Venka Simovska – författare

The Research in Participatory Education Network (RIPEN) was initiated by the Research Programme for Environmental and Health Education at the Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus, in 2003. It embraces a broad spectrum of researchers, scholars, students, and practitioners of participatory education, working in or from Europe, North America, Africa, and Australasia. Given the international scope of the network and the range of interests it now has, as initiators and early participants in the network the editorial team invited RIPEN to discuss what a critical perspective on participatory approaches to education might mean for education and the environment, health and sustainability, and how network members might research and substantiate their claims and ar guments. Following the introductory chapter on the scope of this collection, 19 chapters illustrate the contributors’ responses to that invitation. Our focus on critical perspectives was prompted by earlier work by Majid Rahnema in Wolfgang Sachs’s (1992), Development Dictionary. Critiquing concepts of participation in a volume that set out to stimulate cultural, historical, and anth- pological debate on the key concepts of development, Rahnema (p. 126) wrote: Participation, which is also a form of intervention, is too serious and ambivalent a matter to be taken lightly, or reduced to an amoeba word lacking any precise meaning, or a slogan, or fetish, or for that matter, only an instrument or methodology.

Collectively, the research presented in this book revisits, challenges, and rearticulates taken-for-granted wellbeing conceptualisations, policies and intervention frameworks, as critical discussion of wellbeing in relation to children and young people from a variety of socio-cultural, political, and economic settings is still relatively sparse.

Collectively, the research presented in this book revisits, challenges, and rearticulates taken-for-granted wellbeing conceptualisations, policies and intervention frameworks, as critical discussion of wellbeing in relation to children and young people from a variety of socio-cultural, political, and economic settings is still relatively sparse. The contributions work synergistically to generate a sophisticated understanding of children’s wellbeing while introducing fresh and context-sensitive approaches.  Pre-conceived and taken-for-granted notions of wellbeing are problematised through four sections in (i) Re-examining conceptualisations of wellbeing in educational research and policy; (ii) Focusing on School environments, schooling, and wellbeing; (iii) Examining the significance of cultural contexts; and (iv) Amplifying children's voices. The objective is to help generate new ways of researching and thinking about wellbeing and schooling, that transcend monocultural, monodisciplinary and monomethodological strategies. The book aims to stimulate further theoretical and empirical research, as well as development of effective policies and school interventions which nuance rather than reduce complexity of both education and wellbeing.

The Research in Participatory Education Network (RIPEN) was initiated by the Research Programme for Environmental and Health Education at the Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus, in 2003. It embraces a broad spectrum of researchers, scholars, students, and practitioners of participatory education, working in or from Europe, North America, Africa, and Australasia. Given the international scope of the network and the range of interests it now has, as initiators and early participants in the network the editorial team invited RIPEN to discuss what a critical perspective on participatory approaches to education might mean for education and the environment, health and sustainability, and how network members might research and substantiate their claims and ar guments. Following the introductory chapter on the scope of this collection, 19 chapters illustrate the contributors’ responses to that invitation. Our focus on critical perspectives was prompted by earlier work by Majid Rahnema in Wolfgang Sachs’s (1992), Development Dictionary. Critiquing concepts of participation in a volume that set out to stimulate cultural, historical, and anth- pological debate on the key concepts of development, Rahnema (p. 126) wrote: Participation, which is also a form of intervention, is too serious and ambivalent a matter to be taken lightly, or reduced to an amoeba word lacking any precise meaning, or a slogan, or fetish, or for that matter, only an instrument or methodology.

Schools are unique places. They pay a central role in the formation of young people. The importance of how young people are educated and how they are encouraged to live and learn cannot be underestimated. This book advocates for the fostering of agency not only amongst school personnel but also amongst younger generations for health and sustainability. It provides the reader with a new lens with which to discover health promoting schools and education for sustainable development. It invites the reader to look more deeply into both and to accompany the authors on a journey of discovery of the real potential for each to enhance the practice of schooling.