Developmental psychology and neuroscience of well-being: Exploring the theory and its implications for education research and practice

While the need for supporting mental well-being in education has been capturing a lot of attention, there is lack of clarity and implementation guidance on well-being in education policy. This might be partially due to confusions about what the focus of well-being interventions in education should be, reflecting gaps in developmental psychological theory of well-being. In this talk, Dr. Dorjee will discuss how well-being could be construed in terms of the development of two core underlying neurocognitive capacities and processes. She will present neuroscience studies on mindfulness-based well-being interventions in schools from her lab which led to this theoretical proposal. The talk will conclude with considerations about possible implications of the proposed theory for measuring and improving well-being in schools.