Beyond the ‘diminished self’ : challenging an array of objections to emotional well-being in education

Abstract

With early school leaving prevention being an agreed European Union headline target of 10% across the EU by 2020, emotional-relational dimensions to education are gaining renewed attention in European education policy. Against this backdrop, prominent criticisms of an emotional well-being agenda in education by Ecclestone and Hayes require further consideration. The key objective of this paper is to challenge and reconstruct six key arguments of Ecclestone and Hayes against emotional wellbeing in education. There is a need to move beyond paradigms of conceptual coherence that rest upon diametric oppositions – thought/feeling, healthy/sick, diminished/undiminished, optimism/pessimism, subject/negation of a subject, learning/therapy. It is argued that an emotional well-being agenda in education is a conceptually coherent one, once different levels of prevention and intervention are distinguished and the argument goes beyond flat, undifferentiated conceptions of ‘therapeutic culture’. The Cartesian model supported by Ecclestone and Hayes to frame a ‘diminished’ self is but one selfhood. A more nuanced debate would focus on the strengths and weaknesses of different, pluralistic conceptions of selfhood. Their most substantive objections to an emotional well-being agenda in education concern deficit labelling and privacy and are important cautionary notes.peer-reviewe