Education and Wellbeing of Youths in Secondary Schools: A Comparative Analysis of Teaching Styles and Happiness in Japan, France, and Finland

Do teaching styles affect students’ happiness?

Despite a plethora of studies on a variety of factors and youth happiness, we do not yet grasp possible influences of teachers’ teaching methods on student happiness.

This project, EduWell, aims to (i) understand the relationship between different types of classroom teaching styles and youth wellbeing, and (ii) contribute to a more nuanced approach in scientific and policy comparisons of students’ experiences and subjective evaluations of happiness across three national contexts: Japan, France, Finland.

This is an important issue because, even among rich countries today (i.e. OECD members), a sizeable number of youths are unhappy in schools.

The research aim (i) will be achieved by data collection and analysis (interviews/focus groups with students and teachers, classroom observations) in selected secondary schools in Tokyo, Paris, and Helsinki.

Each case study has a dominant, distinctive teaching style: from more hierarchical (France) to more participatory (Finland) to hybrid (Japan), so that context-dependent youth happiness can be discerned. The research aim (ii) will be achieved with assistance from the two secondment hosts.

Active in education consultancy and policy advice respectively, the two secondment hosts undertake to help exploit and communicate research outputs to curriculum planners in Finland and policy advisors in France.

Lastly, this EduWell project is relevant to the Horizon 2020's work programme on ""Health, demographic change and wellbeing"" (societal challenge 1).

With ageing population and shrinking numbers of youth in much of the developed world, the young has to live with such consequences longer than adults.

Hence, understanding their happiness at the most formative stage of growing up, and to make relevant education policy adjustments when necessary, enhance the long-term state of wellbeing of today's youth in their adulthood.