The school of the good life

A place to devote one’s free time to the pursuit of learning, studying and personal development – that is the original meaning of the word ‘school’, which comes from Ancient Greek. "Our modern school system, however, is a far cry from these ideals," says Denis Francesconi, who heads the Teaching the Good Life project together with Evi Agostini at the University of Vienna. "Education and quality of life are much more closely intertwined than one might initially think. Ultimately, quality of life should lie at the heart of our actions and everything else should be geared towards ensuring it," adds Francesconi. "Vienna, for example, is one of the most liveable cities in the world. Based on this, we asked ourselves: What does 'liveable’ actually mean? How can you measure quality of life? And what role does education play in this context?"

Quality of life is also increasingly becoming the focus of national and international organisations and associations, as demonstrated by the OECD initiative Better Life and the EU initiative Quality of Life in Europe. Even the PISA study, which is known first and foremost for its evaluation of school students' academic performance, has since 2015 also included pupil well-being in its assessment criteria. 

Following this international trend, Denis Francesconi and Evi Agostini have set about developing guidelines in their project to analyse the quality of life in Vienna, with a particular focus on education. "We look at everything from air and water quality to safety and community to the education system per se. All of these things play a role. Our project is very much based on the concept of the ‘Bildungsgrätzel’ initiative of the City of Vienna (in German): It takes a village to raise a child. We focus on this socio-spatial approach."

 

Fundamentals of well-being

While Francesconi and Agostini are investigating the connection between education and quality of life, educational psychologist Julia Holzer is specifically researching well-being at school. What are the building blocks of the well-being of school students? That is her central question. Holzer and her team worked with the EPOCH model developed in Australia. This model was originally created to measure general quality of life, but the educational psychologists have adapted it specifically for schools. It describes five dimensions of well-being: Engagement, Perseverance, Optimism, Connectedness and Happiness.

"Based on this model, we developed a questionnaire and used it to survey a large sample of secondary school students from different types of schools, mainly in Vienna," says Holzer. "We observed that this model is absolutely suited to being used in an educational context and that it is very useful when it comes to making statements about the well-being of pupils."

Is quality of life teachable?

Evi Agostini, Denis Francesconi and their research team also visited schools for their project The Good Life, talking to pupils, teachers and interest groups at city and local level about improving quality of life and what it means for them to lead a good life. "There are many individual factors that play a role. The important thing is engagement and that school students, for example, can have a say in decisions, be it what kind of food is served in the school canteen, how the classroom is decorated, how open spaces at school are designed, ideas on traffic-calming measures in front of the school, etc.," says Francesconi. 

In line with the City of Vienna's sustainable development strategy and support for cooperation between local ‘Bildungsgrätzel’ initiatives (in German) to promote a fair and sustainable quality of life in Vienna, the researchers are talking to a wide range of stakeholders in order to get as comprehensive a picture as possible. "We also want to use the project to develop specific teaching material that teachers can use directly in their lessons to incorporate the topic of quality of life as broadly as possible. I think that schools, neighbourhoods and small communities can do a lot to improve quality of life. Of course, money plays a role – many measures require financing – but we need to talk about what a good life is for us and how it can be realised."

 

"All in all, well-being among Austrian school students is relatively high."

Back to educational psychology. How can schools benefit from the EPOCH model survey? "The great advantage of this method is that we can give headteachers and teachers detailed feedback instead of just saying whether their students are generally feeling good or not," says Holzer. “We can really create profiles and say, for example, that connectedness and happiness are well developed here at your school, but engagement is lower. Based on this concrete feedback, schools can review and adapt certain teaching elements."

And Julia Holzer, a member of the Health in Society Research Network at the University of Vienna, has been able to draw another interesting conclusion from her study – again and again the literature shows that a person's socio-economic status can be linked to their well-being. "Interestingly, we have not found this to be the case in most of the research in Austria, at least with regard to well-being at school. Our results show that both in secondary schools in disadvantaged areas and in academic secondary schools, well-being at school is consistently average to very good – particularly in terms of positive feelings at school and also in terms of connection with others. This is consistent with other Austrian studies on the well-being of young people." 

Overall, the findings are therefore very pleasing – in general, Austrian pupils feel happy at school. Of course, Holzer emphasises, this does not mean there are no high-risk groups that have problems with their mental health. This, she adds, should not be overlooked when working with mean values.

 

How does ‘happiness’ fit into the school curriculum?

Denis Francesconi is convinced that quality of life should not only be part of the curriculum, but must be at the centre of it. "I can really incorporate this topic wonderfully into any subject, be it history, literature, biology, maths or sport," he says: “That is our task for the future – promoting quality of life in schools and supporting teachers in making it a reality.”

For example, teachers can simply ask students how they would describe the quality of their lives here and now, thus opening up the topic. "From there, you can move on to the next aspects, the quality of life in the school building, in the community, in the neighbourhood, in Vienna – and that brings us back to the general framework that quality of life encompasses many different things that are interlinked. Quality of life is not just about individual well-being. It requires civic responsibility towards the community and political commitment."

Success can also promote well-being

When you feel happy and comfortable, you also learn well. "Sometimes people overlook the fact that success at school – in other words, the feeling that I am learning something and going above and beyond what I thought I could achieve – can also strengthen well-being and mental health," emphasises Julia Holzer. "This means that even in challenging learning environments it is possible to set high expectations for students and at the same time give them the feeling that they can do it. Then it is possible for them to develop engagement. This particularly applies to school students who are often exposed to stereotypes due to their socio-economic background."

Unfortunately, there are many obstacles to this that are hard-wired into the education system. School students are divided up far too early. As a result, general secondary schools (Mittelschulen) in particular have a pool of pupils who did not make it into academic secondary school (Gymnasium) for a variety of reasons. "Especially in large cities or urban areas, teachers are faced with classes of over 25 pupils, a large proportion of whom actually need very individualised support," says Julia Holzer: "One proposed solution would be to introduce socio-economic indices that would be used to allocate resources to schools instead of simply allocating resources based on the number of pupils, as is currently the case. In our project 100 Schools, 1,000 Opportunities , such an alternative approach is currently being intensively trialled and researched."

"School of the future"

Denis Francesconi also sees engagement as an important building block for a better quality of life and shares this with future teachers at the Centre for Teacher Education. "I always tell students that they should find a purpose in life. That does not mean revolutionising the world, but getting involved in something, believing in something and standing up for something. That usually helps most people a lot to feel a kind of satisfaction in what they do."

With their research, the experts want to contribute to making schools more of what their original name promises – a place of personal development, learning and community. By placing a stronger focus on quality of life and well-being in education, the school of the future can lay the foundations for a fulfilling and meaningful life.