Education, Welfare Reform and Psychological Well-Being: A Critical Psychology Perspective

Winter, Laura Anne; Burman, Erica; Hanley, Terry; Kalambouka, Afroditi; McCoy, Lauren

doi:10.1080/00071005.2016.1171823

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Although it is difficult to untangle the impact of specific policies (e.g., welfare, housing, educational) and policy‐related events (the vote to leave the EU), the participants were very clear that the broader socio‐political context was having an impact upon their work. As reflected in earlier work, a wide interpretation of emotional well‐being was held (Bragg et al ., ; Winter et al ., ) and the interviewees reported having to attend to pupils’ basic human needs. In justifying this, one teacher linked this directly to the humanistic psychological theory by referring to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Maslow, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Changes, such as those noted above, impact greatly upon peoples' lives and the impact of poverty and inequality upon mental health is well documented (Allen, Balfour, Bell, & Marmot, 2014;WHO, 2014). These policy changes have had a direct impact upon educational practices (e.g., Jones, 2015;Simmie, Moles, & O'Grady, 2016), and specific changes such as the removal of the spare room subsidy (colloquially known as the 'bedroom tax') have led to explicit changes in pastoral support structures (Bragg et al, 2015;Winter, Burman, Hanley, Kalambouka, & Mccoy, 2016). In this latter project, school staff and community workers reported encountering increases in poverty, new challenges related to hunger within schools, and the perception of increased mental health needs.…”

Section: Humanistic Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Supporting emotional well‐being in schools in the context of austerity: An ecologically informed humanistic perspective

Hanley

Winter

Burrell

2019

Brit J of Edu Psychol

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Schools are commonly asked to take on roles that support the emotional well‐being of students. These practices are in line with humanistic education theory and can be difficult to fulfil by schools. Broader ecological pressures, such as periods of austerity, are likely to add to the difficulty in meeting students’ needs. Aims To explore whether professionals in schools believe that their work supporting pupils’ emotional well‐being has changed as a consequence of the current period of austerity. Sample This project reports the views of staff from three secondary schools in the North West of England. A purposive sample of 29 individuals, including members of the senior leadership team and newly qualified teachers, were involved. Methods All participants were interviewed about their perceptions of the impact of a sustained period of austerity upon their work. The transcripts of these interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings Educational professionals associated wider socio‐political factors with a perceived increase in the need for emotional support of pupils. They reported taking on new roles and responsibilities to accommodate this and noted they are doing so with fewer resources and limited governmental support. Conclusions This paper concludes that considering humanistic education theory alongside ecological theory helps to conceptualize how socio‐political factors can impact upon the emotional well‐being in schools. An ecologically informed humanistic framework is depicted based upon the findings of this project as a means of understanding how these two theories complement one another and interact.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Humanistic Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting emotional well‐being in schools in the context of austerity: An ecologically informed humanistic perspective

Hanley

Winter

Burrell

2019

Brit J of Edu Psychol

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, Liddell and Guiney () show a relationship between living in a cold, damp household and problems with mental health issues, while Purdam, Garrett, and Esmail () describe a relationship between food insecurity and use of food banks with feelings of embarrassment and shame. Research looking specifically at the impact of particular welfare reform policies has documented perceived impacts of such changes on emotional well‐being (Winter, Burman, Hanley, Kalambouka, & McCoy, ). In a similar period, there has been increasing talk in counselling, psychology and psychotherapy of the importance of “social justice” (Cutts, ; Winter, Maciagowska, Mangan, & Toor, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social justice and remembering “the personal is political” in counselling and psychotherapy: So, what can therapists do?

Winter

2019

Couns and Psychother Res

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This brief contribution argues for the importance of a social justice perspective in counselling and psychotherapy, particularly within the current international socio‐political context. Much has been said about social justice over recent years in the fields of psychology, psychotherapy and counselling. Professionals and academics have expressed some concerns about what it might actually mean, or how difficult it might be in practice to engage with this perspective. In this paper, the activist phrase “the personal is political” (Hanisch, 1970) is used to illustrate the way in which a social justice approach to counselling and psychotherapy does not need to be complicated, but rather a foregrounding of a particular understanding of well‐being and the people we work with. Following this, some concrete and straightforward suggestions for how therapists might begin to act on their social justice values are made.

show abstract

“…The obverse of these can be seen in the rise of diagnoses of anxiety, vulnerability and other forms of distress associated with financial pressures, precarity and insecurity, that can lead even to suicide (Barr et al, 2015;Ellis et al, 2013;Isin, 2004 ). (Indeed it is worth noting that a key rationale for undertaking our study was because of the escalation in referrals to psychotherapy services in which some of the research team were involved, see also Winter et al, 2016). In particular, as with the discursive shift from 'unemployment' (a structural condition) to 'worklessness' (figured as an individual attribute or state), processes of psychologisation are at work (De Vos, 2012) that correspond both with the occlusion of global and local structural explanations and -as a correlate of responsibilisation -imply a retraction or minimisation of the social bond.…”

Section: A Foucauldian Discursive Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Together, what these examples indicate is how policy discourse, in this case a housingrelated welfare reform that has widespread impacts on family and children's wellbeing and their education (Winter et al, 2016), is both reproduced and transformed by the various subjects who are both subjectified by, but also become subjects of, these discourses. We have claimed that such policies are educational in a double sense: highlighting the educational impacts of social and welfare changes, but also via the ways neoliberal state policies mobilise pedagogical strategies to incite and regulate subjectivity.…”

Section: -2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

Burman¹,

Greenstein

Bragg

et al. 2017

EPAA

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper draws on material generated from a qualitative study of educational impacts of a British welfare reform affecting housing rent subsidy, size and location commonly known as ‘the bedroom tax’ (Bragg et al., 2015), which was partly taken as a topic for study specifically because of its iconic status as a controversial and unpopular welfare ‘reform’ (or cut). The analysis draws on Foucauldian understandings of subjectification or subject-formation - as elaborated both from within and in relation to the social (Foucault, 1970; 1983; Ball, 1990; Olssen, 2006; Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998), read through new and newly available perspectives (Allen, 2015; Pêcheux, 2014). This approach is applied to discuss how those addressed by educational policy, and also as research participants, are both subject to prevailing political and practice-oriented discourses (of educational ‘problems’, and of the neoliberal frameworks by which poverty and welfare cuts are discussed), but also – at times – how they can become the subject of – in the sense of reformulating – these discourses in their accounts of everyday activities. After outlining our approach and the context for the study, we focus on four examples drawn from the narratives of the various stakeholders in the study – parents/carers, school staff and other community-based organisations as illustrations of how this discursive approach can provide rich readings of relevance to educational policy debates. From these we not only take further discussions of the production and regulation of subjectivities via social and educational policy practices, but also offer indicative glimpses of resistance to this as expressed by those who are its primary subjects, and where in one case such resistance brings our own research commitments under critical scrutiny. As such, the contribution of this article is both topic-related (concerning the educational impacts of policy) but, crucially, also conceptual and methodological, in motivating for a Foucauldian-influenced discursive approach that is sensitive to struggle and resistance.

show abstract

Education, Welfare Reform and Psychological Well-Being: A Critical Psychology Perspective

Cited by 15 publications

References 36 publications

Supporting emotional well‐being in schools in the context of austerity: An ecologically informed humanistic perspective

Supporting emotional well‐being in schools in the context of austerity: An ecologically informed humanistic perspective

Social justice and remembering “the personal is political” in counselling and psychotherapy: So, what can therapists do?

Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About