A conceptual model of well-being at school: a European review

Abstract

Children and young learners in Europe face a number of challenges, including an uncertain future marked by approaching wars, poverty, social and cultural inequalities, media manipulation, online safety, cyberbullying, technology addiction, and vulnerabilities that were exacerbated during and after the Covid-19 pandemic (UNICEF Innocenti 2020). Among European children, 35% of 13-year-olds and 40% of 15-year-olds report feeling depressed, nervous, and having psychosomatic symptoms more than once a week (WHO Regional Office for Europe 2020). Promoting and intervening in well-being at school is therefore one of the priorities for schools today. Some of the findings of the recent study on student learning and well-being conducted by the OECD (2020) on the results of PISA 2018 and the WHO’s Health Behavior School Checklist (HBSC) study (Inchley et al. 2020) provide further food for thought. Although most students in OECD countries reported feeling socially connected at school, about one in four disagreed that it was easy to make friends at school and about one in five reported feeling like an outsider at school (OECD 2020). Well-being of children and young people is a multifaceted phenomenon and the focus of this report on the school context should not be interpreted as an indication that it is exclusively an education issue, but it is certainly one of the privileged contexts for intervention. The European Commission’s recent review of the Recommendation on key competencies for lifelong learning led to the inclusion of personal, social and learning to learn (PSLL) as one of the key competences for lifelong learning (EU Council 2018). Through a systematic review, this paper attempts to present the indicators that have been identified in the literature, and in light of related EU and national policies, communications, and reports that can serve as a theoretical framework for future research on school well-being. In particular, it attempts to explore how school climate can reflect the qualities and characteristics of school life through the different dimensions that emerged from the survey.