Mundane matters: (Re)conceptualising moments of student well-being across cultures

Abstract

Most commonly, notions of well-being refer to the importance of social interactions, mental and physical wellness and sustainable daily functions. However, in recent years there has been a steady decline in university students' well-being in multiple geographical contexts. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated issues related to university students' well-being given the swift turn to online teaching and learning, emotional turmoil related to contracting the virus themselves or in their family/friendship circles and the uncertainty of the global economy and job market. This has led to an increase in loneliness and feelings of isolation and left universities uncertain of how to respond. Thus, the aim of this research is to understand well-being from the perspectives of university students in Australia and Hong Kong in order to develop more culturally-relevant responses from universities. Our research was guided by the idea of 'concept-as-method' (Taguchi & St. Pierre, 2017). We specifically drew upon Pink et al.'s (2017) concept of 'mundane data' which highlights the role of everyday micro-routines, improvisations and accomplishments to showcase affective and sensory elements of well-being from participants' perspectives. In order to explore everyday micro-routines in particular, we have turned to Gillen et al.'s (2007) 'A Day in the Life' methodology and collected short, student-generated video vignettes in which participants were asked to highlight moments throughout their day that supported their well-being. Our results show that students' sense of well-being is supported by mundane moments associated with transport, food and the natural environment. As such, we attempt to entangle these mundane or innocuous everyday moments with students' academic worlds to raise questions about how universities might attend to these and improve student well-being.