There is no question that wellbeing is increasingly the focus of attention in the educational arena.  Over the past decades, research has revealed that educational achievement has been increasingly linked to student wellbeing (Gutman & Vorhaus, 2012). Furthermore, there is an increased awareness that the ways children experience education may impact greatly on their overall wellbeing (Winthrop & Kirk 2011). Not surprisingly therefore, school-based programmes aiming to improve the wellbeing of children and adolescents have been implemented in different areas across the globe. In this respect, the OECD has recently initiated a new global measurement regime in the domain of education, comparing not only academic achievement in the key school subjects (PISA), but also students’ wellbeing (OECD 2017; 2019). However, despite this welcome focus, there are still many questions to be answered around how best to conceptualise wellbeing within the schooling context.

This panel discussion will build on the workshop facilitated by the speakers on critical perspectives on wellbeing and schooling at ECER 2021. The 2021 workshop addressed the dominant conceptualisations of student wellbeing as it relates to schooling in different socio-cultural contexts. Whilst the meanings attached to the emotional, social and psychological wellbeing of the children and young adults depend largely on a number of factors specific to the socio-cultural structure and organisation of societies and communities (Thin 2010), tools are often deployed across differing contexts, as can be seen in the case of the PISA studies, assuming uniformity of wellbeing characterisation. This can give the illusion that wellbeing practices and discourses anchored in the Global North should be de facto seen as universal (Ferrero & Barletti 2016), yet evidence is accumulating that wellbeing measurement tools developed in the Global North do not capture wellbeing adequately in other contexts (McLellan, 2019). Furthermore, many disciplines relevant to the educational context view wellbeing as part of their remit and conceptualise and operationalise it in different ways in accordance with their disciplinary perspective.

The speakers in this panel are co-editors of a forthcoming book on cross cultural and cross disciplinary perspectives on wellbeing and schooling that has been a collaborative project within Network 8. We will pick up where the discussion finished in the workshop last year and present our views on these issues drawing on our own disciplinary, methodological, and socio-cultural perspectives. The panel aims to challenge and rearticulate the taken-for-granted conceptions of, policies about, and interventions frameworks to support, wellbeing in schooling, through focusing on two questions, which are also included among the main sections in the forthcoming book: (i) Why are cross disciplinary perspectives valuable when we consider the links between school environments, schooling and wellbeing; (ii) What is the significance of cultural contexts in the enactment if wellbeing at school, and how can interventions to promote wellbeing include cultural awareness and understanding?

Ferrero, E., & Barletti J.P.S. (2016). Placing Wellbeing. Anthropological Perspectives on Wellbeing and Place. Anthropology in Action 23 (3), 1-5. Gutman, L. M. & Vorhaus, J. (2012). The Impact of Pupil Behaviour and Wellbeing on Educational Outcomes. London: DfE. McLellan, R. (2019). Enhancing wellbeing: The necessity and implications of a culturally-grounded interdisciplinary conceptualisation. The Psychology of Education Review, 43 (2), 37-47. Meusburger, P., Freytag, P., & Suarsana, L. (2016). Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of Knowledge and Education: An Introduction. In Meusbuge, P., Freytag, P., & Suarsana, L. (eds) Ethnic and Cultural Dimension of Knowledge. London: Springer, pp. 1-22. OECD (2017). PISA 2015 Results (Volume III): Students' Well-Being. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD (2019). PISA 2018 Well-being Framework, in PISA 2018 Assessment and Analytical Framework. Paris: OECD Publishing. Thin, N. (2010) Why Anthropology Can Ill Afford to Ignore Well-Being in Mathews, G. & Izquierdo, C. (eds) Pursuits of Happiness: Well-Being in Anthropological Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 23-44. Winthrop, R,M. & Kirk, J. ( 2011) Learning for a Bright Future: Schooling, Armed Conflict, and Children’s Well-Being. In Mundy, K., & Dryden-Peterson, S. (eds) Education Children in Conflict Zones. New York; Teachers College Press, pp. 101-122.