Psychological Wellbeing and Academic Environment of Government and Private Secondary School Students – A Comparative Study

Abstract

Education is the cornerstone of human growth, shaping a child's personality and guiding their behaviour to be socially beneficial, fostering a positive outlook towards society, nation, and the world. In the words of Raymont, “Education is that process of development which consists the passage of human being from infancy to maturity the process whereby he adapts himself gradually in various ways of his physical, social and spiritual environment.” Education is a lifelong process and continues from cradle to grave. In a real sense, education is to humanize humanity and make life civilized, cultured and progressive. Every day, individuals acquire new knowledge through their daily experiences, demonstrating absorption, vigour, and dedication in their learning process, however, students must develop effective strategies and styles to construct their knowledge. Depending upon the numerous styles available, students can adopt any of the styles for information processing. Learning styles are the characteristics and preferred ways in which a person gathers, identifies and processes information (Fleming, 2001). Learning styles help the students to learn the subject matter very easily and in this activity, teachers can play a very important role. Malathi & Malini (2006); and Sharma (2011) indicated that students who have higher academic scores, have better learning styles and it is easy for teachers to teach them. Students can take the help of teachers for identification of learning styles. Learning style helps the student to be autonomous in learning and gives confidence to interact with the environment. For learning, the environment plays an important role. Individual school and class environments and their preferences of branches are highly effective in learning strategies and styles. This may be due to the different educational programmes used in schools and branches (Murat & Sari, 2010). The environment should develop the physical, emotional, social, moral, spiritual and aesthetic aspects of an individual. The environment in schools should be congenial so that the individual develops to his maximum. Teachers create opportunities for students to engage in a variety of school activities (Eccles et al., 1993) and these experiences provide students with information regarding their competency to succeed their relatedness to others in that setting and their autonomy as learners’- allowing them to realize their personal and social identities (Connel & Wellborn, 1991). Conducive environment at school also helps students to be stress-free and psychologically well. The well-being of an individual is very important and the environment has a significant contribution to it. Wellbeing is the “state of successful performance throughout the life course integrating physical, cognitive and socio-emotional functions that results in productive activities deemed significant by one’s culture, community, fulfilling social relationships and ability to transcend moderate psychosocial and environmental problems” (Bornstein et al., 2003).