He was awarded an Australian Council for Educational Leaders South Australian Leadership Medal in recognition of his research and publications advancing wellbeing in education in May 2017 and is the recipient of the ACEL Leadership Award for 2017.

Mathew has published and presented internationally on wellbeing, positive education, policy and strategy and is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology (Springer). He has published three ground-breaking co-edited books Future Directions in Wellbeing: Education, Organizational and Policy (2017, Springer), Flourishing in Faith: Theology and Positive Psychology (2017, Wipf & Stock) and Evidence-based Approaches to Positive Education in Schools: Implementing a Strategic Framework for Well-being in School (2015, Springer). His research has been published in AI Practitioner: International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, Australian Educational Leader, IB World Magazine, International Journal of Wellbeing, Journal of Positive Psychology, Psychology, andPsychology of Well-being: Theory, Research & Practice.

He has served as:

• Member of the International Positive Psychology Association World Congress Practice Review Committee for 5th IPPA World Congress, Montreal, Canada
• Member of the International Positive Psychology Association World Congress Practice Review Committee for 4th IPPA World Congress, Orlando
• Member of the International Positive Psychology Association World Congress Practice Review Committee for 3rd IPPA World Congress, Los Angeles
• Member of the 1st International Positive Education Network Festival Abstract Review Committee, Dallas
• Member of the 5th Australian Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Conference Scientific Committee
• South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute - Member of the 4th Australian Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Conference
• The University of Melbourne - Australia's Representative for the International Positive Education Network (IPEN)
• Chair, South Australian Chapter of the Positive Education School's Association (PESA-SA) and was the Chapter's inaugural secretary.

Session Title: Using appreciative inquiry to support positive change: a case study of a whole-school wellbeing initiative

Drawing from the fields of positive psychology, positive organisational scholarship and educational administration, this case study reports on the process used in a large K-12 school to implement the strategic goal of fostering student wellbeing. This case study outlines the three strategic phases used to build wellbeing over a two-and-a-half-year time period: 1) development; 2) implementation; and 3) monitoring. The school aligned its change process to the goal of achieving wellbeing by adopting appreciative inquiry as the overarching change approach. Appreciative inquiry is a systematic, holistic, and collaborative methodology that follows a strengths-based model of change. Through the use of appreciative inquiry, bottom-up (instigated by students and staff) and top-down (instigated by leadership) initiatives were generated over a 6-year period. This keynote provides an applied example of how appreciative inquiry can be woven into a strategic change process to support the wellbeing of students.

BACK