Practice-oriented knowledge about pedagogical wellbeing practices across institutional contexts in Denmark

Scandinavian legislation agrees on the importance of ECEC and schools in terms of promoting children’ s wellbeing. The study explores, in an experimental and practice-oriented way: How do pedagogues understand and practice wellbeing across institutional contexts?
Research and pedagogy are characterized by many contradictory understandings of the wellbeing concept (Molbæk et al. 2023). One consequence is obscurity in how to work with wellbeing. Another is non-explicit disagreements about goals and direction in interprofessional collaborations.
The research draws upon ‘the new paradigm of flourishing in education’ (Kristjansson 2017, Wolbert 2021), and emphasizes a strength-based approach to children and youngsters.
We refer to design-based research (Barab&Squire, 2004) and value interdisciplinarity between pedagogues and researchers in knowledge making processes within a qualitative interpretive research paradigm (Denzin&Lincoln 2018). We perform different kinds of workshops, experiments and prototyping (Marcus 2013; Schön 1991) in collaboration with nine randomly selected pedagogues: 3 ECEC pedagogues, 3 special school pedagogues and 3 leisure-time pedagogues.
All encounters with pedagogues depend on informed consent and voluntary participation. High ethical standards were applied as stated in the Eecera ethical code (2024). Pseudonyms are used.
Findings point to play participation, resistance, expression, autonomy, community, and activity, as continuous cross-contextual flourishing markers. Pedagogical flourishing practices are found to take either the child or the community as a starting point, depending on the situation and with inclusion as a central value.
The 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development points to Quality Education and Reduced Inequalities, which calls for facilitation of flourishing for all children.