Victor Schou-Schmidt: Når selv idealerne halter: En  empirisk  undersøgelse  af  trivslens  betydning,  former  og  forhandlinger  i  en  skolepraksis [When ideals fall short: An empirical study of the meaning, forms and negotiations of well-being in school practice]

This thesis examines how experienced teachers and student teachers understand, interpret, and enact wellbeing in the Danish public school, and how the concept shapes professional roles and everyday practice. Grounded in combination of Critical Theory and poststructuralist perspectives, the study approaches wellbeing as both a pedagogical ideal and a governing mechanism within contemporary schooling.

Based on eight semi-structured interviews, the analysis links teachers’ situated experiences with broader educational policy discourses. The analysis is organized into three themes based upon the empirical data: (1) the conceptual character and function of wellbeing, (2) the practical enactment of wellbeing and the actor landscape surrounding it, and (3) the historical shift in the status and role of wellbeing in education. Theme 1 demonstrates that, despite it being institutionally prioritized, wellbeing remains fundamentally unresolved among both professionals and students. Participants describe the term as broad, diffuse, and unstable, often attaching it to related notions such as community, bullying, emotional states, and classroom climate. This conceptual fluidity generates uncertainty and results in teachers relying on local interpretations rather than shared professional frameworks.

Theme 2 shows how wellbeing functions as an organizing principle that distributes responsibility and shapes subject positions. Teachers are increasingly expected to manage relational, emotional, and pre-clinical concerns that extend beyond classical didactic work. This expansion of responsibility occurs without corresponding clarity about boundaries, competencies, or institutional support. Moreover, parents emerge as key actors whose well-intentioned but individualized focus undermines collective practices and intensifies pressures on teachers. These dynamics produce competing understandings of wellbeing: a communal, participation-oriented version upheld by teachers, and an individualized, protective version reinforced by parents. Theme 3 identifies a marked historical shift in how wellbeing is perceived and legitimized. Experienced teachers recall a schooling and teacher education landscape where wellbeing held little explicit status, whereas student teachers have grown up with wellbeing as a central frame for interpreting problems, interventions, and educational purposes. This contrast illustrates the emergence of wellbeing as a modern discursive formation that constructs certain problems as visible and certain interventions as necessary.

Overall, the study concludes that wellbeing operates today as a pervasive yet ambivalent governing concept in Danish schools. While it supports important concerns for pupils’ participation and flourishing, it simultaneously widens the teacher’s role and risks individualizing structurally produced challenges. The thesis argues that wellbeing should be understood not solely as an emotional or psychological state, but as a relational and institutional phenomenon that requires balanced attention to communal norms, teachers’ professional mandate, and the democratic purpose of schooling. Future wellbeing efforts must therefore rest on clearer distributions of responsibility, sustainable organizational conditions, and explicit reflection on the normative ideals the wellbeing agenda is intended to serve.