Well-being of Teachers and Pupils at School – a Topical Issue with a Variety of Approaches

Abstract

This review study focuses on a concept that has attracted increased interest among experts of various disciplines in recent decades, although its foundations were laid by philosophers as early as ancient Greece (see the two basic approaches – hedonism and eudaimonism). Moreover, it is a concept for which it is difficult to find a Czech equivalent. Many Czech authors do not translate this term and work with the globally used English term well-being. Another group of Czech authors works with the term “pohoda” or “osobní pohoda”. The interpretation of the whole issue is divided into eight parts. The first part presents the long history of the term well-being and its transformations from antiquity to the present day. The second part summarises current efforts to define well-being and points out that experts have not yet reached a consensus. The third part offers an overview of the whole spectrum of theories of well-being and seeks to explain what they are based on, what they emphasize and how they can be used. The fourth part is interesting in that it shows how the different disciplines differ from each other in their understanding of and work with well-being. The following disciplines have been chosen to illustrate this: medicine, education, psychology, sociology and the latest trend – a multidisciplinary approach. The fifth part of the review study presents different types of well-being that appear in the international literature. Our analysis identified a total of 30 different types of well-being. The sixth part of the interpretation focuses on diagnosing well-being. It offers a set of 21 questionnaires measuring well-being in children, adolescents and adults. The seventh part chooses a topic of interest to the general public as it considers current knowledge about well-being and discomfort in the school setting. The final, eighth, part of the review offers a look at interventions that seek to improve well-being levels in children and adolescents.