‘My life is like a massive jigsaw with pieces missing’. How ‘lower-attaining’ children experience school in terms of their well-being

ABSTRACT

‘Lower-attaining’ children are known to encounter negative experiences in school, including experiencing feelings of upset, shame and inferiority. Using extensive interview and observation data from the first two years of a five-year longitudinal study of 23 ‘lower-attaining’ children (age 7–9), we draw on Seligman’s theory of well-being to identify the children’s experiences of school in terms of their emotions, relationships and sense of achievement. Our analysis finds that on balance, these children are experiencing threats to their well-being in relation to their perceived lack of attainment and its associated shame, in an increasingly performative educational culture. We conclude that such threats are hampering the well-being of these children, which may cause both immediate and longer-term damage.

KEYWORDS:

• Well-being
• lower-attaining children
• mental health
• performative educational culture
• Martin Seligman

Acknowledgements

Grateful thanks to the children who took part in the study and to Dr. Mark Herrett and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [RPG-2017-413].