From a global perspective, the broad term ‘wellbeing’ is typically accepted as a description of the many interrelated aspects of an individual’s life. However, there remains an irony in that wellbeing is inconsistently defined across disciplines and according to the context in which it is considered (Crivello, Camfield & Woodhead, 2009; Dear, Henderson & Korten, 2002; Gillett-Swan, 2013, 2014; Gillett-Swan & Sargeant, 2014; Jones & Sumner, 2009; Watson, 2010). The inconsistency in understandings of wellbeing is exacerbated when attempting to understand children’s wellbeing compared with those of adults and the extent to which adult conceptualisations of wellbeing accurately represent children’s expressed wellbeing needs.

Various national and international indicators of child wellbeing have been established through a series of policy reviews and research, such as ARACY (2008), UNICEF (2007, 2013) and the work of Bradshaw et al. (2007). These indicators include consistent features of material wellbeing, health, safety, education, relationships, risks and subjective wellbeing, with additional indicators including behaviours (ARACY, 2008; UNICEF, 2007), participation (ARACY, 2008; Bradshaw et al., 2007), environment (ARACY, 2008), and housing (Bradshaw et al., 2007). Much of the research about children’s wellbeing places substantial emphasis on the literature, which presents adult conceptualisations of wellbeing, to inform the emergence of important themes when determining indicators for children’s wellbeing.

With the increasing presence of ‘wellbeing programs’ targeted at children, an additional element should include investigating and defining wellbeing for educational purposes and contexts from the child’s perspective (Adams, 2012; Fattore, Mason & Watson, 2007; Gillett-Swan, 2013, 2014; Gillett-Swan & Sargeant, 2014; Mashford-Scott, Church & Tayler, 2012).

Most wellbeing provision for children in school appears to be focused on children’s socio-emotional wellbeing, health and safety (Queensland Government, 2008). Elements within wellbeing such as mental health are particularly visible in policy and provision development for children in educational contexts through programs such as Social Emotional Aspects of Learning [SEAL]/Social Emotional Learning [SEL] (Farrell, 2008; Hallem, 2009; Humphrey, Lendrum & Wigelsworth, 2010); yet beyond the indicators of child wellbeing and other measurable outputs to determine how children are doing, there is little research that seeks the perspectives of children themselves: that is, research that specifically seeks children’s perspectives on wellbeing (Adams, 2012; Gillett-Swan, 2013, 2014; Mashford-Scott, Church & Tayler. 2012).

Educational policies and provision are designed for children to address what are thought to be their best interests, and many of the policies and provision developed for children may be broadly described as relating to various aspects to do with their wellbeing. As children spend a lot of their time in education, it would be valuable to utilise the sociological perspective of childhood to investigate the everyday experiences of the child actually being a child.

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