Peer-reviewed article
Involving children, teachers and parents/carers in dialogues around child well-being in schools
Myrofora Kakoulidou, Heba Al-Jayoosi, Maria A. Kambouri, Georgia Pavlopoulou ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study describes a knowledge exchange programme that involved 25 primary school children (aged 9-10), teachers, and parents in dialogues about school well-being. Children participated in co-created creative activities to share their experiences and communicate messages through a school blog. The programme aimed to demonstrate the importance of including young people's perspectives when designing school well-being initiatives. The article focuses on methodology rather than measuring outcomes of a specific intervention.
Key points
- 25 students from an inclusive, multicultural primary school (aged 9-10) were involved
- Children used co-created multimodal creative activities to share school well-being experiences
- A school blog was created to communicate key messages to local communities
- Parents and teachers engaged in discussions building on children's blog content
- The study emphasises the importance of seeking young people's views when designing school well-being initiatives
Limitations
This article describes a methodological approach and programme design rather than evaluating the impact or effectiveness of the initiative on child well-being outcomes. The document does not provide quantitative or qualitative findings about whether the programme improved well-being or changed practice.
Abstract
Building dynamic partnerships between communities and academic institutions, via knowledge exchange, plays a vital role in generating research with mutual benefits for research partners and wider communities. Knowledge exchange between universities and schools has recently received particular interest in child and adolescent mental health research. This article outlines a knowledge exchange programme that involved children, primarily, and teachers and parents/carers in dialogues around school well-being. Using a series of co-created and multimodal creative activities, we: (1) worked closely with 25 students of an inclusive and multicultural primary school (aged 9 to 10 years old) to understand their school well-being experiences, and to co-create a school blog to communicate key messages with local communities; and (2) initiated a discussion around child and school well-being with a group of parents/carers and teachers through expanding on the children’s blog. In this article, we outline our methodology to facilitate children’s involvement with the project well-being activities. We explore key methodological strengths and challenges, and highlight lessons we learned and how these stress the significance of seeking young people’s points of view when designing school well-being initiatives.