Keywords

A core focus of life for children and young people is school. As the mandatory occupation of the child (Lahelma and Gordon, 1997, in Lanas, 2019), schooling is predetermined to teach the knowledge and skills valued by generations before them (Biesta, 2006). Overwhelmingly, the experience and intentions of schooling are predetermined well ahead of any student entering the gates. Such predetermination is based upon ideals of living well in a world worth living in for all conceived by those who will not live in the future adult world the school students will lead.

Schooling is a system that has its own rules and skills taught or, more often than not, required to be ‘detected’ for learning to be a ‘good student’ as soon as possible (MacLure et al., 2012). Alternatively, children risk “becoming inscribed as problematic” given the opportunity for success “is not equally available to all” (Lanas, 2019, p. 250). School for some is a place of aggression, at an individual and systemic level, where students learn they are not valued and do not belong (McGregor et al., 2017; Reimer & Longmuir, 2021). Schooling produces childhood (Lanas, 2019), where the aim is to ‘flourish’ (Kristjánsson, 2016), though the reality for many is failure (Clark, 2016; McGregor et al., 2017). How then do children and young people live well at school, how does school support them to live well now and into their collective future, and how may they shape the relationship between schooling and living well?

The project at the heart of this chapter is a small exploratory multi-case study that sought children and young people’s perceptions of living well in the context of schooling. The project did not set out to be representative, rather initiate conversation about how to engage children and young people in taking direction for understanding the relationship between school and living well in a life worth living for all, both now and in future. An underpinning goal in initiating conversation was to explore ways to support student action in the development of schooling for living well. I have focussed on the glimmers of awareness to dissonance between schooling and life outside of school, to consider space within the ‘tightly constrained practice’ (Kaukko et al., 2020, p. 5) of schooling in which children and young people may take up their agency in shaping how they live well now and into the future. Through exploration of the relationship between education and schooling, and dominant school-based approaches to living well, I highlight the need for a transformative activist stance (Stetsenko, 2014) that engages children and young people in understanding the limitations of existing models of schooling to enable living well for all. My intention is to initiate a position from which students may be at the core of school transformation to enable living well in a world worth living in for all, both in their present and future.

Education and Schooling: A Hazardous Separation for Living Well

To be educational is to enable all to live well in a world worth living in for all (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018). In this way, education serves a ‘double duty’ to individuals and society (Kemmis, 2023; Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018). It should not be presumed however that schooling is educational (Grootenboer et al., 2018). Assuming the institution of schooling to be educational neglects the very real possibility for schooling to be ‘non-educational’, even ‘anti-educational’ (Kemmis et al., 2014) through “irrational, ineffective and unjust” practices (Grootenboer et al., 2018, p. 5) that arise from narrow focus taking attention from the essential questions of purpose (Biesta, 2020).

Exploring questions of purpose is at the heart of praxis, for practice to be morally informed, historymaking action (Kemmis, 2023; Smith, 2008). Biesta (2020, 2009, 2013, 2020) proposed three domains of purpose for education. While the three domains of purpose: qualification, socialisation, and subjectification, are all necessary, it is the final domain that enables education (Biesta, 2020). Qualification is about developing the knowledge and skills that prepare people to ‘do things’ that is enter further education, training, or into employment (Biesta, 2013). Socialisation is achieved explicitly as well as implicitly through the power of the hidden curriculum (Carter, 2019), inserting children and young people into the existing social, cultural, and political order. Socialisation reproduces and maintains existing orders and traditions (Biesta, 2009, 2013). Instrumentalist goals of preparation and replication shutdown space for praxis, removing the possibility for questions of purpose to consider individuals and societal transformation.

Independent from existing traditions, subjectification supports children and young people to respond, create, and transform their world rather than only abide by the traditions established long before their existence in the world. When acting in the domain of subjectification it is the teacher’s role to engage in praxis providing opportunities to encourage children and young people in the possibility to exist as a subject of their own life, rather than as the object of both the internal and external forces that come to play upon them (Biesta, 2020). Freedom arises in the agency to choose “to act or to refrain from action” (Biesta, 2020, p. 93).

Subjectification enables education as living well in a world worth living in by supporting children and young people to engage with the lifelong challenge of being in the world. Subjectification is not individualist as criticism may suggest (Carter, 2019), rather a complex balancing act of negotiating place of the self within the world, without leaning too far one way or the other that may lead to self-destruction or world-destruction. An outcome of subjectification is that we actively seek “reality checks… so as to come into a relationship with what and who is other, not simply overrule it” (Biesta, 2020, p. 97). Education reaches the purpose of subjectification by educators:

interrupt(ing) children’s development by interrupting the questions (of) which talents and abilities are going to help children and young people to live their lives well, with others, on a planet that has limited capacity for giving us what we want, and which talents and abilities are going to hinder this. (Biesta, 2022a, p. 159)

Experiencing reality is a challenging position in which children and young people must face the resulting reality checks that interrupt intentions and initiatives (Biesta, 2020). In turn children and young people are faced with being both the subject of their own initiatives as well as “how others take up and continue our beginnings” (Biesta, 2020, p. 96). Subjectification is world-centred (Biesta, 2022a), holding “the double purpose of ‘collectividually’ (Stetsenko, 2013, 2019) forming both persons and societies” (Kemmis, 2023, p. 23) necessary for all to live well in a world worth living in (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018).

Contemporary political agendas have separated education from schooling in focusing narrowly on learning, prioritising an instrumentalist purpose for schooling (Biesta, 2006, 2013, 2022b; Kemmis et al., 2014). Narrow focus on learning and learners has removed questions of purpose and in turn eroded opportunities for schooling to enact a subjectification role that enables school to be educational. Qualification and socialisation, without subjectification, is training not education, fulfilling purposes to enter and thus maintain existing structures and traditions. Subjectification moves practice from the non-educational position of control for replication to taking the inherent ‘risk’ of education that children and young people may accept our intentions or not (Biesta, 2013, 2020).

Without the freedom and agency for subjectification, schooling becomes a predetermined, imposed experience. The obligatory requirements of schooling “alienate, confine, control and reduce ‘education’ to narrow pathways… (setting young people) up for failure and conflict” (McGregor et al., 2017, p. 27). Education that supports all to live well in a world worth living in, fosters “individual and collective self-expression, individual and collective self-development and individual and collective self-determination… oriented towards the good for each person and the good for humankind” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 26). Schooling however, may “inhibit and… prohibit engagement with the higher order skills and the depth and breadth of knowledges that underpin a personally, civically and professionally ‘meaningful’ education” (McGregor et al., 2017, p. 1). Educators working in schools are hampered by unquestioned structures including compulsory attendance, same-age groupings, and teacher-student hierarchies, that work against education (Pateman, 1980, in Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 32). Tension between education and schooling has increasingly posed the risk that schooling would:

no longer be educating people to live well in a world worth living in, but training docile citizens… no longer be preparing people for lives worth living, but preparing people to ‘fit in’ to the social, political and economic arrangements of our era. (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 61)

As disjuncture between education and schooling grows, Biesta (2022b) suggests the need for “interruption” as the “crucial educational key-word”, to take a “critical stance” against the ideologies (p. 338) driving schooling agendas. Interruption is needed to “remake schools so they serve the double educational purpose of the formation of good persons and the formation of good societies—people who can live well in a world worth living in” (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 35).

In this chapter, I explore glimmers in school students’ perceptions of schooling in their own lives where interruption may grow for students to take a transformative activist stance (Stetsenko, 2014), to remake schools for education and thus living well in a world worth living in for all. First, I consider the ways schooling approaches have explicitly considered school’s role in living well. I also explore how these existing approaches align with the need for remaking schools to be educational.

Schooling and Living Well

School practice for education, and thus living well, requires praxis which will open questions of purpose and enable subjectification supporting the double duty of education for individuals and society. School approaches to living well have drawn particularly from eudaimonia, with varied perspectives and resultant practice that may leave aside praxis and questions of purpose that make schooling educational. The Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia recognises living well as a lifelong pursuit of “living a complete human life, or the realization of valued human potentials” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 140). Eudaimonia is not a feeling or search for feeling, rather “a way of living… an exemplary life” characterised by “being actively engaged in excellent activity, reflectively making decisions, and behaving voluntarily toward ends that represent the realization of our highest human natures” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 143, 145). Such a life “is noble not only for the one who lives it, but also because it contributes to the good for humankind” (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 11). Eudaimonia differs from hedonism in feeling pleasure and happiness as the experience of living well, rather than the goal. Hedonism may separate living well from the experience or process of seeking goals, potentially ‘living unwell’ to seek pleasure and happiness, and thus cannot “reliably lead to either individual or collective wellbeing” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 141). Education removed from pedagogical praxis and the necessary questions of purpose, reliant on qualification and socialisation, may indirectly encourage hedonism over eudaimonia.

Two approaches dominate schooling practice for living well from the perspective of eudaimonia: flourishing (Brighouse, 2008; de Ruyter & Wolbert, 2020; Kristjánsson, 2016, 2017; White, 2011; Wolbert et al., 2015); and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Ryan et al., 2009). These approaches may have the potential to promote further separation of education from schooling or revival of schooling as educational.

Flourishing has been positioned as an overarching aim of schooling (Brighouse, 2008; de Ruyter & Wolbert, 2020; Kristjánsson, 2016, 2017; Wolbert et al., 2015). Recognising the dynamic nature of living well, flourishing “refers to the actualization of human potential through worthwhile activities and relationships” (de Ruyter & Wolbert, 2020, p. 2). Drawing on Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia, flourishing centres on two criteria: it is “intrinsically worthwhile” and involves “actualization of the human potential” (Wolbert et al., 2015, p. 122). While Aristotle recognised the significant role of luck in eudaimonia (de Ruyter & Wolbert, 2020), neo-Aristolean views on flourishing are “about furthering assets that students already possess” building on two preconditions: external necessities, and a sense of meaning and purpose (Kristjánsson, 2017, p. 88). Flourishing in the context of preconditions means “one takes into account what people can achieve given their circumstances and abilities” (Wolbert et al., 2015, p. 89).

Conflict exists in the conceptualisation and articulation of flourishing, where flourishing may simply be a form of character education (Miller, 2016) and thus sit within the purpose of socialisation. Rather than encompassing a ‘worldy’ view of “existing together-in-plurality” (Biesta, 2016, p. 188) necessary for the double duty of education for living well in a world worth living in for all, flourishing may focus on the socialising purpose of developing as a ‘good person’ (Henderson, 2020) absenting the fullness of “living a complete human life” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 140). Flourishing has also been suggested as an ‘objective well-being theory’ (de Ruyter & Wolbert, 2020) leaning further to the instrumentalist nature of qualification and socialisation rather than subjectification.

Further issue in the scope for flourishing to enable the educational ideal of living well arises in the positioning within schooling. Whilst White (2011) suggested the need for curriculum redesign to enable flourishing in schooling, Kristjánsson (2017) stated: “(I)t is not meant to supplant anything (except perhaps the obsession with high-stakes testing), but rather to enhance and add new layers to already existing school practices” (p. 88). Schooling has demonstrated a “standard approach given a problem, add a course” (Noddings, 2005, p. 49), a reductionist tactic that has been unsuccessful in relation to living well, such as previous well-being programs that mirrored existing practice neglecting established, entrenched detriments of the dominant, instrumentalist model of schooling (Biesta, 2006; Cigman, 2012; Gillies, 2011). Without broad scale change for schooling to be educational, as discussed above, enhancements to existing practice will not lead to living well in a world worth living in for all. Flourishing seen as an enhancement to existing schooling practices is insufficient.

The second school approach to living well that dominates the literature is self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000) which builds on living well as a lifelong process, intrinsically worthwhile, and fulfilling human potential. Often ascribed as a theory of motivation, self-determination theory provides a working model for school practice that supports living well for all (Ryan et al., 2009). Self-determination theory outlines three core processes to living well: intrinsic goals; the basic needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence; along with “reflective capacities, in which one considers the meaning and value of one’s way of living” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 158). The core processes of self-determination theory are central to the purpose of subjectification.

Self-determination theory highlights the tension between the double duty of education in fostering living well in a world worth living in for all, and schooling. Self-determination theory determines living well by the “degree to which people’s energies and interest are focussed on intrinsic values versus second- or third-order values and/or goals whose value is either derivative or unclear” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 149). Contemporary schooling requires student focus on second and third-order goals such as exam results and future careers—the purpose of qualification. Schools “are constrained by the dominant “grammar of schooling” (Tyack and Cuban, 1995) that maintain traditional structures and arrangements in classrooms and schools” (Reimer & Longmuir, 2021, p. 63) separated from questions of purpose. Driven by accountability agendas (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009), the dominant practice of teachers is controlling as opposed to supporting autonomy (Reeve, 2009) and thus subjectification. Controlling practice directs focus to extrinsic goals which do not positively impact students’ basic needs and therefore may have a negative impact on living well (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 165; Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). For schooling to support living well in a world worth living in for all—to be educational—change is necessary. Self-determination theory provides insight into the pedagogical praxis and subjectifcation for schooling to be educational.

Seeking Student Perceptions on Schooling for Living Well in a World Worthy of All

School is the “occupation of the pupil” (Lahelma & Gordon, 1997, in Lanas, 2019, p. 250) therefore children and young people need autonomy in putting “forward the correct understanding of the society in order to change it” (Cornell West in Stetsenko, 2014, p. 185). Existing discussion and exploration of schooling in terms of living well in a world worth living in for all is directed by, and often filtered by adults. Where student voice is considered in schooling it is used as a mechanism of socialisation to “de-fuse and gently mould ‘potentially disruptive perspectives’ (Fielding, 2004, p. 298)” (Mayes, 2020, p. 380). This chapter draws on a project that sought to open the conversation on living well in a world worth living in for all through hearing the perspectives of children and young people.

In seeking new knowledge, new perspectives on children and young people, living well, and schooling, I drew on arts informed and post-qualitative inquiry, creating my own path to engage differently (Lather, 2013). Central to this project was the reality that “student voice initiatives are always entangled in their discursive-material-affective conditions of articulation – the present conditions of speech, mobility, and feeling in and beyond school” (Mayes, 2020, p. 393). In seeking student perceptions of school’s role in living well in a world worth living in for all I sought to engage with student voice to explore how to give space to children and young people so that they may utilise their agency within these tightly constrained sites of practice. I sought voice without voice—perspectives given in a manner determined by the participant, as much as possible, in absence of my input—using a digital platform.

The project was open to any child or young person attending school in Australia. Participants were sought through the distribution of a recruitment notice via social media, schools, and student organisations. An instruction sheet was provided to support participation independent from me, and where possible, from other adults. The book’s focus on ‘living well in a world worth living in for all’ was modified to ‘living well in a world worthy of all’ to avoid making suggestions to children and young people of life not being worth living. The following request was made of the participants:

Prepare a creative response to your experience of schooling to live well in a life worthy for all. What’s a creative response? Story, song, poem, painting, sculpture, comic strip, meme, photos, short film, spoken word performance…. (Participant Instruction Sheet)

Each participant was also asked to provide an artist’s statement:

a short explanation of your creative response - consider what you want people to understand from your creative response. (Participant Instruction Sheet)

All responses were shared via a private Padlet (digital platform) to enable multimedia responses, autonomy from me, and for participants to respond to each other’s contributions. Beyond the essential ethical considerations, the use of Padlet required additional consent from participating students and their carers. Eleven students participated ranging from four to 14 years. Each student chose the name they wished to use in the project and publications.

Voice cannot and should not be left unexamined, or believed to be unexamined (St Pierre, 2008). What the children and young people offered in their own “voice cannot be thought as existing separately from the milieu in which it exists” (Mazzei, 2013, p.734), which requires “(V)iewing voices and meanings as elusive, contingent, and therefore contradictory – simultaneously expressing the said and unsaid” (Jackson, 2003, p. 704). While student voice was sought in forms as free from my direction as possible, voice was interpreted through the tightly constrained practices of schooling.

The creative responses and artists’ statements formed the data for the project. Unexpected constraints arose in this data that prevented the planned post-qualitative approach to analysis, leading back to the traditional qualitative path of coding. Biesta’s (2020) domains of purpose for education and self-determination theory (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Ryan et al., 2009) were utilised as the analytical strategy to explore student perceptions of schooling for living well. This deductive approach sought to explore how the children and young people’s perceptions of schooling and living well reflected crucial functions for schooling to be educational and thus enable living well in a world worth living in for all. I prepared a table (Fig. 8.1) to guide directed content analysis (Hsiu-Fang Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) for the ways Biesta’s (2020) domains of purpose and self-determination theory (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Ryan et al., 2009) are seen in practice.

Fig. 8.1
A table lists 2 columns and 9 rows of data. Column headers are categories and descriptors. Categories are qualification, socialization, subjectification, intrinsic goals, relatedness, competence, autonomy, reflection and reflexivity, and others.

Categories and descriptors for directed content analysis (adapted from Biesta, 2020; Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Ryan et al., 2009)

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A step was added prior to direct content analysis to enable analysis specific to the needs of visual data. My first step was to analyse the creative works through Guillemin’s (2004) questions derived from Rose’s (2001) critical visual methodology framework. Rose’s (2001) framework considers three aspects of site (production, image, audience), each viewed through three lenses of modality (technological, compositional, social). As the creative works were prepared independently, I focussed on Guillemin’s (2004) questions regarding the image (or creative work uploaded as an image), and audience. In relation to the images, I asked questions such as “What is being shown? What are the components of the image? How are they arranged?” and “What do the different components of the image signify? What is being represented? What knowledges are being deployed?” (Guillemin, 2004, p. 284). Looking from the position of the audience I asked questions including “Where is the viewer positioned in relation to the components of the image? What relation does this produce between the image and the viewers? Is more than one interpretation of the image possible?” (Guillemin, 2004, pp. 284–285).

Analysis took three phases: visual analysis of images; separate directed content analysis of images and statements; and review of analysis across images and statements for congruence and dissonance. Unlike other forms of directed content analysis a hypothesis was not used, nor was there intent to prove or develop the theories used to guide the analytical strategy. The theories were drawn upon to explore presence in children and young people’s perceptions of schooling. As such, the probe questions given to the participating children and young people were not aligned with Biesta’s domains of purpose or self-determination theory. Limitations of directed content analysis including increased researcher bias and leading of participants (Hsiu-Fang Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) were avoided through these modifications to the method. The following section discusses the findings in the light of the spaces for where children and young people perceived presence of subjectification and self-determination theory, along with where they raised problems with schooling being non-educational in the goal of living well.

Glimmers in Student Perceptions on Schooling for Living Well in a World Worth Living in for All: A Space for Interruption to Take a Transformative Activist Stance

Overwhelmingly the students shared visions of a traditional model of schooling with the teacher directing students who remained passive in their role. Autumn’s drawing shows a classroom scene that was common amongst the student responses (Fig. 8.2). The students captured schooling as instrumentalist, seeking qualification and socialisation preparing students for the life they will enter after completing school. Dan (9 years) took this qualifying role of school to an almost dystopian view as the space to learn “what you are good at and what you enjoy” to find the path for work to “make a living” (Dan, artist’s statement). Dan presented living well as the ability to make money to provide for oneself where school’s role is solely instrumental in meeting the qualification and socialisation purposes of school. The glimpse into Dan’s perception of school highlights the absence of subjectification and in turn schooling’s departure from education.

Fig. 8.2
A drawing sheet illustrates a teacher taking a mathematics class for 6 students to determine the product with 4 options.

Drawing by Autumn (9 years)

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Amidst these visions of traditional schooling to form society’s next generation of obedient citizens to fit into the existing order, appeared some glimmers of awareness to the absence of education with the support to live well in a world worth living in for all. Here I have focussed on just three participant perspectives to explore the space for interruption. Beauregard, one of the youngest participants at age 6, was very clear in their recognition of disjuncture between school and the world beyond school. Won Bhin, the oldest participating student (14 years) and only student attending secondary school, outlined juxtaposition between what school prepares students for, and what life outside of school requires. Autumn (9 years) hinted to the possibility that change in schooling practice might only be superficial. Each of these glimmers posed school as a challenge to living well, both now and in future, and raised space for interruption to engage in a transformative activist stance to remake schools.

Fig. 8.3
A watercolor painting. It comprises multiple colors including houses near a tree.

“Painting of a possum living in a tree near houses”, Beauregard (6 years)

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Beauregard (6 years) shared their thoughts on schooling and living well through a painting and artist’s statement. In painting a possum living in a tree near houses (Fig. 8.3), Beauregard directed their attention beyond the school fence to the world around them. Beauregard articulated this view in their artist’s statement, positioning living well in the world with others (all living things): “to keep the balance good so all animals can stay alive” (Beauregard, artist’s statement). Not only did Beauregard take a worldview for all to live well, they also recognised the ongoing pursuit of living well asserting the need for improvement so that “hopefully we will treat the world better” (Beauregard, artist’s statement). Beauregard drew attention to a possible absence of education in his schooling given:

doing education, rather than training or socialisation or indoctrination, for example, requires knowing whether the consequences of what we are doing are or is educational, in the sense that it sustainably serves the interests of individuals and the good for humankind. (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 153)

Without engaging students in understanding the world they live in, and how to relate with all aspects of their world, schooling will not contribute to living well in a world worth living in for all.

Beauregard presented a different view, from others in the project, to the relationship between school and students in living well, suggesting scope for student autonomy and potential to derail the overarching goals of schooling. Stating “school is trying to help me learn how to read and how to do maths so I can make the world better and get around the trickiest consequences”; Beauregard highlighted the qualifying purpose of school as preparation for life which is a point after school. School is ‘trying’ in their purpose suggesting Beauregard sees this goal as not necessarily being achieved—possibly proposing that school goals are dependent on students taking up their role in that arrangement. Ultimately learning—and perhaps education—is in the hands of students even when practices are tightly constrained. Beauregard suggested changes to connect learning at school to the wider world now:

We need to learn about nature. All species need something to keep them alive; even us. We need to learn it early. We need to learn about nature's habitats. We need to learn it because it is important for all nature. We need nature to live. We need all sorts of life to live. (Beauregard, artist’s statement)

In this way, Beauregard provides a glimpse to a disjuncture between school and life beyond school, and a potential juxtaposition between what preparation school seeks and what is needed in life.

Won Bhin (14 years) created a mind-map (Fig. 8.4) outlining how they see the relationship between school and life, providing a view to tensions that may arise between school and living well. Won Bhin stated that “School requires us (students) to…socialise with others; do your best, work hard; learn; spend time on work outside of school” which they contrasted with life outside of school as involving “going out with family and friends; free time: TV, art; gaming; sport; biking” (Won Bhin, mind-map). For Won Bhin, living well at school is about meeting prescribed expectations, while living well outside of school is self-directed, autonomous. Won Bhin separated the purposes of education between school (qualification and socialisation) and life outside school (subjectification), thus separating school from being educational and achieving the goal of living well in a world worth living in for all.

Fig. 8.4
A handwritten flow chart. The top portion illustrates how to maintain a balance between school and free time. The bottom portion illustrates jobs like to do.

Won Bhin’s mind-map (14 years)

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Won Bhin drew the mind-map showing life at school and life outside of school separated by the focal point of “Maintaining a balance between school and free time” (Won Bhin, mind-map). At school Won Bhin follows school requirements, striving to meet expectations by “putting in a great deal of effort” (Won Bhin, mind-map). There is nothing in Won Bhin’s outline of school life that shows evidence of school working within the purpose of subjectification, or core processes of self-determination theory. It is out of school where Won Bhin presents competence, relationship, and autonomy, through self-direction of “free time” to go out with family and friends and engage in activities of personal interest. Outside of school Won Bhin experiences the freedom to be the subject of his own life, although this time and thus the experiences in their “free time” are restricted by the need to meet the demands related to school’s purpose of qualification: “get(ting) homework and assignments out of the way to work towards free time” (Won Bhin, mind-map). Won Bhin shows a clear picture of school requiring extrinsic goals be achieved before attaining intrinsic goals. The hard work to meet school expectations is “immediately rewarded with time off, and long-term rewards of making the most of your education so you can do jobs you are interested in and enjoy” (Won Bhin, artist’s statement). Schooling is thus recognised as instrumentalist in the goal of qualification, seeking to prepare students for engagement in life after school, yet Won Bhin’s mind-map shows the separation between school and life culminating in his life outside of school as the driver to his future life with no connection from school to his ambitions.

While Won Bhin views school as preparation for life after school—jobs—they have raised a question as to what in life school prepares students for. Won Bhin’s mind-map depicts the tension between education and schooling, and thus tension in living well. Tension exists for Won Bhin in balancing life outside of school—life of relatedness, competence, and autonomy—with the demands of school. Tension is present through the threat of not having time for life outside of school if school demands are not met, and the greater threat of not achieving the “jobs you are interested (in) and enjoy” (Won Bhin, mind-map). Aristotle suggested “that a focus on pleasure and pain, rewards and punishments, can lead people to biased insights, or avoidance of truths, because they bend their perceptions for hedonic purposes” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 145). Won Bhin’s tension in juggling school with life outside of school may appear to be a pursuit of pleasure, though their description of school expectations shows second and third-order goals, while life outside school provides their needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy are met in pursuit of first-order, intrinsic goals. The very separation of school and “life outside of school” (Won Bhin, mind-map) shows the dominant role school plays in controlling access to living well as a first-order goal, by prioritising second and third-order goals to achieve the status of “good student” (MacLure et al., 2012) meeting the purposes of school for qualification and socialisation.

Autumn’s drawing (Fig. 8.2) shows a stereotypical view of a traditional primary classroom with the teacher standing at the board and children sitting on the floor looking at the teacher. Autumn’s drawing presents the active role of the teacher to instruct and the passive role of the students to listen and receive—hinting at the maintenance of social order and traditions for school’s purpose of socialisation. Autumn also included the day’s timetable on the class wall presenting instructions for students to follow throughout the day. Autumn portrayed a transactional relationship between school and students with students as passive agents to receive (Freire, 1970) the knowledge necessary to succeed in life, where school is separated from education.

In their drawing (Fig. 8.2) and artist’s statement, Autumn presented living well as being the consequence of schooling and hinted at the passive, predetermined roles students may hold in the relationship between school and living well in future: “For example, if you like maths, you can be a mathematician and if you don’t know maths - you won’t be able to do things in life” (Autumn, artist’s statement). In this statement, Autumn raised preconditions for living well and the possibility that school may provide what is needed only if a student is able—if they like maths they will do well, though if not they will have nothing—suggesting the need to be the ‘good student” (MacLure et al., 2012) to gain what school has to offer in living well, and also the limitation to the possibility for a world worth living in for all, given the opportunity for some and not others (Lanas, 2019).

Awareness that all might not be as it seems arose in the conclusion to Autumn’s artist’s statement. Autumn noted: “That is how it seems anyway” suggesting their understanding of school in living well has developed from looking beyond the surface of school practices reading between the lines to the implicit purpose of schooling for qualification and socialisation. Autumn’s statement also suggests an awareness of schooling practice having shifted from the traditional image portrayed, yet the underpinning goal has remained. Practices may have changed in Autumn’s classroom though it may be that the practice architectures —cultural-discursive arrangements, material-economic arrangements, social-political arrangements—are constraining the practice of the teacher and/or students, so that the purpose remains unchanged. Schools are.

obstinately stuck in the nineteenth century. They remain stuck there because people doggedly remake them as ‘school’ – that peculiar form of life familiar to almost everyone in the developed world, remote though it may be from the ways life is lived in other parts of contemporary societies, and in other parts of the days of schoolchildren, their teachers, their parents, their communities and the organisations in which the children will one day work. (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 2)

Autumn raises the possibility that the contemporary practices of schooling which make the physical space and activity of classrooms unrecognisable to those of the nineteenth century, might not remake the purpose of schooling, and thus not serve the double duty of education.

Looking Further into the Perceptions of Children and Young People on Schooling and Living Well

Within the tightly constrained practice of schooling, students are ‘trained’ in ‘normality’ and students are active in this process (Laws & Davies, 2000). Students must take up some of the desire for order and normality to be a ‘good student’, and in doing so they collaborate with teachers in this training (Laws & Davies, 2000), which may prevent awareness to potential conflict between schooling and living well. The glimmers of awareness to these conflicts shared in this chapter highlight the possibility available from investigating the perceptions of children and young people through new lenses where their voices are heard.

Limitations to this project include the number of participants and breadth of experience across schooling types. In addition, Padlet supported autonomous engagement though without inclusion of a focus group or individual interviews, it was not possible to probe further and clarify meaning taken from the content and varied modes of responses offered. The glimmers to conflict between schooling and living well observed within the responses of the three students shared in this chapter may or may not be conscious within the meaning intended by these students. Further research would benefit from exploring school and life more broadly with children and young people; hearing from students who have experienced different approaches to schooling; and opening conversation amongst students across varied models of schooling to interrupt understandings of what school is and can be. Expanding to include focus groups and interviews would also increase the data providing greater scope for other interpretive approaches.

Student voice is imperative to understanding the extent of tension in schooling and the impact on children and young people to engaging in living well. Student voice is curtailed to the benefit of conformity as part of school training. Student voice in school is limited to ‘good students’, used disciplinarily to support ongoing control, to maintain their role as ‘good students’, and thus good children, good people (Mayes, 2020). Agency for other students is disregarded as irrelevant given it arises from students who are ‘problems’ and in need of correction (Lanas, 2019; Laws & Davies, 2000). Using Padlet in this project provided a space for children and young people to share their voice on school and living well without influence. Future research would benefit from utilising Padlet for capturing initial responses prior to focus groups or individual interviews.

Absent from these glimmers is any hint towards their own agency to contribute to change in schooling practice. Laws and Davies (2000) claimed: “we are at the same time shaped by forces external to us, and yet through that very shaping, gain the possibility of power and of agency” (p. 206). Neglected from Laws and Davies' (2000) conclusion was that the claim was based on students who had moved from mainstream schools where they had ‘failed’ to become ‘good students’, to a school for ‘behaviourally disordered and emotionally disturbed’ students. The latter school responded very differently to the students’ behaviour than their previous schools; responses that supported relatedness, competence, and autonomy. The students’ experience of being disempowered had not given them agency, the change in school recognised their agency “making visible aspects which would otherwise remain invisible” (Lanas, 2019, p. 256). These are the ‘canaries in the mine’ who in their rejection of ‘normality training’ show us the problems that are present for all (Shalaby, 2017), they are the ones to be radical, insightful, and antagonistic in their evaluation of school and vision for new paths (Fielding, 2015). Following the UK ‘School I’d Like’ project, Fielding (2015) suggested “(I)t is to… (schools doing things radically differently) to which we might fruitfully turn in our quest for creative, life-enhancing ways of living and learning together” (p. x). The next step for this project will be to seek students who have experienced different approaches to schooling.

Foucault’s opposition to “vision for change” rests on the limitations created “(w)hen you know in advance where you’re going to end up there’s a whole dimension of experience lacking” (cited in Stetsenko, 2014, p. 185). When children and young people are trapped in the predetermination of outcomes, short and long-term, in their schooling, the scope for where they get to step beyond the oppression of normative ideals and truly imagine a different path from which transformation may begin is beyond limited. The growing examples of schools having stepped off the normative path may provide the key (Brunker & Lombardo, 2021; Corry et al., 2022; MacDonald et al., 2018; McDonald & Burton, 2014; Moffatt & Riddle, 2021; Nicholson, 2020; Reimer & Longmuir, 2021; te Riele et al., 2016). Another necessary dialogue is interschool—ongoing conversations with children and young people across vastly different school contexts to disrupt the ‘normality training’ and truly develop a transformative action stance of radical, insightful, and antagonistic students who may then engage in robust conversations where hope for utopia may become possible—“a future-oriented agenda, a political instrument for activism and social change” (Stetsenko, 2014, p. 185) in schooling practice. Rather than succumb to Foucault’s pessimism that “we cannot develop programs for the future because the future is unknowable” (Stetsenko, 2014, p. 186), recognise activism as fundamental to the autonomy necessary in living well, freedom to shape their lives, their collective future, stepping out of the shackles of predetermined outcomes mismatched with an unknown future.

As schools are such tightly constrained sites of practice we might reasonably ask if change, let alone Utopia, is even possible. In the foreword to ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, Shaull (1970/2005) asserted “(T)here’s no such thing as a neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom” (p. 34). To live well requires freedom for “behaving voluntarily toward ends that represent the realization of our highest human natures” (Ryan et al., 2009, p. 145). Without freedom in schooling children cannot live well, and a world worth living in for all remains a utopian dream. For freedom to be seen as a possibility in schooling students need imagination, and imagination needs inspiration. Transformative power “has to do with people’s ability to imagine what does not yet exist, what they think needs and ought to be created and struggled for, through imagination and action that are challenging the present and stretching beyond the status quo” (Stetsenko, 2014, p. 185).