Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-30T22:26:54.996Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Student Wellbeing and the Therapeutic Turn in Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2014

Katie Wright*
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Katie Wright, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, 100 Leicester Street, Carlton VIC 3010, Australia, Email: kwright@unimelb.edu.au
Get access

Abstract

This article considers current concerns with promoting student mental health and wellbeing against the backdrop of critiques of the ‘therapeutic turn’ in education. It begins by situating accounts of ‘therapeutic education’ within broader theorisation of therapeutic culture. In doing so, the importance of this work is acknowledged, but key assumptions are questioned. The emergence of concerns about self-esteem and wellbeing are then examined through an analysis of changing educational aims in Australia. This enables consideration of the broader context for policy reforms and emergent ideas about the importance of fostering wellbeing and attending to the social and emotional aspects of learning. Finally, the article argues for the salience of historicising both educational policy and scholarly critiques of therapeutic education in order to: (1) situate the contemporary emphasis on student wellbeing within a longer history of educational reforms aimed at supporting young people; (2) unsettle taken-for-granted ways in which mental health and wellbeing are currently foregrounded in contemporary schooling; and (3) develop new perspectives on the therapeutic turn in education.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, S., Brownlie, J., & Given, L. (2009). Therapy culture? Attitudes towards emotional support in Park, Britain. In A., Curtice, J., Thomson, K., Phillips, M., & Clery, E. (Eds.), British social attitudes: The 25th report (pp. 155172). London: Sage Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amerijckx, G., & Humblet, P.C. (2013). Child well-being: What does it mean?Children & Society. Advance online publication. doi:10.1111/chso.12003Google Scholar
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2010). Mental health of young people, 2007. Canberra, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2010). The shape of the Australian curriculum. Australian Curriculum, Version 2. Sydney, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Australian Education Council (AEC). (1989). The Hobart Declaration on Schooling. Hobart, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth (ARACY). (2013). Report card: The wellbeing of young Australians. Sydney, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Barcan, A. (1990). The crisis in educational aims. In Frodsham, J.D. (Ed.), Education for what? (pp. 1152). Canberra, Australia: Academy Press.Google Scholar
Barcan, A. (1993). Sociological theory and educational reality: Education and society in Australia since 1949. Sydney, Australia: NSW University Press.Google Scholar
Brownlie, J. (2011). ‘Being there’: Multidimensionality, reflexivity and the study of emotional lives. The British Journal of Sociology, 62 (3), 462481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunila, K. (2012). From risk to resilience: The therapeutic ethos in youth education. Education Inquiry, 3 (3), 451464.Google Scholar
Cigman, R. (2012). We need to talk about well-being. Research Papers in Education, 27 (4), 449462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, C., & Yates, L. (2009). Curriculum policy in South Australia since the 1970s: The quest for commonality. Australian Journal of Education, 53 (2), 125140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, T. (2012). Health inclusive education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16 (10), 10331046.Google Scholar
Craig, C. (2007). The potential dangers of a systematic, explicit approach to teaching social and emotional skills (SEAL). Glasgow: Centre for Confidence & Well-Being.Google Scholar
Craig, C. (2009). Well-being in schools: The curious case of the tail wagging the dog? Glasgow: Centre for Confidence & Well-Being.Google Scholar
Ecclestone, K. (2007). Resisting images of the ‘diminished self’: The implications of emotional well-being and emotional engagement in education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 22 (4), 455470.Google Scholar
Ecclestone, K. (2011). Emotionally vulnerable subjects and new inequalities: The educational implications of an ‘epistemology of the emotions’. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 21 (2), 91113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ecclestone, K., & Hayes, D. (2009). The dangerous rise of therapeutic education. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Farrell, P. (2010). School psychology: Learning lessons from history and moving forward. School Psychology International, 31 (6), 581598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furedi, F. (2004). Therapy culture: Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harwood, V., & Allan, J. (2014). Psychopathology at school: Theorizing mental disorders in education. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hayes, D. (2004). The Therapeutic turn in education. In Hayes, D. (Ed.), The RoutledgeFalmer guide to key debates in education (pp. 180185). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hyland, T. (2006). Vocational education and training and the therapeutic turn. Educational Studies 32 (3), 299306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidger, J., Araya, R., Donovan, J., & Gunnell, D. (2012). The effect of the school environment on the emotional health of adolescents: A systematic review. Pediatrics, 129 (5), 925949.Google Scholar
Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
McCollow, J., & Graham, J. (1997). Not quite the national curriculum: Accommodation and resistance to curriculum change. In Lingard, B. & Porter, P. (Eds.), A national approach to schooling in Australia? Essays on the development of national policies in schools education (pp. 6075). Canberra, Australia: Australian College of Education.Google Scholar
McLeod, J., & Wright, K. (2009). The talking cure in everyday life: Gender, generations and friendship. Sociology, 43 (1), 122139.Google Scholar
MindMatters (2012). Whole school matters: A whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing. Draft. Department of Health and Ageing: Commonwealth of Australia.Google Scholar
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). (1999). The Adelaide declaration on national goals for schooling in the twenty-first century. Canberra, Australia: Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.Google Scholar
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians. Melbourne, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Nolan, J. (1998). The therapeutic state: Justifying government at century's end. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rice, J.S. (2002). The therapeutic school. Society, 39 (2), 1928.Google Scholar
Rieff, P. (1966). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Slee, P.T., Dixon, K., & Askell-Williams, H. (2011). Whole-school mental health promotion in Australia. The International Journal of Emotional Education, 3 (2), 3749.Google Scholar
Scott, C. (2008). Teaching as therapy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40 (4), 545556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stout, M. (2000). The feel-good curriculum: The dumbing-down of America's kids in the name of self-esteem. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.Google Scholar
Tasmania Department of Education. (1968). The school in society: Report of the committee set up to investigate the role of the school in society. Hobart, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Twenge, J.M., & Campbell, W.K. (2013). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of entitlement. New York: Atria Books.Google Scholar
Victorian Department of Education. (1984). Curriculum development and planning in Victoria (Ministerial Paper No. 6). Melbourne, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Victorian Department of Education. (1985). Curriculum frameworks P-12: An introduction. Melbourne, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Weare, K. (2010). Mental health and social and emotional learning: Evidence, principles, tensions, balances. Advances in School Mental Health Promotion, 3 (1), 517.Google Scholar
Weare, K., & Nind, M. (2011). Mental health promotion and problem prevention in schools: What does the evidence say? Health Promotion International, 26, i129i169.Google Scholar
Western Australia Committee on Secondary Education. (1969). Secondary education in Western Australia (Dettman Report). Perth, Australia: Ministry of Education.Google Scholar
Wheelahan, L. (2007). How competency-based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge: A modified Bernsteinian analysis. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28 (5), 637651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, K. (2011a). The rise of the therapeutic society: Psychological knowledge & the contradictions of cultural change. Washington, DC: New Academia.Google Scholar
Wright, K. (2011a). The therapeutic school: Historicizing debate about educational policy and practice. In Threadgold, S., Kirby, E., & Germov, J. (Eds.), Local lives/global networks. Refereed proceedings of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Conference. Newcastle, Australia: The University of Newcastle.Google Scholar
Wright, K. (2012a). ‘To see through Johnny and to see Johnny through’: The guidance movement in interwar Australia. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 44 (4), 317337.Google Scholar
Wright, K. (2012b). ‘Help for wayward children’: Child guidance in 1930s Australia. History of Education Review, 41 (1), 419.Google Scholar
Wright, K., & McLeod, J. (Eds.) (in press, 2014). Rethinking youth wellbeing: Critical perspectives. Singapore: Springer.Google Scholar
Wyn, J. (2007). Learning to ‘become somebody well’: Challenges for educational policy. The Australian Educational Researcher, 34 (3), 3552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yates, L., & Collins, C. (2010). The absence of knowledge in Australian curriculum reforms. European Journal of Education, 45 (1), 89102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, M. (2013). Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: A knowledge-based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45 (2), 101118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar