The theoretical part of this study begins by first introducing the notion of « subjective children well-being ». It focuses on the general idea of well-being before looking more specifically at the well-being that relates to school. To continue, this study discusses how students’ well-being evolves throughout their schooling. To do so, the various dimensions and factors associated with this well-being are highlighted. Gradually, this research focuses on individual predictive factors through the study of the perceived well-being of pupils with special needs or disabilities. To sum up the issue, we must first of all remind that, in the international literature, there is a consensus on that there is a progressive decrease in students’ satisfaction with regard to their school life during their schooling. Thus, initially, after observing that the transition of 5th grade students to middle school corresponded to a significant episode in their schooling since their feeling of well-being clearly declines at that stage, we wondered whether there was a similar effect during the transition between nursery school and 1st grade. Secondly, we noticed that French students tend to negatively estimate their ” relationship with school assessment”, that is to say that they are worried about grades and assessments at school. Therefore, we wanted to observe whether this phenomenon was observable earlier in the students’ schooling, i.e. for the transition from nursery school to 1st grade in elementary school. Finally, the international literature is formal: students with special educational needs or in a situation of disability obtain lower scores of “overall satisfaction at school” and “satisfaction with school assessment” than their peers. This is why we felt necessary to observe the progression of the subjective well-being of children at the beginning of schooling according to teachers’ assessments of their subsequent school adaptation profile.
To answer these questions, we use the Be-scol 5-7 (Jacquin et al., 2019) adapted from the Be-scol (Guimard et al., 2015) and the Questionnaire for kindergarten children (Florin et al., 2008). On the one hand, the first tool – intended for the children themselves – makes it possible to assess their level of satisfaction in various fields that relate to their well-being at school. On the second hand, the other tool – intended for the teachers – makes it possible for them to identify pupils who might experience some difficulties in adapting to the school system. Due to the health crisis caused by the epidemic of lung infection, the data collection that was initially planned with the young pupils could not be carried out. Thus, in order to answer the hypotheses, we used the data collected by previous students of master’s degree who worked in the framework of Judikaëlle Jacquin’s thesis. She is actually doing a PhD and my research is based on her work. In order to study the evolution of the subjective well-being of pupils when they begin 1st grade after leaving nursery school, I chose to use data from the longitudinal sample (N = 114). For the first two hypotheses, the data were processed by a T-analysis of the Student T-sample paired with the Jasp software (significance level p<.05). For the other two hypotheses, the data were processed by a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) also using the Jasp software at the significance level p<.05.
Finally, overall, all hypotheses rejected. There are several possible explanations for these results: on the one hand, it is essential to say that, because of their emerging cognitive abilities, toddlers do not have as much ability to think critically about their feelings and well-being at school as their older peers. This would explain why young students, whether troubled or not, tend to express a higher overall sense of well-being, not yet being able to assess precisely to what extent their basic needs are being met. It should also be noted that the transition between nursery school and 1st grade in elementary school is not as marked as it was a few years ago when kindergartens were still separate from elementary schools and that the teachers’ training was different depending on the school where they were going to teach etc. This would explain the perceived well-being gap between this transition and that of 5th grade to first year of middle school. On the other hand, young pupils are only at the beginning of their schooling and benefit from a relatively less formal teaching than the older ones. Indeed, in kindergarten, the goal is to enable young children to “become pupils” and, due to significant inter-individual differences at this stage of development, teachers prefer their observation and those of parents to monitor the learning and progress of young pupils rather than setting up “assessment” criteria. Thus, very young children are not yet familiar with the traditional forms of evaluation that older students “undergo” in France and which tend to worry them. Finally, from a methodological point of view, we can criticize the test used to identify the students whose teacher fears they struggle because it is above all a pedagogical tool and not a diagnostic one. Moreover, teachers’ evaluations are a matter of “prediction”, which, in our opinion, is never certain. Indeed, children’s developmental trajectories can vary very quickly, especially at this stage of development.