Enhancing wellbeing – Evaluating an Intervention for Further Education Students

Wellbeing is an emerging science. However, there are a number of differing views regarding how to define it as a concept, whether it is able to be measured and the potential for enhancing it at an individual level. The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of a pastoral intervention programme designed to enhance the wellbeing of Further Education (FE) students.

The mixed methods evaluation study reported here selected a sample of (N = 244) FE students who undertook a ten-week pastoral intervention programme delivered by their tutors that aimed to highlight the strategies they could employ to increase their personal resource bank. The Wellbeing in Further Education Students Survey (WFESS) was used to measure the students' perception of how resourced and challenged they felt in ten life areas, alongside the impact of challenges they faced and the level of strategies they used to deal with the challenges. This measure was taken before and after the intervention.

The results highlight a significant increase in the perception of feeling resourced following the intervention. Feedback from the delivery team of tutors highlighted a number of aspects of the intervention programme that received positive feedback from the students. The tutors also noted that the intervention had some positive effects in terms of enhancing their own wellbeing.

A number of limitations occurred during the research. Access both to the students and the tutors involved in the programme was restricted. However, this research offers a significant step towards the use of intervention programmes with FE to enhance the wellbeing of students and staff, through the increase of awareness of personal resource strategies that can be employed to counteract the challenges they face in life.