Exploring Key Factors and Conceptualizations for Well-Being in Lower Secondary Education: Embracing Student Voices in the Well-Being Debate

This study challenges adult-centric perspectives on student well-being by offering a student-centred conceptualisation informed by students’ views on the factors shaping their well-being. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and co-creation workshops with 36 students aged 13 to 15 from Danish lower secondary schools, the research explores well-being through the lens of their lived experiences. The analysis identifies five interrelated categories: Expressions of well-being, Social interaction, Conditions for well-being, Challenges to manage, and School environment determinators. These findings demonstrate that student well-being is a deeply holistic and multifaceted concept, often extending beyond individual experiences to form a collective and relational understanding. The study introduces a model illustrating this dynamic, emphasising the entangled and multilayered nature of well-being as perceived by students. By prioritising youth perspectives, this research contributes to the growing discourse advocating for student-led insights in well-being scholarship and underscores the importance of educational practices that sensitively integrate and respond to student voices.