Wellbeing in schools is a field characterized by the proliferation of research over the last decade. Wellbeing is often used as a measure of quality of life, referring to a wide range of phenomena, socioeconomic indicators or subjective experiences. The conceptualizations draw upon different disciplines – from psychology and philosophy to childhood studies, economics, social welfare studies and political science. A recent systematic review focusing on bibliometric and network analysis of the research on wellbeing in educational contexts published in the years 1978-2018 identifies a pattern of an emerging discipline, with an initial 15-year inception period followed by a 10-year consolidation period and a decade of rapid exponential growth (Hernández-Torrano, 2020). The same review reveals that the most influential research is conducted in predominantly English-speaking countries dominated by the US, followed by the UK, Australia and Canada, while European and specifically Scandinavian research is scarce. This article engages with wellbeing in schools in the context of the Danish ‘Folkeskole’ (public primary and lower secondary schools, students aged 6-16 years).

Wellbeing has become a core issue in educational reforms and related scholarship, both internationally and in Denmark (e.g., Thorburn, 2018; McLellan, Faucher & Simovska, 2022). In the literature, wellbeing is typically defined as ‘being well’, or having an optimal psychological experience and functioning, positively associated with students’ motivation, learning and academic achievement (Adler, 2017; Bücker et al., 2018). Consequently, educational research, policy and practice have mostly endorsed the ‘transformative’ potential of the concept—that is, its potential to inform school development and interventions conducive to the thriving, inclusion and engagement of students (e.g.McCallum & Price, 2016). However, research has suggested that the (over)use of the concept can easily swing from being transformative to being ‘tyrannical’ (Simovska & Kousholt, 2021), excluding certain subjectivities and entailing the dominance of simplified ‘feel-good’, ‘positive thinking’ or similar individualistic agendas in schools (cf. Watson et al.).Furthermore, the aspirations of measuring and promoting school wellbeing are characterized by inconsistent and often contradictory uses of social and educational theory (Wright & McLeod, 2015; Spratt, 2017; Simovska & O'Toole, 2021) and a scarcity of children’s and young people’s perspectives.

Against this background and with an ambition to contribute to amplifying children’s voices related to wellbeing at school and refining the concept theoretically, in this article, we explore children’s perspectives on wellbeing in school. 

For the analysys, we deployed the model of student wellbeing developed by Simovska and colleagues (Simovska, 2016; Simovska & Kousholt, 2021; O’Toole & Simovska, 2022). The model builds on the key theoretical assumptions originating in neurocognitive science, specifically the 4E approaches (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991). In this theorizing, wellbeing is construed as Enactive, Embodied, Embedded and Extended. Inother words, the mind and the body are treated as inextricably connected (enactive and embodied) and intertwined with the social, physical and material worlds (embedded and extended). Accordingly, conceptualizing school wellbeing entails accommodating students’ lived experience in the context of the material and discursive (power) relations, (in)equalities and opportunity/adversity dynamics they encounter in a specific historical, political and sociocultural setting of the school.

The study was conducted at a Danish public primary school attended by 236 students in Years 0-6 and with 39 staff members. To access the diverse perspectives of differently aged children, three classes were recruited for the study: a year 2 class (8 years of age), a year 4 class (10 years) and a year 6 class (12 years). A total of forty-seven children and their teachers took part in the study. In the planning and conducting of the research, we were guided by the notion of ethical reflexivity (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004), observing both ‘procedural ethics’ (informed consent and personal data protection) and ‘ethics in practice’ or situated, emergent ethics focusing on trust and care for vulnerability in all phases of the research. Aligned with the Danish code of conduct for research integrity, we followed the principles of honesty, transparency and accountability. All the participants in the study were pseudonymized. Different data generation methods were used with a view to accommodating the age, individual communicative competences and preferences of different children. The children were given more or less free rein with regard to both the form and content of their accounts of wellbeing. As a result, some children produced drawings or paintings, while others wrote stories or poems, built Lego models, or recorded films or audio narratives. All this was treated as data records and analysed.

The analysis showed that the children see wellbeing at school as a complex phenomenon that cuts across lessons, breaks and both school and leisure time. They take a critical stance toward certain aspects of the institutionalized frameworks and culture of schooling, such as the length of the schooldays, the workload and the time schedules, the layout and furnishing of classrooms and the affordances provided by other physical spaces in and around school. The separation between the physical and the intellectual, or rather the marginalization of the body at school, is also something that the children experience as hindrance to their wellbeing at school. Further, the analysis points to the students’ desire for more opportunities for engagement and influence on decisions made at school—both everyday matters and more substantial decisions at the organizational level. They experience wellbeing as closely linked to a sense of togetherness, doing things together with classmates, and having friends at school. However, the children also stated that the sense of belonging is not a given; many examples emerge in the data where the children portray situations in which they feel out of place and express a desire for a more inclusive school environment that is sensitive to diversity and conducive to subjectification. Relationships with adults, both teachers and other school staff, are also viewed as important for wellbeing at school. According to the dimensions of the deployed conceptualization of wellbeing in schools, it is clear that the children often refer to the agency dimension when discussing the other dimensions categorized as being, belonging or becoming, indicating that being engaged and having meaningful influence over school matters is vital to children’s wellbeing at school. In conclusion, we argue that research that treats children as experts in their school wellbeing and takes their voices seriously has a better potential to inform and improve school-based wellbeing promotion.

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