THE PRECONDITIONS TO FLOURISHING: STRUCTURAL NECESSITIES FOR ACHIEVING WELL-BEING IN SCHOOLS

ABSTRACT

There is warranted concern among educationalists about child well-being where a number of school factors have created a system and a society where well-being is at stake. Within this discourse, understanding the impact of social and emotional learning and school-based well-being programs have seen educationalists return to Aristotle to understand the foundational conception of flourishing. Following this trend, we propose that before flourishing can be supported in the areas of teaching and learning, the preconditions to flourishing must be met. This paper examines the provision of structural and policy factors that form the preconditions to flourishing using the lens of Aristotle’s eudaimonia, external necessities, and the obligations of the polis. This analysis found that policy intent and purpose are largely aligned with the preconditions; but the differential uptake of policy initiatives along socio-economic lines has created an education system where school capacity to provide the external necessities for student flourishing is supported by schools in an inconsistent way. This, we argue is not what Aristotle proposed for a public education, where all children have an equal chance of building capabilities to flourish.

Keywords:

• flourishing
• Aristotle
• capability
• external necessities
• policy
• well-being framework
• school excellence framework

Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to the two reviewers of this journal for the detailed feedback provided of the draft manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.