Veranstaltungsprogramm

In childhood studies, the well-being of children has gained increasing international and interdisciplinary attention. The field is currently energized by a paradigmatic shift that emphasizes understanding the societal conditions of childhood and growing up, children’s social positions, their agency, and everyday lives not merely through adult perspectives but through direct engagement with children. This highlights a significant research gap: insufficient knowledge about what children themselves understand by well-being and what they perceive as necessary for their well-being.

The WoKidS research project addresses these questions within the framework of the international, qualitative research network Children’s Understandings of Well-being – Global and Local Contexts. Multinational Qualitative Study (CUWB). As part of this network, WoKidS explores children’s perspectives on well-being in German-speaking Switzerland using interviews, child-generated drawings, and focus groups. The study, aligned with the international CUWB network's sampling approach for comparability, includes children aged 8 to 14 years and addresses the core research question: When, under what conditions, and how do children experience well-being?

The WoKidS project centers on children’s well-being by investigating two key questions:

1. What do children perceive as necessary to feel well?

2. What do children understand by the concept of well-being?

From a childhood-theoretical perspective, these questions are examined through a qualitative research design aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of children’s subjective perspectives, individual priorities, and preferences.

The project pursues two interconnected research goals:

1. A qualitative representation of empirically derived perspectives of children in German-speaking Switzerland regarding their well-being.

2. A comparison of these perspectives with national and international findings.

The project involved conducting and analyzing interviews with 55 children and 5 focus groups. Additionally, extensive ethical and methodological considerations were systematically addressed, including topics such as child protection and rights, the vulnerable position of children (e.g., within the generational order), child welfare, and trauma-sensitive interviewing techniques.

The analysis reveals that children primarily associate well-being with family, friendships, and various places. In this ambivalences in peer relationships or the importance of private spaces emerge. The conditions chil-dren identify as affecting their well-being are highly diverse, encompassing issues such as displacement, cli-mate change, gender, disabilities, limited financial resources, and societal expectations. The findings also highlight that children navigate both local and global contexts and often exhibit an awareness of the societal conditions of their childhood.

Student well-being (StudWB) can be seen as a precondition of successful learning, an educational goal in its own right, and a protective resource to cope with challenges and adverse situations in school (Hascher & Hagenauer, 2020). It contributes to student engagement in school and can support academic achievement, facilitating the central goal of education (Pietarinen et al., 2014). However, StudWB tends to decline over the course of the academic years (Wang & Eccles, 2012), a trend which is accentuated following the transition to secondary school (Symonds & Galton, 2014). These concerns have found their way in the contemporary school discourse, prompting the integration of StudWB as a pivotal component within the educational policy frameworks of numerous nations (OECD, 2019). The important role of well-being has instigated the development and implementation of an increasing array of approaches aimed at fostering StudWB, such as school-based well-being interventions (Waters, 2011). While such interventions have proven to be effective (Sin & Lyubomirski, 2009), not all approaches work equally well for all students. Effectiveness of school interventions depends on personal characteristics such as baseline well-being (Lyubomirski & Layous, 2013). To discover the relationship between the personal characteristics and the effectiveness of an intervention, it is necessary to analyze such factors in a person-centered approach, which helps to distinguish differential intervention effects on specific well-being profiles. The aim of our study was twofold: (1) to analyze the effects of a newly designed school-based well-being-increasing intervention program “Well-being Boost Training” on StudWB; and (2) to examine which latent well-being profiles could be derived from a sample of secondary school students and how profile membership changed over the course of the intervention. Participants were 681 lower secondary school students in Grade 8 in Switzerland, who participate in the longitudinal SNSF-Project Well-being in School (WESIR, 2019–2025). The 10-week-long intervention program “Well-Being-Boost Training”, as part of the WESIR project, was based on sound intentional well-being-enhancing strategies performed once a week during regular school hours that aim at cultivating positive emotions, cognitions, and behaviors among adolescents (e.g., performing acts of kindness, expressing gratitude, sharing positive experiences). Participating classes were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions: (1) self-oriented (i.e., one is responsible for one’s own well-being); (2) socially-oriented (i.e., one is committed to socially-engaged pursuit of well-being); (3) self- and socially-oriented; and (4) control. Students in the control group reflected on their weekly learning process at school, representing a less engaging and influential activity that does not directly affect well-being. The intervention was implemented by students’ teachers and integrated into actual classroom practice. Students filled out an online survey including the Student Well-being Scale (Hascher, 2007) with three positive (e.g., enjoyment in school) and three negative dimensions (e.g., worries in school) before, in the middle, and at the end of the intervention. To investigate developmental trends in student well-being, we conducted a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post hoc tests using the Bonferroni correction. To identify well-being profiles and their change over time, latent profile and latent transition analyses were conducted using MPlus Version 8.10 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2017). The preliminary findings showed that in general StudWB decreased over time in all groups, with an exception for the dimension “Worries in school” that decreased over time. Latent profile analysis revealed four distinct well-being profiles. Latent transition analysis indicated stability in profile membership, with differential shifts observed in the experimental groups, implying different positive intervention effects for specific student subpopulations. These findings underscore the need for adaptive interventions and the necessity of considering the multidimensional nature of well-being and students’ differential compositions in developing dynamic interventions.

Schools represent critical social spaces. Aspects such as peer relationships and classroom climate significantly impact students' socio-emotional and academic development (Furrer & Skinner, 2003; M.-T. Wang et al., 2020; W. Wang et al., 2014). Teachers play an essential role as an "invisible hand" in shaping these social processes (Farmer et al., 2018; Hamm et al., 2011). Yet, their perceptions of students' social networks and wellbeing often diverge from students' actual networks and experiences (e.g., Marucci et al., 2018; Pearl et al., 2007; Urhahne & Zhu, 2015; Venetz et al., 2019). Teacher attunement to classroom social dynamics has been linked to student wellbeing and relationship quality (Farmer et al., 2018; Gest et al., 2014; Hamm et al., 2011). However, there are hardly any tools supporting teachers in systematically assessing such aspects.

This contribution introduces “Klassenpuls”, an application designed to support teachers in understanding classroom dynamics through a tripartite measurement approach integrating individual, collective and relational data to assess student wellbeing, classroom climate, and social networks. Klassenpuls is aimed to provide teachers with an accessible and easily administrable tool to collect and monitor these aspects. Klassenpuls is still under development, and this contribution aims to present and discuss the tripartite data concept and its usefulness for teachers in gaining a deeper understanding of social-emotional classroom dynamics.

In initial field tests, the tripartite measurement framework of Klassenpuls encompassed the following components: student wellbeing, assessed by a combination of aspects from the Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (Venetz et al., 2015) and the Student Wellbeing Questionnaire (Hascher, 2007); perceptions of classroom climate, assessed by a combination of aspects from the Classroom Peer Context Questionnaire (Boor-Klip et al., 2016), classroom management and teacher-student relationships (Praetorius et al., 2018); and social network data, assessed by positive student interactions (Eckhart et al., 2011).

To demonstrate the usefulness of this tripartite approach, data from 8 classrooms with 186 students are presented and it was analyzed whether a) different student profiles regarding their subjective well-being could be identified and b), how students with different well-being profiles differed in their perception of classroom climate and social network position.

This approach resulted in four different wellbeing profiles: 1) a group with neutral indices overall (41.9%), 2) a group scoring high in perceived social problems and school related worries (11.6%), 3) a group with positive indices overall (34.3%), and 4) a group scoring low in emotional wellbeing / joy in school (12.2%). The profile groups differed significantly in their perceptions of all classroom climate variables, with the biggest difference found between group 3 (high overall wellbeing) and group 4 (low emotional wellbeing) for the variable teacher-student-relationships (d = 1.18). The profile groups also differed significantly in their network positions, with group 2 (low social wellbeing) receiving significantly less positive interactions (d = 0.8) than group 3 (high overall wellbeing).

The findings demonstrate how the tripartite approach enables teachers to identify both individual students requiring support and classroom-level dynamics that might need intervention, thereby supporting their role in fostering inclusive classroom environments. Potential implications and possible further improvements of the software will be discussed.

Theoretical Background

Health is recognized as an indispensable foundation for academic achievement (WHO & UNESCO, 2021). As early as 1950, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted that children must be in good health to learn effectively (WHO, 1986). Similarly, Paulus (2010) emphasizes the importance of viewing education and health as inherently interconnected domains rather than isolated areas. Within the framework of school health promotion, the WHO advocates for a holistic approach that engages all relevant stakeholders across all levels of the education system (WHO, 2023). However, this comprehensive approach is inherently complex and necessitates strong leadership to manage organizational, substantive, and coordination-related tasks. Consequently, school leaders are regarded as a key actors in the effective implementation of health promotion (Dadaczynski et al., 2022).

The leadership role of school leaders is shaped by specific contextual factors that define their responsibilities and the scope of their decision-making (Hallinger, 2018). Political, institutional, and organizational frameworks significantly influence the extent to which school leaders can effectively introduce and sustain health promotion initiatives (Hung et al., 2014; Samdal & Rowling, 2011; WHO & UNESCO, 2021).

The present research project seeks to examine the implementation of holistic health promotion at various levels of the education system, with a focus on the roles of different actors and the contextual conditions influencing school leaders' perspectives. To this end, the study employs an educational governance approach, which facilitates the analysis of various actors and their coordination within the multi-level education system (Altrichter & Maag Merki, 2016). In this way, the study aims to explore how school leaders perceive their role and the roles of other actors in the health promotion process, how they coordinate their actions, and which factors facilitate or impede implementation.

The following research questions are guiding our study:

1. Which actors and governance mechanisms/structures are formally designated by the cantons of Schwyz and Bern for the implementation of health promotion?

2. How do school leaders perceive these and other actors, and how do they cooperate with them within and across the levels of the education system?

3. What role do school leaders see themselves playing in the implementation of health promotion?

4. From a governance perspective, what factors do school leaders view as barriers or facilitators to the implementation of health promotion?

Design and Methods

The research combines document analysis from the cantons of Schwyz and Bern with qualitative interviews with school leaders. Documents are retrieved from publicly accessible online portals of the respective cantons and networks.

6 Interviews were conducted in the canton of Schwyz, 4 interviews in the canton of Berne. They were analyzed using content analysis as outlined by Kuckartz (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2022).

Results

Preliminary findings reveal the involvement of diverse actors in school health promotion, including school leaders, cantonal coordination offices, NGOs, school social workers, school psychologists, and other specialized professionals. The coordination of these efforts is complex and varies significantly between schools. Furthermore, many school leaders report feeling overwhelmed by the abundance of health promotion programs and cite insufficient time and human resources as key barriers to thoroughly evaluating and implementing these initiatives in practice.