Eudaimonic well-being and education

Francesconi, Denis

doi:10.4324/9781315724966-30

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…That is, wellbeing is not only an individual concern, but a function of subject-system capacities (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993). When it comes to children, their wellbeing may be dependent on the agency (Fattore et al, 2009) or autonomy (Ryan & Weinstein, 2009) they are afforded within the systems they are embedded in, education representing one such system (Francesconi, 2018).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s Lived Experiences of Wellbeing at School in England: a Phenomenological Inquiry

Clarke

Platt

2023

Child Ind Res

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This phenomenological inquiry investigated children’s wellbeing experiences at school, including their hedonic (feeling good) and eudaimonic (doing good) accounts, a distinction often overlooked. Further, while phenomenological inquiries of children’s mental ill-health exist, wellbeing, a fundamental part of mental health, is neglected. This is at odds with positive psychology which favours strengths-based approaches to studying human development. Phenomenology provides rich detail, facilitating deeper understanding of why and how certain factors affect wellbeing, as described by children themselves. A sample of 15 children (aged 9–11), attending one English primary school broadly representative of the national socio-demographic, engaged in interviews. Children’s experiences of ‘feeling good’ at school were characterised by: an interdependence on peers’ emotional states (described as ‘a domino effect’), a need to feel cared for by, and trust, adults, and desire for autonomy over their time. Children attributed mistrust in adults to adults disregarding seemingly incidental events which felt significant to children. Children experienced ‘doing well’ as equating to academic attainment, conveying a fixation with test scores, using language of ‘correctness’ and efficiency. Shame pervaded when ‘correctness’ was not achieved, with children describing being ridiculed for poor test scores. Recommendations for schools to support children’s hedonia include prioritising wellbeing curricula and emotional literacy, greater staff reflexivity, and prioritisation of pupil voice. To foster children’s eudaimonia, recommendations include the need for teachers to provide formative, personalised feedback for pupils focused on the learning process, and the need for Government to embrace a range of ways pupils can feel successful beyond academic attainment.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s Lived Experiences of Wellbeing at School in England: a Phenomenological Inquiry

Clarke

Platt

2023

Child Ind Res

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“…Eudaimonic wellbeing is not directly concerned with a healthy lifestyle per se. Instead, it relates to ethics and the normative idea that wellbeing is a life task, an existential aspiration and a virtue (Francesconi, 2018); further, it implies care for the community and social justice. Eudaimonia is interpreted as a meaningful, existential, programmatic will or intention, which guides present and future action to promote individual and collective self-realization (Francesconi, 2018).…”

Section: Quality Of Life and Sdgsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is in line with the general aims of the Quality of Life Movement (Francesconi et al, 2021b). In this context, and in order to move beyond the sanitary reactions to the pandemic towards an educational concept of eudaimonic wellbeing (Francesconi, 2018), it will be crucial for the future of schools to plan and implement changes in the curriculum that put a stronger focus on personal and social wellbeing and self-care. This can be achieved through workshops, focus groups, personal and pedagogical coaching and other methodologies fostering socialization and self-reflection, as well as by ensuring that students understand the past and current emergency and any future crisis, and that they are equipped with the requisite tools to take care of themselves and their environment.…”

Section: Covid-19 As An Opportunity To Foreground Wellbeingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facets of primary and secondary school students' wellbeing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative analysis of Austrian and Italian educational policy

Francesconi¹,

Gross²,

Agostini³

2021

Psihol istraživanja

Self Cite

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The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the limits of current social and educational structures. In most countries, COVID-19 has compromised the wellbeing of students, but also of their families and teachers. During the first wave of the pandemic, school systems all over the world had to respond quickly and appropriately to the systemic shock it represented, and countries put a variety of different policy measures in place to tackle its extensive impact. The theoretical framework adopted in this paper is a critical perspective and the policy framework is the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); it provides a qualitative analysis of selected educational policies deployed by Italy and Austria to support the wellbeing of school pupils. The two countries deployed different education governance and emergency management strategies, in particular during the first wave of the pandemic. We applied our theoretical and policy frameworks to qualitative content analysis of educational policy documents from February to the end of August 2020, aiming to evaluate the responses to crisis of different education systems and potentially to support their improvement. The overall research question was: How did educational policies in Italy and Austria support students' wellbeing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic? The results confirm that the Italian and Austrian systems had different strategies to support wellbeing and put different initiatives in place. However, educational policies in both countries, and especially Italy, had a stronger focus on the physical wellbeing of individual students during the period under study, and tended to neglect social wellbeing. The paper concludes by reflecting on the opportunities presented by this emergency for school systems to position wellbeing (in the broader sense of eudaimonic wellbeing) at the centre of educational policy

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“…Subsequently, another Nobel Prize laureate, the cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman, together with colleagues, established a new discipline called 'Hedonic Psychology' (Kahneman et al, 1999). The foundation of this new branch of psychology marked a relevant change in the science of psychology (Francesconi, 2018) and coincided with the birth of Positive Psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Today, both Hedonic and Positive Psychology inform the QoL movement through the scientific approach to subjective and experiential wellbeing (Helliwell et al, 2012(Helliwell et al, , 2020.…”

Section: Introduction: the Eudaimonic Approach To Quality Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, the popular discourses of sustainability and social justice have much in common with the quality of life framework set up by Nussbaum and Sen (Giovannini, 2018). Etymologically, eudaimonia means good spirit ( èu = good and dàimōn = spirit), the good god, which nowadays can be translated as good potential, talent, character or mind (Francesconi, 2018). Behaving in a eudaimonic way means behaving for self-realization, for the actualization of one’s own potential.…”

Section: Introduction: the Eudaimonic Approach To Quality Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Quality of life movement: Historical overview of the policies and challenges for the future of education

Francesconi

Tarozzi

Bykachev

et al. 2022

Policy Futures in Education

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Since the early 1990s, there has been a paradigm shift in human development theory due to a slow but steady increase in the attention paid to the concepts of quality of life, wellbeing and happiness. Accordingly, some scientists have questioned the validity of Gross Domestic Product as a tool to explain the wealth and development of nations, and several institutions and scholars have started to provide new policies and indexes to measure both subjective and collective wellbeing. These include, among others, the so-called Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report, the OECD's Better Life Initiative, the Quality of Life in Europe and the United Nations' World Happiness Index. At the moment, a comprehensive and critical historical review of this trend is still missing, as well as its impact on education systems. In this paper, we first review the historical development of what has been called the ‘Quality of Life movement’ (QoL movement) and the major trends and indexes currently available for measuring the quality of life and wellbeing. We then present some education policy initiatives as examples of the attempt to implement QoL discourse into education systems. We conclude by outlining critical theoretical considerations of how the QoL movement could impact future education policies and systems.

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Eudaimonic well-being and education

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

Children’s Lived Experiences of Wellbeing at School in England: a Phenomenological Inquiry

Children’s Lived Experiences of Wellbeing at School in England: a Phenomenological Inquiry

Facets of primary and secondary school students' wellbeing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative analysis of Austrian and Italian educational policy

Quality of life movement: Historical overview of the policies and challenges for the future of education

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