Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EduWell (Education and Wellbeing of Youths in Secondary Schools: A Comparative Analysis of Teaching Styles and Happiness in Japan, France, and Finland)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-09-01 do 2023-08-31
This project addresses the main question of how different teaching and schooling systems across Europe and Asia can have an impact on students’ multi-faceted state of wellbeing. This is important for societies because across much of the rich world, a sizeable number of youths are unhappy in schools. The overall objective is to understand how different education systems impact youths’ comprehensive wellbeing at the most formative stage of growing up, and to use findings to inform context-specific policymaking to enhance longer term youth wellbeing in societies facing different challenges (ageing population, migration-induced diversity, etc).
Work performed at the beginning of the project includes literature review of existing frameworks of (youth) wellbeing measurement and what impacts youth wellbeing especially in educational contexts. Both scientific and grey literature were reviewed. On this basis, I designed fieldwork strategies for data collection in field sites (schools, education agencies, etc). I then set out to contact possible schools and education policymakers in the two main fieldwork sites envisaged: Finland and Japan. In the second project year, I spent several months conducting fieldwork in Helsinki and Tokyo. These activities included data collection such as observations of school activities, interviews and focus group discussions with school administrators, parents, teachers, as well as site visits and interviews with city government officials responsible for education policies. The main focus was to examine how was “wellbeing” as a concept incorporated into both education policies and school practices, how do educators implement their understanding of student wellbeing in their pedagogy, as well as how different global cities deal with new challenges such as increasing diversity by promoting student wellbeing. Some of the main findings towards the end are: (i) Educational practices that emphasise on giving students a sense of agency and decision-making in their daily life at school (from subject combinations to how classes should be organised to the amount and nature of homework to lunch menus) are overwhelmingly perceived by students as something that enhance their life satisfaction at school, (ii) in increasingly diverse and multicultural urban classrooms from Finland to Japan, different approaches have been implemented or tested as regards promoting the wellbeing of (especially migrant students) – from active systematic public school support in remedial classes in Finland to more laissez-faire approach in Japan. On this basis, future, more long-term studies looking into how such diverse approaches affect student wellbeing in multicultural urban classrooms in Europe and Asia are envisaged. Findings related to this study have been continuously communicated and disseminated in public workshops and conferences.
Current state of the art often implies that happiness and wellbeing as an individual pursuit focusing on what an individual agent can do is anchored in Western traditions and contexts. This comparative study incorporating both European and East Asian case studies showed, in a preliminary case, that even in an East Asian context, the increased feeling of individual agency (i.e. a student feels she or he has a say in various aspects of her or his school life) is a particularly welcomed aspect in enhanced feelings of life satisfaction. As previously mentioned, main results to be expected by the end of the project are (i) Educational practices that emphasise on giving students a sense of agency and decision-making in their daily life at school (from subject combinations to how classes should be organised to the amount and nature of homework to lunch menus) are overwhelmingly perceived by students as something that enhance their life satisfaction at school, (ii) in increasingly diverse and multicultural urban classrooms from Finland to Japan, different approaches have been implemented or tested as regards promoting the wellbeing of (especially migrant students) – from active systematic public school support in remedial classes in Finland to more laissez-faire approach in Japan. On this basis, future, more long-term studies looking into how such diverse approaches affect student wellbeing in multicultural urban classrooms in Europe and Asia are envisaged.