Starting point for pupil influence in well-being development

  • Duration: 15–30 minutes for initial task and long-term work for actual improvements
  • Participants age: 11–15 years
  • Subjects: Language arts
  • The activity contributes to: It depends on the pupils’ suggestions and the opportunities to change the well-being environment based on them.
  • Well-being area: Mental well-being, Social well-being and Physical well-being
  • Student participation: High
  • Feasibility for teachers: Medium - hard
  • Materials:
    • Pencils
    • Papers

Description

  1. Ask the pupils to complete the two following sentences on a piece of paper:
    1. “Now I will tell you about one time when I had a good time in school, it was …”
    2. “If I were to decide how to make school the best place for learning, I would like to …”

 

  1. Analyse the texts together with your colleagues and see what things from the pupils’ experiences and suggestions that you could possibly use to improve the school environment. Please consider that there may be suggestions that are related to physical, mental and social dimensions of well-being. If the suggestions have organisational implications, discuss potential organisational changes with the principal/headmaster and see what opportunities there are.

 

  1. Bring back your analysis to the pupils, without telling about specific pupils’ experiences or suggestions, if these are of a sensitive nature. Talk together about which suggestions that may be feasible and what the conditions for change could be. Choose some areas together and make a plan for improvement. Decide and share responsibility areas. Finally, make a plan for follow-up.

Experience from the testing

The first step of this procedure has been used in prior research about well-being and learning environment in school. A synthesis of research showed that many of the pupils’ suggestions were coherent with other research findings about factors that promote well-being and learning in school. Hence, they can make relevant and reliable suggestions, and letting them do so and basing school development on their ideas promote their engagement and well-being, while also being an accurate way of identifying areas of possible improvement.

Learn more

See detailed description of the programme, sessions, and evaluation:
https://profith.ugr.es//wp-content/uploads/2022/10/MANUAL-BICI-.pdf

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