Attachment in School: What is this novel scientific construct, why does it matter, and how can schools boost it?
Date: March 4, 2026
Time: 12:00-1:00pm UTC
About this webinar
There are multiple ways schools can assess their community’s connectedness, student wellbeing, and overall climate that promote the right kinds of educator-student relationships and the best kinds of environments for fostering positive academic and developmental outcomes.
While schools look to measure climate and connectedness, there is opportunity to institute practices that engage and invite youth voice, while planting seeds for possibility of student-led initiatives that help make school a place that both students and adults want to be. Adults and students deserve environments where all individuals feel valued, respected, and supported–let’s use the measurement of this in our schools to teach it too!
This webinar will provide you with a tested plan for facilitating 60-minute student focus groups (loaded with fun leadership activities) and the right questions to get at the answers and learnings you need for engaging youth and making a plan with students for improving climate, connectedness, and well-being at your school.
Speaker
Doug Ota is a researcher, author, health (GZ) and child (NIP K&J) psychologist, and specialist in how transitions affect people. Doug has always had a passion for the theme of mobility and belonging. He is the author of Safe Passage: How Mobility Affects People and What International Schools Should Do About It (2014). Safe Passage led to the founding of Safe Passage Across Networks (SPAN) in 2016 (www.spanschools.org), an international non-profit supporting transitions in educational settings. It also gave rise to the Safe Passage Attachment Study in International Schools (SPASIS), the basis for his Ph.D.
Doug studied Religion at Princeton University (1993) and Clinical Child Psychology at the University of Leiden (2000, cum laude). His clinical qualifications are as a NIP Child Psychologist (2008) and a BIG-registered Gezondheidszorg (GZ) Psychologist in the Netherlands (2023). Doug earned his PhD in developmental psychology, under the supervision of Professor Marinus van IJzendoorn, one of the world’s leading researchers in attachment theory. His PhD investigated levels of attachment security in international schools, and the novel idea that schools could be attachment objects for their students. Sponsored by the Council of International Schools (CIS), Doug’s work has led to transitions-related standards becoming adopted into CIS accreditation standards for its schools worldwide.
Doug has a private and online practice as a child, family, and couples therapist (www.safepassage.nl). The father of three fine adults, Doug lives with his wife in The Hague, Netherlands. For fun, he still runs marathons, and he welcomes any runners from the mobile community to get mobile with him.