Validating Personal Well-being Experiences at School: A Quantitative Examination of Secondary School Students

Abstract

Progress in education has involved, to a large extent, a focus on individuals' wellbeing experiences at school (ACU and Erebus International, 2008; Fraillon, 2004). This line of inquiry has produced extensive findings, highlighting the diverse coverage and scope of this psychosocial theoretical orientation. We recently developed a theoretical framework (Phan, 2015-In press-c; Phan & Ngu, 2014) with its corresponding measure, titled the Academic Well-Being Experience Questionnaire, to assess and evaluate differing components of personal wellbeing at school, for example: appreciation and value, relating to others, academic striving, daily functioning, emotional wellbeing, and personal functioning. Our conceptualization, in contrast to existing conceptualized frameworks, is innovative as it emphasizes a number of personal and achievement-related attributes - for example: affective response, interpersonal skills, and academic outcomes. This study, correlational in design, situated six major components of personal wellbeing (e.g. academic striving) within the framework of social cognition (Bandura, 1986, 1997). We used causal modeling procedures to analyze the data (N = 230), testing a hypothesized 'a priori' model that postulated the following: (i) enactive learning experience as an antecedent, (ii) academic self-efficacy and the six components of personal wellbeing as central mediators, and (iii) school experience as an adaptive outcome. Evidence obtained provided moderate support for our hypothesized model, which we discuss in detail.