Transforming the wellbeing focus in education: A document analysis of policy in Aotearoa New Zealand

Purpose: Understanding the nature of wellbeing as multidimensional and complex provides a policy window to generate a strengths-based policy orientation to promote wellbeing in education settings. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to map how wellbeing is interpreted across public education policy documents in Aotearoa New Zealand. Method: To explore the narrative that this group of documents weave, we draw on models of holistic wellbeing, ecological systems and appreciative inquiry. Policy documents were analysed using text mining software to track notions of wellbeing; their occurrence and co-occurrence with related concepts. Results: Key findings include the predominance of wellbeing, the interrelatedness of wellbeing with relationships, and the predominance of student wellbeing over the wellbeing of other stakeholders, highlighting that current education policy does not interpret wellbeing as relational, complex or contextual. Conclusion: We argue that interpreting such documents through a wellbeing lens demonstrates the complexity and disparity of the conceptualization and contextualization. We assert that it is critical to explore possibilities for deliberate and ecological wellbeing connections within educational policy and practice for the good of all stakeholders.