School and well-being : education, self-determination and adult-imposed aspirations

Schools, as diverse communities where children live much of their daily lives, are significant for their impact on children’s well-being. The chapter is a nuanced exploration of how the children we talked with in our research project, respond to the potentially contradictory expectations school poses for experiences of well-being in the present and well-becoming in the future. We move beyond describing the tensions between well-being and well-becoming by framing our discussion around what children told us about their experiences of well-being at school, in terms of opportunities to pursue agency and competency, defined in our discussion as selfdetermination, and the requirements to prepare for a future, what we refer to as adultimposed aspirations. We argue, from our findings that, while the opportunities school provides children for self-determination promote their sense of well-being, the pressures from adult-imposed aspirations, particularly for secondary school children, can undermine well-being in the present. The children’s discussion informs us that opportunities for self- determination can develop internalised competence, provide opportunities for meaningful social recognition, and that practical achievements and learning outcomes emerge from the process. On the other hand, adult-imposed aspirations as described by children, in situating them as society’s human capital, in a system of marketised education, impose expectations on children, associated with credentialism and instrumental rationality. These expectations emphasise a formal achievement orientation and pre-determined outcomes. We extend the discussion of some of our findings by drawing on earlier child participatory, qualitative research, by two of the authors of this chapter (Fattore et al. 2016). We conclude by arguing that both the opportunities and the expectations that characterise children’s experiences of school, contribute strong demands on children in terms of the constitution of the self, and thus have contested implications for their sense of well-being