Wellbeing at school in the experience of primary school children
Abstract
School children’s assessment of their experience in school through their cognitive opinions and their emotions, and their perception of their positive functioning and their relationships with others, have an impact on their educational well-being. The aim of the present study was to understand the elements that lead to school children’s wellbeing at school. A qualitative study with a phenomenological approach was carried out to analyse the experiences of 302 primary school children, who filled in an open-ended questionnaire on well-being at school. The information was analysed inductively through a cyclical process that generated four categories: the teaching-learning process, school spaces and times, relationships, and emotions. The importance given to relationships with peers and with teachers, the demand for improvements in teaching (cooperative learning, play-based learning), time management (study time and free time) and the school and classroom environment stood out. Positive emotions predominated over negative ones, especially happiness and cheerfulness, although boredom and sadness also appeared frequently. This study will contribute to the construction of an instrument to measure well-being at school based on the categories and codes extracted from the students’ cognitive and emotional evaluation of their experiences during their school day.
Keywords
school wellbeing, school, qualitative research, primary, children’s perceptionsReferences
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