Beyond Well-being: The Quest for Wholeness and Purpose in Education

Abstract

Purpose:This article develops a critique of contemporary understandings and practices related to well-being in education. It proposes a fuller development of wholeness and purpose that supplements and goes beyond the new well-being agenda.Design/Approach/Methods:This article draws upon a document analysis of conceptual and policy frameworks related to well-being. It builds its critique of well-being with reference to a qualitative study consisting of 222 interviews with educators in the Canadian province of Ontario with regard to their understandings of well-being. It includes references to the research and development work in the U.S., Germany, and Norway.Findings:The inclusion of well-being in policy agendas is an important step forward in the field of educational change, but this indication of progress is in danger of being reified through simplistic understandings of life satisfaction and other frameworks that evade the complexity of human development. Wholeness and purpose are concepts that include but also go beyond well-being that should be addressed by educators.Originality/Value:Most of the criticisms of the new well-being agenda in educational policies and research simply assume its status as a summum bonum for human development. This essay acknowledges the importance of well-being but expands beyond it to define wholeness and purpose as an alternative set of constructs with their own independent integrity that should not simply be subsumed into current well-being agendas.