Nuna Skinhøj Henningsen: PARADOKSER I KONSTRUKTIONEN AF TRIVSEL: En poststrukturalistisk analyse af trivsel som politisk problem i Folkeskoleloven 2014-2024 [PARADOXES IN CONSTRUCTING WELLBEING: A poststructuralist analysis of wellbeing as a political issue in the Educational Laws 2014-2024]

This study explores how the concept of well-being is represented in Danish educational legislation from 2014 onward. Anchored in Foucault’s theoretical framework and Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach, the analysis investigates how well-being is constructed in policy documents and which underlying conceptual logics render this representation meaningful and legitimate. The study focuses on how students, as well as other actors, are positioned and subjectified within these constructions through discursive practices. Drawing on Foucault’s notions of power, discourse, governmentality, knowledge, and subjectification, the empirical analysis examines three iterations of the Danish Public School Act (covering primary and lower secondary education) from 2014, 2019, and 2024. The findings suggest that students are primarily constructed as recipients of pedagogical and instrumental interventions, rather than as autonomous agents within their educational environment. The categorization of students based on the presence or absence of well-being risks marginalizing those identified as lacking well-being, as the problem is framed almost exclusively in terms of deficit. Well-being emerges in the policy documents as a positively charged, yet unexamined norm, defined largely through its absence. Furthermore, annual assessment of the students’ well-being is framed as a necessity, carried out through standardized, quantitative measurement tools. This approach leaves little room for alternative understandings or subjective experiences of well-being and reinforces a narrow and decontextualized representation of the concept in practice.