1. Dr Maeve O’Brien,
St Patrick’s College
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2. Understanding the Significance of Well‐Being
And why are you so firmly and triumphantly certain
that only what is normal and positive‐in short
well‐being‐is good for man? Is reason mistaken
about what is good? After all, perhaps prosperity
isn’t the only thing that pleases mankind, perhaps
he is just attracted to suffering. Perhaps suffering
is just as good for him as prosperity.
Dostoyevsky, 1983, 41 (Notes fron the Underground)
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3. Overview‐Arguing for Well‐Being and a ‘Careful
Society’
Exploring Well‐being and quality of life‐including the area of
relationships, the work of care theorists and researchers
Making the case for the affective context of life and care in public and
private contexts‐care and citizenship, and the well‐being of society
Care as a ‘good’ for well‐being and education: Raises issues of
distribution, recognition, power and resources
Care, well‐being and education‐ ‘a new ethics’ and ethical practices in
secondary sphere of care relations
Interrelationship between care, well‐being, education and social
justice 3

4. The Significance of the Affective Domain to
Understandings of Well‐Being
Allardt’s (1993) sociological welfare model –Having, Loving and Being
Equality Model (2009)‐economic, cultural, affective and political
contexts‐ care, love and solidarity are forms of relationship which
occur across primary, secondary and tertiary care contexts primary,
secondary and tertiary care.
Nussbaum and Sen’s human development work: The Capabilities
Model‐relationships are based in emotions which make us fully
human care as a capability
Psychoanalytic perspectives on well‐being: care experiences and care
relations, Intersubjectivity‐the ethical subject’s capacity to care
(Benjamin, Hollway, 2005)
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5. Care Scholarship Concepts and Well‐Being
Feminist moral philosophers and political theorists suggest that
relationships of care are based in inescapable states of dependency,
interdependency and vulnerability (Tronto, Bubeck, Nussbaum,
Kittay, Sevenhuijsen, Fraser, Fineman)
A very different view of the human being and of human flourishing
relative to the post modern rational conception of a detached rational
economic actor
A different conception of a citizen, ….as having care needs and the
capacity to care, to be caring and to have caring ethical dispositions.
Care as crossing the public private divide..the withering away of the
state and care!
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6. Making Human Vulnerability Explicit: The
Vulnerable Society and its Institutions
Fineman’s (2008) theorisation of the human subject as vulnerable and
institutions as also vulnerable – education and schooling
(we need to)..to redirect focus onto the societal institutions that are
created in response to individual vulnerability. This institutional focus
has the effect of supplementing attention to the individual by placing
him/her in social context. The institutions that are of particular
interest are those that are created and maintained under the
legitimating authority of the state, since the ultimate objective of
vulnerability analysis is to argue that the state must be more responsive
to, and responsible for, vulnerability. (ibid: 13).
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7. Key Issues for well‐being: responding to
vulnerability, dependency and interdepenence
Taking care seriously as key to well‐being means considering:
Relationships and the private space of life‐work/life balance.What
counts as work‐care as work, the non‐recognition of care in the home,
defined as love, as natural
That problem that care has been dichotomised as love or labour and
not as both
What does that mean for educators and for schooling?
Nell Noddings, well‐being and happiness as an aim of education‐the
need for care and to learn for relationality. Teachers in particular
contexts‐social disadvantage, teacher education.
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8. Gender Inequalities, Care and Well‐Being: within
public and private institutions
Women, well‐being and caring identities, identity and the moral
imperative to care
(Bubeck, Delphy and Leonard, Lynch et al., O’Brien)
Men and exclusion from care (Hanlon, 2009)
Women in the home and the imperative to perform educational
support work (Lareau, 1989, Griffith and Smith, 2005, Reay, 1998,
O’Brien, 2005, 2008)
Schooling teaching and caring, what is valued, recognised and
rewarded? (Farrelly’s (2008) work on ‘walking the tightrope’ of care).
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9. Caring and Resourcing Well‐being in Education
Resourcing Caring‐the issue of nurturing and emotional capitals
(Lynch, 2008, Reay 2000, O’Brien, 2009)
How these are created and used.
Perspectives of those under the care of educators. Listening to
students.
Intersection of caring contexts and socio economic and cultural
contexts
(Feeley, 2009, state harm) (O’Brien, 2009, social class, poverty,
marginalisation and care)
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10. Intersection of Capitals for Care and Well‐Being‐Economic, Social,
Cultural and Emotional Resources (see O’Brien 2009)
MASHA
EC ELLIE
4 BRIGID
MAISIE
KAY
3 NUALA
DOREEN
LINDA
2
KATE
RUTH
1 SARAH
JANET
ANNA
EMC 0 CC RITA
PAULINE
VAL
TRUDI
ROSE
LAURA
DONNA
MARIE
MAURA
CONNIE
NOREEN
NELL
SC
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11. (Lack of)Well‐Being and Schooling
Lack of focus and a need to focus on aims of education (Noddings’
critique)
Education needs to be concerned with a broad conception of well‐
being (in mainstream and alternative provision)
Climate and culture of the schools are significant to well‐being, and
related to curricula, streaming, assessment and quality of relationships
(Konu, Lintonen and Rimpela, 2002‐friendship and absence of bullying
for SWB, Engels, Aaelterman, Van Petegem and Scepens, 2004‐
teachers’ relationships impact on student well‐being)
Equality and well‐being: resources, recognition, power and affect‐in
education, the impossibility of an internal settlement (Baker et al.
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2004)

12. 12

13. Contested and Multiple Well-Being and Schooling-current
Well- Schooling-
Perspectives on Well-Being
Well- thinking and problematics
Happiness as Eudaimonia-the good life or
Eudaimonia-
Hedonistic happiness and Subjective well- Happiness as an aim of education
being. (Noddings, 2003) and/or education for a
Defining or prescribing norms of well-being competitive market and the need for public
as problematic for individual meaning dialogue around this
seeking.
The need for education for self- development
The tensions and overlaps between SWB and for participation in democracy and for
and social indicator perspectives-need for
perspectives- citizenship, social solidarity
subjective and objective perspectives
Equality and Well-being-care and love (Baker
Well- being- ( For well-being and equality across all
et al. 2004) contexts of life including intimate and social
spaces
Capabilities and Well-Being (Sen, 1993)
Well- For our unique sets of functionings and for
flourishing within our societal context
Having, Loving and Being (Allardt, 1993) To have skills, resources to participate in
society, for relationships and for being in our
unique ways
Achieving health of populations through
critical literacy
As part of the Allardt model: The problem for teachers and students of
Health Promotion and the WHO agenda, acquiring the cultural power and tools of
having health in Allardt’s model analysis to define our reality
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14. Educating for Well‐Being and Democracy
Educating in and for care (Cohen, 2006, O’Brien and
Flynn, 2008, Lynch, 2008, Feeley, 2009, O’Brien
forthcoming 2010).
Character education and the virtues and caring
climates (Cohen)‐a need for social, emotional, ethical
and academic education‐ SEEA but not to be reduced to
mere lists of skills‐practical education (Dewey)
Health Promoting Schools Movement‐WHO/ Mental
Health 14

15. Conclusions
Recognising the significance of affective life and human relationality‐
intersubjectivity and vulnerability
Recognising caring or affective resources and skills and the capacity to
and for care
Recognising the labour in relationships of care and the attendant costs
Recoding care as gender neutral and extending informal care work
outside the nuclear family to extended networks of affiliation
Recognition of affect in schools
‐aims directed at well‐being and practice
‐curricula and evaluation that are responsive to models of well‐being
‐individual and collective aspects of well‐being
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16. Which Model of Citizenship? What kind of
teacher?
Fraser 2000
The Citizen Carer as opposed to Citizen Breadwinner or a
combination‐ Citizen Carer/Worker‐A citizen who is recognised as
vulnerable (Fineman) and in need of care and also capable of caring
for others
The Teacher Carer Citizen: Language of care and Relationality‐
language can be used for purposes of liberation or of subjugation
(Wittgenstein, Irigaray, Freire), we need a language of care, well‐being
and relationality in the field of education that is recognised… and
leads to care praxis.
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