Improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people has become a policy priority among many high-income countries due to concern about a marked increase in the rates of young people being diagnosed with depression and anxiety (Olfson, Blanco, Wang, Laje & Correll, 2014). In the Scottish context, current policy emphasises the prevention of ill health and the integration of services to achieve public health goals (Scottish Government, 2011) with schools and teachers seen as key to promoting student health and wellbeing (Priestley & Drew, 2016). However, while wellbeing is applauded as a holistic goal, its achievement is usually hampered by ambiguity around the term ‘wellbeing’ that may lead to uncertainty in schools about how to convert government policy into everyday practice (Chapman, 2015).

This political interest is seen in the Scottish national education policy, Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), which aims to transform Scottish education towards greater emphasis on three core areas: literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing (HWB) with HWB positioned as a ‘responsibility of all’ school staff. CfE’s overarching aspiration is to help all students develop the ‘four capacities’ to become successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, and effective contributors (Scottish Executive, 2006). Schools are supported in their enactment of policy by ‘experiences and outcomes’ (E&Os) – a series of first-person statements that guide both how and what young people should experience and achieve as they progress through school (Gray, MacLean, & Mulholland, 2012). 

Policy documentation claims that mental, emotional, social and physical health and wellbeing are essential for successful learning and successful development of the four capacities. However, the ways in which teachers enact the curricular guidelines may be related to the ways in which they conceptualise HWB (Gray, MacLean & Mulholland, 2012). This issue is further complicated by the fact that the term wellbeing remains an elusive concept with competing discourses on the best way to conceptualise, measure or increase wellbeing (Spratt, 2017).

This study explored how conceptualisations and discursive constructions of HWB were recontextualised and enacted in local school practice. To do so, Foucault’s concepts of discourse, knowledge and power were used to analyse case studies published by the Scottish education agency, Education Scotland (ES). These case studies describe the ways four secondary schools enacted policy and were highlighted because ES considered them to have demonstrated good progress in implementing HWB. As such, these school sites may not be representative of all Scottish schools, but they were selected for analysis because by highlighting them as ‘good practice exemplars’, ES may be using them as a normative standard to influence the actions of other local schools. This study is informed by Spratt’s (2016; 2017) discussion of common discourses found in the CfE policy documentation, and aims to address two main research questions: 1. how discursive constructions of HWB in the CfE policy are recontextualised and enacted at the local level, and 2. how responsibilities of school staff and students are understood within local schools.

Analysis found that schools primarily conceptualised HWB as either teaching for achievement of predefined learning outcomes or teaching as a process for character development, and mostly relied on differing discourses (i.e. care and flourishing respectively). These competing curricular constructions implied different modes of action from educators that may constrain teachers’ pedagogic autonomy and impede the more aspirational tenets of CfE policy. The findings point to the need for further clarification of CfE policy aims to better support implementation.  

Discourse and power: Foucauldian theories Discourse is commonly understood as language that can be used to articulate the values and practices of society and make certain ways-of-being or ways-of-thinking acceptable (Willig, 2008; Rossi et al., 2009). Educational policy embodies these discourses and can construct social life and socialise the population by defining the norms and rules of how individuals are to behave (Spratt, 2017). Discourse is often associated with Michel Foucault, a social philosopher known for his theories on the indivisibility of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1980). Foucault argued that discourse was the embodiment of power and knowledge because of its ability to define ‘truth’ and that power was exercised through preferential access to discourse. This knowledge can become so influential that it produces a ‘regime of truth’ that makes it difficult to see or think in any other way and can create a powerful constraint on how and what can be done (MacNaughton, 2012). Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA) is generally understood as the examination of communication to uncover how language can be recruited to define truth, what is normalised or pathologised, and what practices are made acceptable by these ways of thinking (Rossi et al., 2009). As this research aimed to examine how policy texts were enacted in secondary schools and how HWB discourses may control school practices and behaviours, Willig’s (2008) Foucauldian-inspired analytical framework was chosen because it analyses the ways discourse can be used to control social and pedagogical practices. This framework explores how discourses conceptualising wellbeing can create subject positions that may become a powerful ‘truth’ that defines what ways of thinking or practices are possible. Data analysis To understand how CfE’s wellbeing discourses may work to control behaviour, four secondary school case studies were examined. These studies were produced by an external consulting firm for Education Scotland and constructed accounts of HWB implementation in four case schools. Analysis for this paper occurred in a multistep process of initial coding to categorise comparable HWB school practices which were then analysed to identify various discourses using a discourse manual developed a priori based on common discourses used to conceptualise HWB (Spratt, 2017). The themes were then examined using a Foucauldian-inspired analytical framework (Willig, 2008) to explore how the schools conceptualised wellbeing, what common discourses were used, and what implications these conceptualisations might have had on the actions and responsibilities of staff and students.

The findings revealed two main conceptualisations of HWB in the schools as either teaching for outcome achievement or as a process for character development, and mostly relied on differing discourses (i.e. care and flourishing respectively). Tension arose because the conceptualisations implied different modes of action from educators. HWB centred on outcome achievement puts responsibility on teachers to transmit the required knowledge and may lead teachers to rely on predefined objectives to evidence learning. Constricted emphasis on outcomes may stifle teacher and student autonomy (Priestley & Drew, 2016) and conflicts with the aspiration of HWB as a process to give teachers increased flexibility to enable student-driven learning. Competing discourses around wellbeing may leave schools uncertain how to convert curriculum goals into practice and may lead schools to depend on previous practices that might inhibit pedagogical innovation (Priestley & Drew, 2016). These findings suggest that in order to facilitate successful curriculum implementation and support educators, additional clarification around curricular goals and assessment measures is needed. Furthermore, schools may need more time to engage with local curriculum planning, especially schools located in areas of social and economic disadvantage. The findings revealed differences between affluent and disadvantaged schools in perceptions of implementation barriers, particularly time availability. Previous research found that if teachers do not have time to fully engage with the principles of CfE, they may be more likely to rely on previous practice and allow assessment needs to drive pedagogy (Priestley & Minty, 2013). This may have negative consequences on the HWB and equity of learning opportunities for more disadvantaged students if teachers do not have the time or capability to recontextualise the curriculum to suit their needs. This may also lead to apprehension and decreased HWB for educators if schools feel unable to make meaningful changes to the curricular agenda.

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