Perspectives on wellbeing (TRIVSEL) in diverse pedagogical contexts in DK: How pedagogues navigate to nourish different children's wellbeing

BACKGROUND
Research on children’s wellbeing as well as pedagogical practice are characterized by many and contradictory understandings of the concept of wellbeing (Molbæk et al. 2023). There seems to be a lack of definitions of the concept in research as well as in pedagogical practice. One consequence is obscurity in how to work with wellbeing. Another is non-explicit disagreements about how to understand the wellbeing concept in interprofessional collaborations.
AIM
The project aims to explore different pedagogical practices and understandings regarding children’s wellbeing in ECEC, school and special education - with the purpose of extending the ability of professionals to act sensitively towards different children in different areas of society.
Research Question: How do pedagogues understand and practice wellbeing? How can pedagogues and researchers through experiments develop pedagogical perspectives on wellbeing that answers to contemporary pedagogical challenges?
METHOD
Based in design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004) and in close collaboration with 9 pedagogues and 20 students, design-based experiments are performed including: Place sensitive focus group interviews with pedagogues in 3 different pedagogical contexts; Workshops for collaborative generation of a compass of wellbeing; Further development of the compass in ECEC, school and special education; Evaluation and adjustment of the compass in 20 additional pedagogical institutions.
RESULT AND CONCLUSIONS
Empirical data from focus group interviews and first workshop will be presented to show how edagogues understand and work with children’s wellbeing in different pedagogical contexts, and to discuss how development of a wellbeing compass could potentially be used to qualify pedagogical practice.