Work occupies much of our lives. Hours spent at the office or at home thinking about work-related tasks and obligations often exceed time away from work. Yet, how many of us find our work meaningful? How many of us feel able to do our best work? And how often do we stop to consider the consequences of our work on others, or its impact on society as a whole? For individuals at all levels—young students, graduate school students, and new and veteran professionals—opportunities to consider the meaning of work for themselves and others are rare, but imperative. Society needs professionals who care about good work.
Since 1995, researchers at Claremont Graduate University , Harvard University , and Stanford University have been engaged in the GoodWork ® Project, investigating the notion of “good work” in professions and professionals. “Good work” is defined as work that is at once excellent in quality, responsive to the needs of the broader community, and personally meaningful.
The project, led by psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon and Howard Gardner, evolved out of concern about what might happen when professionals face immense pressure to meet bottom-line demands. Where scientists in the past focused on contributing to knowledge or curing disease, for example, today they may be searching for lucrative treatments to increase a biotech’s market share value. This is not to say that financial concerns have not always had some role in professions. Scientists, of course, have always competed for grants.
But the market pressures of today must be considered in combination with advances in technology that are unprecedented. Young workers are developing in a different cultural climate than their predecessors, and face the complex challenge of learning to negotiate the often competing demands of excellence, ethics, and earnings. Veteran professionals also struggle to maintain standards and sense of purpose in these changing contexts.
These challenges to doing work that is at once excellent in quality, socially responsible, and enjoyable—“good work”—are salient for professionals across stages and fields. The GoodWork® Toolkit is a series of materials that introduces and raises consciousness about concepts of “good work;” in working with these materials young students and veteran professionals alike explore, discuss, and articulate core responsibilities, beliefs and values, and goals for work. The GoodWork® Toolkit provides a framework for individuals to consider the kind of workers they are now and the kinds of professionals they want to become.
Toolkit Programs
Purpose
The GoodWork® Toolkit encourages high quality and meaningful work while at the same time catalyzing thinking about the work’s consequences for others. Through a series of cases and accompanying activities, individuals consider themes central to “good work.” Participants are asked to think critically about what constitutes a “good” professional. Is a “good” journalist one who frequently gets her stories on the front page, even if her tactics are questionable? Or is a “good journalist” one who will not compromise professional standards (such as fairness, honesty, and accuracy) but whose stories garner less attention? The primary purpose of the Toolkit is to engage individuals in questions that all professionals should consider. We suggest individuals think through guiding questions before working with Toolkit materials and revisit them again afterwards.
Courses (Offered through the Project Zero Classroom)
Teaching “Good Work” in the Classroom: An Introduction to the Toolkit . In this mini course, we explore and reflect on what it means to be a “good” professional and we introduce a unique educational approach to prepare young students, our future workers, to become ”good workers.”
Professional Development Seminars
We work with groups of professionals. Participants consider standards, issues of personal and professional responsibilities, values, and ethical tensions that arise when some of these issues come into conflict with one another. We are willing to tailor the seminar to meet the specific needs of a department, for example, to help draft a shared mission statement.
School-Wide Consultation
We work with entire school communities—teachers, students, and parents—to define a shared mission around what constitutes “good work.” For example, to help teachers bring their individual goals into alignment with one another and with their school’s mission, we ask them to articulate their goals, beliefs, responsibilities, and to consider what “success” means to students, to fellow teachers, and to parents. We also work as consultants with schools to address particular school-wide issues—for example, to consider issues of honesty.
Consulting with Individual Teachers
Teachers who use the Toolkit have access as well to our experience and knowledge about good work. We have helped teachers to prepare specific lessons, or to make connections between a specific topic (WW II) and good work (issues of responsibility)