From individual wellbeing to collective resilience: a cultural approach to higher education
From individual wellbeing to collective resilience: a cultural approach to higher education

Summary/Abstract: Wellbeing has been defined in relation to the quality of personal life and social relationships. The contexts in that people live, study and work may promote or undermine the subjective wellbeing due to potential opportunities or challenges. Higher education settings are academically stimulating and career-focused and, therefore, highly competitive. Nevertheless, higher education area is also a socially rich environment that provides constructive human interactions as a medium to enrich learning. A positive attitude contributes not only to personal wellbeing and deep learning, but also to individual and collective resilience in an era of dynamic changes and crisis. The psychological resilience is the ability to overcome the adversities of life, while the collective resilience is the ability of a group or a community to face challenges and internal or external tensions, arising as a result of political, economic, social or environmental changes. In these conditions, the educational relationships serve as a catalyst for resilience. Our study aims at investigating the perception of Romanian students, framed by the specific cultural context, regarding positive emotions, optimism and wellbeing, and collective resilience. The questionnaire-based inquiry has collected the responses of the participants. The key-themes identified from the answers to the open questions have been interpreted in a grounded theory approach. Our findings show that all participants declare positive experiences regarding emotions and that the reasons for which they are grateful are the learning acquisitions and personal achievements.

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