The MSCA research project SHINE, which was carried out at the European University of Cyprus, used a comparative approach to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ well-being and happiness in Cyprus and Greece, in order to understand patterns of inequality that affect happiness attainment in children. Specifically, it gave secondary school students the opportunity to report their experiences and share insights into the impact of the pandemic on their society, on their educational experience and especially on their everyday lives, and to share thoughts on the role they believe education can play in tackling this impact. Through this, it raised important questions about the possible role of education for the promotion of students’ well-being in contexts of emergency such as the pandemic and aimed to lay a foundation for tracing new ways of exploring the practices and discourses through which well-being and happiness are constituted.
In periods of great transition, the role of education could not be more pivotal. Education systems have to develop robust and urgent responses to prepare students to think more critically and creatively about the future. Schools can be sites for and participants in substantive social change, public spaces where projects are undertaken in response to the needs and the desires of the community, places where young people grow to become more adaptable to change and learn to be proactive, developing skills that will help them face challenges and build emotional happiness. They can become places that give students the support they need to blossom in life.
In the conclusions of the project, it is argued that the COVID-19 pandemic and the prevention measures imposed have brought about disruptive and unexpected changes in adolescents’ daily lives and habits. They have also led to the redefinition and reframing of their social identities, their relationships with their friends and family, and their habits and routines. During the lockdown, adolescents were forced to isolate in their homes, away from their schools, sometimes for many months. Their personal and social rhythms changed in an attempt to adapt to and cope with these disruptive changes. Adolescents and their family members suddenly lost the place and time landmarks usually marking their daily routines. Their houses became offices for their parents and classrooms for themselves. The boundaries of school, work, rest, and leisure spaces became very faint. Communication with those outside their households became entirely virtual.
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, while also dealing with social exclusion, adolescents faced an unequal distribution of economic, social and cultural resources connected to schooling. Adolescents from families in the upper and upper-middle socio-economic classes had different educational experiences during this pandemic compared with students from middle-, working- and lower-class families. This related to the divergent modes of teaching, the unequal number of hours of schooling per day, access to computers, access to an internet connection and the variety and quality of the extracurricular activities available. Adolescents’ socio-economic background and personal history shaped the way the effects of this crisis affected their school achievement; they also shaped their responses to the contemporary setting of the pandemic, which was frequently ingrained with misery, fear, tension, and an increasing sense of insecurity.
