Human Well-Being for Sustainable Education: The Perspective of Private Elementary School Teachers

Abstract

This descriptive survey looked into how teachers of a private elementary school perceived human well-being so that opportunities could be identified to address gaps in current knowledge around teacher wellbeing and its flow-on effects on teaching practice and student learning. The study was conducted among 35 teacher education faculty members assigned to teach elementary school pupils. The teacher-respondents answered a researcher-prepared questionnaire composed of three parts: Part I, the study-participants’ demographic profile; Part II, their perception of human well-being based on eight dimensions--material
well-being, bodily well-being, social well-being, security, freedom of choice and action, psychological well-being, spiritual well-being and environmental sustainability; and, Part III, the respondents’ sequencing of the eight dimensions of human well-being based on their perceived level of importance. Based on the data gathered, it was found out that the teacher-respondents perceived all the dimensions included in the study Very Important in achieving human well-being, with spiritual wellbeing as the most important and freedom of choice and action as the least important. The results, however, showed no evidence of Maslow’s
ranking of needs or evidence that these needs were in a hierarchical order. On the contrary, the results supported John Finnis’s point that these needs, being categorized as dimensions of human well-being, are non-hierarchical, irreducible, and incommensurable basic reasons for human actions, which are referred to by Amartya Sen as valuable functioning or capability expansion.