THE BACK BURNER: EDUCATIONAL EQUITY, RESILIENCE, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AS A PREDICTOR ON PROMOTING STUDENTS MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of the current research was to determine the effect of equitable education, resilience, and psychological well-being on promoting student's mental health. The researchers eagerly explored everyday situations happening in male elementary schools of district Lahore, focusing on pandemic situations with zeal and zest. Methodology: The researchers structured causal-comparative research focusing positivist paradigm on a sample of randomly selected 980 respondents enrolled in male elementary schools of district Lahore of Punjab-Pakistan. The authors collected the data after administering Scott (2006) Educational Equity and school reforms Scale, Prince-Embury (2013) Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents, Ryff’s (1989) Psychological Well-beings Scale, and Lukat et al. (2016) Positive Mental Health Scale. After ensuring ethical considerations, the researchers run regression technique, one way; ANOVA and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (r) on the participants data. Main findings: The findings revealed that educational equity effect 81%, resilience 87.10%, and psychological well-being affect 66.60% in promoting students mental health. Educational equity, resilience, and psychological well-being have the same effect on 6th, 7th, and 8th grades students in promoting their mental health. Further a significant strong association between educational equity and mental health (r = .900**, n = 985, p < .05), resilience and mental health (r = .946**, n = 984, p < .05) and psychological well-beings and students mental health (r = .815**, n = 985, p < .05). Applications of this study: The results of the research will be applicable for headteachers, teachers, and parents to get aware of the worth of equitable education, resilience, and psychological well-being that play an enormous role in promoting students mental health. The debatable constructs of the current research will provide capable stakeholders to know the entire magnitude of mental health that drastically instigate and enhance student's vigour, attentiveness, dependability, intellectual ability, and optimism. Novelty/originality of this study: It is evident from the literature that less work is conducted inequitable education, resilience, and psychological well-being that play a massive role in promoting students mental health. In the case of Pakistan, the situation is very alarming and the meager because none of the researchers took initiative to framed research on these burning constructs. However, this research will opened new dimensions for the future researchers that will raise their intentions to explore the effect of primary, secondary, higher secondary, and tertiary level students equitable education, resilience, and psychological well-being on their mental health.