This volume offers a critical rethinking of the construct of youth wellbeing, stepping back from taken-for-granted and psychologically inflected understandings. Wellbeing has become a catchphrase in educational, health and social care policies internationally, informing a range of school programs and social interventions and increasingly shaping everyday understandings of young people. Drawing on research by established and emerging scholars in Australia, Singapore and the UK, the book critically examines the myriad effects of dominant discourses of wellbeing on the one hand, and the social and cultural dimensions of wellbeing on the other. From diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, it explores how notions of wellbeing have been mobilized across time and space, in and out of school contexts, and the different inflections and effects of wellbeing discourses are having in education, transnationally and comparatively. The book offers researchers as well as practitioners new perspectives on current approaches to student wellbeing in schools and novel ways of thinking about the wellbeing of young people beyond educational settings.

Young people grow up in varied circumstances with different priorities and perspectives. While youth does not exist as a single group we need to understand what is happening in young people's lives. Rethinking Youth challenges the conventional wisdoms surrounding the position and opportunities of young people today and provides a systematic overview of the major perspectives in youth studies. The authors demonstrate how the concept of youth involves a tension between the social significance of age, which gives young people a common status, and the significance of social divisions. Drawing upon studies from different societies, they examine debates surrounding youth and economy, youth development, youth subcultures, youth transitions and youth marginalisation. Rethinking Youth offers a provocative critique of mainstream conceptions of youth, the programs and strategies designed for 'at risk' young people, and policy development in youth affairs. It calls for greater sensitivity to the complexities of youth, and greater emphasis on democracy and equality in dealing with the problems experienced by young people in a rapidly changing world. Johanna Wyn is Director of the Youth Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. Rob White lectures in Criminology at the University of Melbourne.

This book offers an innovative conceptual and methodological approach to one of the most significant health and wellbeing challenges for contemporary youth: body image. The social and cultural dimensions shaping body ideals and young people’s body image concerns have not been adequately explored in the current landscape of social media and youth body cultures. The author provides a sociological reframing of body image, foregrounding the social and cultural dimensions which are critical in shaping young people’s everyday bodily experiences. Chapters explore the significance of ‘gender’ and ‘wellbeing’ norms and the ways that circumstances of hardship and inequality are significant in mediating body concerns. In this, the book complicates simplistic understandings of body image, instead showing the complex processes by which body concerns are formed through the circumstances of embodied experience. The book advocates for the non-individual dimensions of body concerns—the social and cultural conditions of young people’s lives—to be foregrounded in strategies aimed at addressing this complex youth wellbeing issue. This text will be of interest to scholars in gender studies, youth studies, and feminist sociology.

Youth are usually not (yet) decision makers in politics or in business corporations, but the sustainability of Arctic settlements depends on whether or not youth envision such places as offering opportunities for a good future. This is the first multidisciplinary volume presenting original research on Arctic youth. This edited book presents the results of two research projects on youth wellbeing and senses of place in the Arctic region. The contributions are united by their focus on agency. Rather than seeing youth as vulnerable and possible victims of decisions by others, they illustrate the diverse avenues that youth pursue to achieve a good life in the Arctic. The contributions also show which social, economic, political and legal conditions provide the best frame for youth agency in Arctic settlements. Rather than portraying the Arctic as a resource frontier, a hotspot for climate change and a place where biodiversity and traditional Indigenous cultures are under threat, the book introduces the Arctic as a place for opportunities, the realization of life trajectories and young people’s images of home. Rooted in anthropology, the chapters also feature contributions from the fields of sociology, geography, sustainability science, legal studies and political science. This book is intended for an audience interested in anthropology, political science, Arctic urban studies, youth studies, Arctic social sciences and humanities in general. It would attract those working on Arctic sustainability, wellbeing in the Arctic, Arctic demography and overall wellbeing of youth.

This book introduces a new wellbeing dimension to the theory and practice of learning space design for early childhood and school contexts. It highlights vital, yet generally overlooked relationships between the learning environment and student learning and wellbeing, and reveals the potential of participatory, values-based design approaches to create learning spaces that respond to contemporary learners’ needs. Focusing on three main themes it explores conceptual understandings of learning spaces and wellbeing; students’ lived experience and needs of learning spaces; and the development of a new theory and its practical application to the design of learning spaces that enhance student wellbeing. It examines these complex and interwoven topics through various theoretical lenses and provides an extensive, current literature review that connects learning environment design and learner wellbeing in a wide range of educational settings from early years to secondary school. Offering transferable approaches and a new theoretical model of wellbeing as flourishing to support the design of innovative learning environments, this book is of interest to researchers, tertiary educators and students in the education and design fields, as well as school administrators and facility managers, teachers, architects and designers.

This book offers an innovative conceptual and methodological approach to one of the most significant health and wellbeing challenges for contemporary youth: body image. The social and cultural dimensions shaping body ideals and young people’s body image concerns have not been adequately explored in the current landscape of social media and youth body cultures. The author provides a sociological reframing of body image, foregrounding the social and cultural dimensions which are critical in shaping young people’s everyday bodily experiences. Chapters explore the significance of ‘gender’ and ‘wellbeing’ norms and the ways that circumstances of hardship and inequality are significant in mediating body concerns. In this, the book complicates simplistic understandings of body image, instead showing the complex processes by which body concerns are formed through the circumstances of embodied experience. The book advocates for the non-individual dimensions of body concerns—the social and cultural conditions of young people’s lives—to be foregrounded in strategies aimed at addressing this complex youth wellbeing issue. This text will be of interest to scholars in gender studies, youth studies, and feminist sociology.

This book reexamines reflection and ethics for teachers, and argues the case for ensuring teaching practices are educational and professional rather than simply technical or clinical. Demonstrating that theory is indispensable when it comes to professional deliberation and educational practice, the authors draw on their experience to provide insights for teachers that will enable them to become better professional educators. This collection of research chapters, written by established researchers and educators in the field who are familiar with a variety of teaching contexts and are conversant with the current teaching standards and policies relating to teaching and teacher education, is a valuable resource for practicing teachers, researchers, policy-makers as well as for final-year student-teachers in Initial Teacher Education programs. Further, it enables early career teachers to meet their professional responsibilities in a more critically informed and capable manner.