How do 6 - 8 year old children conceptualise the idea of wellbeing in their school context? A study of young children's ideas about wellbeing in a faith school in England.

The aim of this thesis is to explore how children give meaning to the concept of wellbeing within a school environment. It is rooted in a recognition of the importance and value of respecting children’s rights to be heard. There is a scarcity of existing qualitative studies focusing on how young children in UK primary schools develop their understanding of wellbeing across a longitudinal course. This study asks what 6-8 year old children think wellbeing means and to what extent they see their experiences at school as supportive of children’s wellbeing. This is done to examine the impact of the school environment on how children create meaning and to enable school leaders, educators and academics to understand the nuances of children’s thought-processes and experiences in conceptualising wellbeing. Using a case study of an urban primary school in England, this study shows the importance of positive relationships and ideas about agency on children’s meaning-making. Children identified safety as a key component in their understanding of wellbeing and this was linked to both positive relationships with their teacher and a belief in God as a protector. Concerns about reprimands and peer teasing resulting from low academic attainment were found to diminish feelings of wellbeing. The significance of this study is that it informs our understanding of how a school’s particular ethos can have a considerable impact on how children conceptualise and rationalise abstract concepts. In addition, it demonstrates in practical terms the flexibility of a participatory methodology based on the Mosaic approach with exploratory methods such as story completion tasks adapted for use with young children and a successful switch midway through fieldwork to remote data generation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Waterson, Anne

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kershner, Ruth

• wellbeing
• children's rights
• conceptualisation
• religion
• sociocultural theory
• participatory research design
• thematic analysis
• relationships
• agency

Licence

• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.91795

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/344371