psychology question

Advances in Children’s Rights and Children’s Well-Being Measurement: Implications for School Psychologists

Hanita Kosher Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Xu Jiang University of South Carolina

Asher Ben-Arieh Hebrew University of Jerusalem

E. Scott Huebner University of South Carolina

Recent years have brought important changes to the profession of school psychology, influenced by larger social, scientific, and political trends. These trends include the emergence of children’s rights agenda and advances in children’s well-being measure- ment. During these years, a growing public attention and commitment to the notion of children’s rights has developed, which is best expressed in the United Nations Con- vention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention outlines the conditions necessary to ensure and promote children’s well-being and calls for the ongoing monitoring of children’s well-being for accountability purposes. We articulate advances in children’s rights and children’s well-being measurement in the context of children’s schooling experiences in general and for school psychology in particular. We highlight implica- tions for the assessment roles of school psychologists, who occupy a unique position at the intersection of multiple subsystems of children’s overall ecosystems. We argue that the synergy between a rights-based agenda and advances in children’s well-being assessment methodology can provide valuable opportunities for school psychology. This synergy can help school communities establish perspective and goals for chil- dren’s well-being in rights respecting ways, using the most promising well-being assessment strategies.

Keywords: children’s rights, United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights, child well-being, subjective well-being, school psychology

Over the past several decades, growing pub- lic attention to the notion of children’s rights has emerged, along with a greater commitment of responsibility to children’s care and develop- ment to ensure that their rights are upheld (Pe- terson-Badali, Morine, Ruck, & Slonim, 2004). Additionally, the science of children’s well-

being, including the measurement of children’s well-being, has also experienced considerable growth (Ben-Arieh, 2008; Huebner & Hills, 2013). The overarching purpose of this article is to articulate those advances in children’s rights and children’s well-being measurement, partic- ularly in the contexts of children’s schooling in general and international school psychology in particular. In recognition of the 25th anniver- sary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989; hereinafter referred to as the Convention) in 2014, this article rep- resents one in a series of eight articles that has been organized through the cooperation of the editors of six premier national and international school psychology-related journals (Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, Journal of School Psychology, Psychology in the Schools, School Psychology International,

Hanita Kosher, The Paul Bearwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Xu Jiang, Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina; Asher Ben-Arieh, The Paul Bearwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; E. Scott Huebner, Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina.

Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to E. Scott Huebner, Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Pendleton St 1512, Columbia, SC 29208. E-mail: [email protected]

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School Psychology Quarterly © 2014 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 29, No. 1, 7–20 1045-3830/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/spq0000051

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School Psychology Quarterly) to advance the understanding and application of a children’s rights approach for psychology in the schools. In this particular article, we focus on the impli- cations for the assessment roles of school psy- chologists, who are extensively trained in as- sessment methodology and who occupy a central position at the intersection of multiple levels of children’s overall ecosystem (Fagan & Wise, 2007).

Children’s rights are a relatively new idea. Dur- ing most of human history, children did not enjoy any rights; they were viewed as the personal prop- erty or extensions of their parents with few or no legal rights (Stier, 1978). During the 19th century, the conceptualization of childhood as a unique period of life emerged along with attempts to grant protection and provision rights to children. However, this early recognition of children’s rights was based on a view of children as passive, weak, and vulnerable creatures, and therefore pri- marily in need of protection (Hallett & Prout, 2003). During this period, children were perceived as “human becomings” and were not recognized as full human beings with freedoms and rights (Alaimo & Klug, 2002).

It was not until the second half of the 20th century that the focus of children’s rights shifted from protection and provision rights to rights of participation and self-determination, based on the assertion that children are legal persons who are entitled to many of the same rights as adults (Peterson-Badali & Ruck, 2008). Increasing awareness of children’s self- determination rights has led to a global move toward increasing child participation in the de- cisions affecting their lives (Cherney & Shing, 2008; Lansdown, Jimerson, & Shahroozi, in press; Ruck & Horn, 2008).

The increased awareness of children’s rights is reflected in the Convention, which was ad- opted by the UN General Assembly in 1989. Official commitments to the Convention have been made by 193 of the world’s 195 recog- nized nations, with the exception of the U.S., which has signed indicating intent to move to- ward official commitment (i.e., ratification), and Somalia. It is the most comprehensive and most widely ratified of all human rights treaties, ad- dressing a full range of rights for children.

The Convention affirms not only the child’s right to protection from harm and abuse or the provision of goods and services, but also the

right to develop into an autonomous adult and to have a voice in matters that affect her or him (Alaimo & Klug, 2002; Freeman, 1998; Par- tridge, 2005; UNICEF, 2002). The Convention highlights that the child is a human being, who has the right to be respected as a unique indi- vidual with her own perspective and personal intentions by fellow human beings and by the state, its institutions, and other organizations (Krappmann, 2010).

It is common to address the full range of children’s rights in the Convention according to the “three Ps:” protection rights, provision rights, and participation rights (Troope, 1996; UNICEF, 2007). Provision rights refer to young people’s right to the adequate provision of ser- vices and resources to enable them to develop their abilities (Ruck & Horn, 2008; UNICEF, 2007). Protection rights include the right to be protected from neglect, abuse, exploitation, vio- lence, cruel and degrading treatment, discrimina- tion, invasion of privacy, exploitation, hazardous work, and armed conflict (UNICEF, 2007). Par- ticipation rights refer to the right of children to be respected as active members of the society who take part in decisions affecting them. This princi- ple includes access to information; freedom of movement, association, belief, and expression; privacy; liberty; and development toward inde- pendence (Alderson, 2008; Hart, 1991; UNICEF, 2002, 2007).

Since their formulation in the Convention, con- sideration of children’s rights has become essen- tial for comprehensive discussions of children’s welfare. Over the years, notions of child welfare and child well-being have become almost synon- ymous with children’s rights. The Convention is a common, acceptable framework to discuss chil- dren’s status and well-being in various formula- tions and institutions. The language and frame- work of rights as expressed in the Convention provides a moral, legislative, and substantive force for children’s protection and services, including their access to basic needs for everyday survival (Khadka, 2013). The general notion of children’s well-being is further situated within the context of the Convention in the next section.

The Convention and Children’s Well-Being

The Convention offers a normative frame- work to understand children’s well-being (Bradshaw, Hoelscher, & Richardson, 2006) as

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it promotes a holistic view of child well-being, giving equal weight to children’s civic, politi- cal, social, economic, and cultural rights (Ben- Arieh, 2008). In the Convention, rights are im- plicitly understood as creating opportunities for well-being (Ben-Arieh & Frønes, 2011). The general principles of the Convention fit closely with a variety of discussions on how to concep- tualize child well-being (Bradshaw, Hoelscher, & Richardson, 2007). The Convention estab- lished an extensive legal framework of rights across a broad spectrum of domains that outline the conditions related to children’s well-being. According to Edberg (2009), this framework encompasses positive conditions, such as safety, best interests of the child, education and health care access, freedom of expression, thought and assembly, and others that pertain to negative conditions, such as discrimination, ex- ploitation, violence, and trafficking, for overall development.

Well-being is mentioned in the Convention sev- eral times. Article 3, which focuses on the best interests of the child, underscores that “States’ parties undertake to ensure the child such protec- tion and care as is necessary for his or her well- being . . .” The Convention identifies the physical, mental, social, spiritual, and moral domains as the primary areas of concern for overall well-being. For example, Article 27 indicates that “States’ parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physi- cal, mental, spiritual, moral and social develop- ment” (see also Articles 17 and 32).

Consistent with the adoption of the Convention, increasing attention has been paid to discussions of the meaning and measurement of child well- being. In the next section, the definitions and measurement of well-being are discussed, partic- ularly in relation to the context of large-scale national and international assessment systems.

Definitions and Large Scale Monitoring of Child Well-Being

Well-being has been defined in many ways. Dictionaries define well-being as a desirable state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous. However, well-being is also related to the ful- fillment of desires, the balance of positive and negative emotions, to living conditions, and so on (Ben-Arieh & Frønes, 2011). In short, well- being is generally operationalized as a broad

construct that encompasses objective and sub- jective indicators.

From a children’s rights perspective, well- being can be defined as the realization of chil- dren’s rights and the fulfillment of the opportu- nity for every child to be all she can be in the light of her abilities, skills, and potential. The degree to which this realization is achieved can be measured in terms of positive child out- comes, whereas negative outcomes and depri- vation point to the denial of children’s rights (Bradshaw et al., 2007). Most conceptualiza- tions of child well-being involve multiple di- mensions. One example is that of the Organiza- tion for Economic and Cooperative Development, which includes the following di- mensions: material well-being, housing and en- vironment, education, health and safety, risk behaviors, and quality of school life (see Brad- shaw et al., 2006). Huebner (1994) provides another conceptualization, which includes the five contexts of family, friends, school, self, and living environment.

Children’s well-being is not conceptualized as a static concept. It is considered to be dy- namic in nature, and it is generally situated within developmental and ecosystemic concep- tual frameworks. Well-being has to be under- stood in relation to individual preferences and opportunities. As such, the same level of com- modities and resources do not produce the same level of well-being for all individuals (Ben- Arieh & Frønes, 2011). Child well-being results from the interplay of resources and risk factors for a child, her family, friends, situation at school, and the wider society. These factors are constantly changing, and children, with their evolving capacities, actively contribute to their own well-being (Bradshaw et al., 2007). Chil- dren’s movement through the life course im- plies that their well-being (and capabilities) can be continuously changing, especially during times of key developmental transitions (e.g., adolescence). Such changes throughout the life course require a set of indicators capable of identifying important differences in children’s well-being at various age levels and in various contexts (Ben-Arieh & Frønes, 2011).

Recent years have brought a dramatic rise in the number of efforts at the national and inter- national levels to measure and monitor the well- being and lives of children using statistical data and indicators (Ben-Arieh, 2006). Although the

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use of statistical data and indicators specifically to study the well-being of children is not new, the child indicators movement really sprang to life only during the last two decades of the 20th century (Ben-Arieh, 2012; Bradshaw, Keung, Rees, & Goswami, 2011). Today, the use of child indicators is widely accepted and recog- nized as an important tool to promote children’s well-being and to shape social and political change processes and policies (Ben-Arieh, 2000).

Indicators are generally constructed as pro- files over a series of dimensions, or as indexes combining a series of indices into one measure. The indicators refer to a wide range of phenom- ena including measures, signs, indices, and symptoms, pointing to children’s present and future developmental status. Indicators of well- being cover a broad range of perspectives and fields, ranging from measures of objective con- ditions of children’s lives (e.g., material stan- dards, community standards, and social capital) to measures of children’s subjective experiences life (e.g., life satisfaction, positive emotions; Ben-Arieh & Frønes, 2011; Diener, 2000).

Research related to indicators of children’s well-being is growing and reflects several im- portant trends. These trends are inspired by the framework established by the Convention as well as developmental psychology, especially the ecological model of development (Fer- nandes, Mendes, Aurora, & Teixeira, 2012). The five most important trends have been sum- marized by Ben-Arieh (2000, 2006, 2008). First, the child is a main unit of analysis. The Convention conceptualizes the child as an inde- pendent human being. Hence, the child’s per- spective should be the main unit of analysis, although others’ perspectives (e.g., parents, teachers) are important in comprehensive child well-being assessments. Second, well-being is more than survival or the absence of pathology; it includes positive indicators that reflect “thriv- ing” or “optimal functioning” beyond a neutral point. Thus, well-being includes more than neg- ative outcomes in life; it also includes positive outcomes. Third, early efforts to develop well- being indicators emphasized children’s well be- coming, that is, their subsequent achievement or well-being whereas recent efforts focus also on children’s current well-being. Fourth, well- being is multidimensional. The Convention highlighted the need to examine multiple do-

mains of children’s lives to be comprehensive. However, summary indices can be useful to facilitate comparisons of trends across different demographic groups, localities and regions. Fi- nally, children’s current subjective experiences must be taken into account. The Convention recognizes children’s right to be heard, concep- tualizing children as important agents in assess- ing their well-being and making decisions about their lives.

The last point deserves particular attention. One of the latest developments regarding as- sessments of the dimensions of children’s well- being is the introduction of the construct of subjective well-being (SWB) by Diener (1984). Over the last few decades, there has been a growing interest among researchers on chil- dren’s subjective perceptions of their well- being (Bradshaw et al., 2007; Cummins & Lau, 2005; Fattore, Mason, & Watson, 2007). This new trend was influenced by the children’s rights notion, which calls for respect for chil- dren as rights bearing persons whose opinions should be heard and considered in decision making concerning them. A central principle of the Convention has been that children’s rights monitoring should include the voices of the children themselves, especially their judgments of SWB. Children’s perceptions of the nature and impact of life conditions can differ from those of adults (e.g., parents, teachers), under- scoring the notion that multiple perspectives need to be taken into account (Ben-Arieh, Mc- Donell, & Attar-Schwartz, 2009).

According to Diener (1984, 2000), SWB re- fers to individuals’ cognitive evaluations of the overall quality of their lives (i.e., global life satisfaction) and with specific life domains (i.e., school satisfaction, family satisfaction) as well as reports of affective well-being, reflecting the frequency of various positive and negative emo- tions experienced over time. Affective experi- ences include the children’s reports of pleasant emotions (joy, excitement), and negative emo- tions (e.g., sadness, anger; Bradshaw et al., 2011). In addition to Diener’s hedonic focus, some scholars have argued for the inclusion of eudamonic indicators of children’s well-being that are empirically related to SWB, such as purpose, gratitude, hope, optimism, and self- efficacy (Furlong, You, Renshaw, Smith, & O’Malley, in press; Keyes, 2009).

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Numerous large-scale approaches have been proposed to conceptualize and measure the well-being of children. A current, common theme involves the notion that well-being mea- sures should be multidimensional to reflect the complexity of children’s lives (Bradshaw et al., 2007; Huebner, 1994). Large-scale, multidi- mensional indexes of children’s well-being, de- signed for cross-national applications, have been introduced in recent years. For example, the Multi-National Project for Monitoring and Measuring Children’s Well-Being (Ben-Arieh et al., 2001) is a noteworthy, interdisciplinary effort. The index encompasses 50 indicators of five components and 13 subcomponents. The components are: safety and physical status, per- sonal life skills, civic life skills, children’s eco- nomic resources, and children’s use of time. Another index is the EU25 child well-being index, which constitutes eight higher-order clusters: material situation, housing, health, subjective well-being, education, children’s so- cial relationships, civic participation, and risk and safety (Bradshaw et al., 2007). These ex- amples are both consistent with the conceptual- ization of children’s rights articulated in the Convention, in which children’s rights to devel- opment and survival are multidimensional and include the physical, mental, social, spiritual, and moral domains as the primary areas of concern for children’s overall well-being.

What one can learn from the conceptualiza- tion and associated indexes of children’s well- being in the light of the notion of children’s rights? How can this approach contribute to the context of children’s schooling in general and school psychology in particular? The following sections will discuss the relevance of children’s rights and children’s well-being to education in general and to the field of school psychology in particular.

Children’s Well-Being, Children’s Rights, and Schooling

School and family are among the major en- tities in children’s lives (Melton, Limber, & Teague, 2000). A good education is considered to be one of the most important aspects of society, and it is one of the major goals of the Convention (Scherer & Hart, 1999). Education (and schooling) was one of the first rights granted to children, as in the 18th and 19th

century, school became the major “work set- ting” for children. At first, education was con- ceived of as a tool for producing individuals who would be useful to society (Hart & Pav- lović, 1991). The educational culture has tradi- tionally included harsh discipline practices, fre- quently using fear and intimidation to control children. For many years, children were also denied opportunities for self-determination in the school setting (Hart, 1987, 1991; Henriksen, 1982; Plumb, 1972; Takanishi, 1978). How- ever, a dramatic change has occurred in many places in such practices during the 20th century as education began to be viewed as a right of children and as a means to promote their well- being rather than primarily as a means of soci- etal control (Hemelsoet, 2012).

The Convention places a high value on edu- cation. Article 28 states that all children have the right to a free education. “States’ parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity.” This article also states that discipline in schools should respect children’s dignity, without the use of violence.

Article 29 states that children’s education should develop each child’s personality, talents and abilities to the fullest. Education should also encourage children to respect others’ hu- man rights. It should also help them learn to live peacefully and responsibly, protect the environ- ment, and respect other people’s cultures.

The Convention not only prescribes chil- dren’s right to education but also articulates standards for the promotion and fulfillment of well-being of children in the school context. The standards include the aforementioned pro- vision and protection rights as well as partici- pation and self-determination rights. More spe- cifically, children’s rights to schooling and education must include the following: (a) pro- vision rights—schools and education should be easily and readily accessible to all children and provide them with opportunities to meet basic needs as well as fostering opportunities for learning, development, health, and overall well- being; (b) protection rights—schools and edu- cation should be a protected haven for children, free of physical, mental or any other danger; and (c) participation rights—special attention is required in regard to participation rights in the education context, as it is characterized by a

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societal context where adult authority and power is almost absolute (Smith, 2007). Schools and the education system need to assure a variety of participation and self-determination rights, such as freedom of association, protec- tion of privacy, freedom to express opinions, and freedom of thought, conscience, and reli- gion. Children, from a young age, should be provided meaningful opportunities to partici- pate in all aspects of school functioning (Covell, 2010; Melton, 1987).

The Convention provides relevant guidelines to develop and apply a child rights approach to professional work in education (Hart & Pav- lović, 1991). School professionals have the pri- mary responsibility to promote the realization of children’s rights, including children’s well- being. School psychologists are in a unique position to do so. Children’s well-being is ar- guably a central responsibility of the school community, everywhere in the world (Nod- dings, 2003).

Beyond general implications for children’s schooling, the Convention also yields implica- tions for school professionals, such a school psychologists. We address these implications next.

School Psychologists’ Roles and Functions

School psychologists provide a number of services to children in schools, including a va- riety of assessment and intervention functions at the individual, group, and systems levels. The roles and functions of school psychologists around the world are evolving, having been shaped by many forces throughout the history of the profession (Fagan, & Wise, 2007; Oakland & Jimerson, 2007). Although most school psy- chologists’ roles and functions are multifaceted, extending beyond assessment, we focus on the assessment role herein, recognizing that high quality assessment data provide the foundation for other school psychologist roles (e.g., con- sultation, intervention, advocacy).

For many years, the assessment (and inter- vention) practices of school psychologists were mainly based on the medical model of human functioning, which led to a focus on identifica- tion and treatment of pathology within individ- ual children, especially children with special needs (Sheridan & Gutkin, 2000). Such a nar- row focus has been inconsistent with the more

holistic conceptualization of well-being embed- ded within the Convention.

Alternatives to this deficit-based perspective have been articulated by many authors in school psychology (e.g., Rhee, Furlong, Turner, & Ha- rari, 2001; Terjesen, Jacofsky, Froh, & DiGi- useppe, 2004). Emerging developments in the field of psychology have included positive psy- chology (Gilman & Huebner, 2003; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), which incorporates at- tention to SWB, personal strengths, and envi- ronmental assets in conducting assessments, in- terventions, and prevention services for all children (Jimerson, Sharkey, Nyborg, & Fur- long, 2004).

The breadth and depth of school psycholo- gists’ roles in general and assessment practices in particular have recently broadened in scope in many places, reflecting the shift in the con- ceptualization of children’s well-being as more than the absence of psychopathological symp- toms (Meyers & Meyers, 2003; Farrell, Jimerson, & Oakland, 2007; Suldo & Shaffer, 2008). The medical model is being expanded to include considerations of the larger systems that influence children’s functioning (Sheridan & Gutkin, 2000) as well as positive individual assets (Furlong et al., in press). There is some evidence that the dominant school psychology paradigm for service delivery in some areas is moving from a relatively exclusive emphasis on assessing and remediating the “problems” of individual children with special needs to a rel- atively greater emphasis on prevention and the promotion of positive development and well- being in all children (Farrell et al., 2007; McIn- tosh, Martinez, Ty, & McClain, 2013). Descrip- tions of evolving practices in multiple nations reflecting this change can be found in Furlong, Gilman, and Huebner (in press).

Such changes in practice rest on the recogni- tion that school psychologists are in a unique position in the ecology of children, intersecting with children and most key environmental sys- tems, such as family school and community- school systems (Nastasi & Naser, in press; Sheridan & Gutkin, 2000). Such changes are also consistent with calls in school psychology for the implementation of population-based ser- vices (Doll & Cummings, 2008), response-to- intervention procedures (Sugai, Horner, & Gresham, 2002), and holistic school-based

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mental health approaches (Leschied, Flett, & Saklofske, 2012) in schools.

We believe that greater attention to a chil- dren’s rights agenda offers many opportunities for schools psychologists. In the following sec- tion, we address the implications of children’s rights agenda for school psychological services as a whole.

Implications of Children’s Rights for School Psychology

The universal recognition of the concept and value of children’s rights has influenced school psychology. School psychologists have made various commitments to the Convention, such as those articulated in various position state- ments of their professional organizations. The new conceptualization of children’s rights has been endorsed internationally by school psy- chology communities who are continually ex- amining ways that school psychology may fur- ther contribute to the implementation of the Convention goals (Hart & Prasse, 1991; McMa- hon, 1993).

School psychologists’ particular expertise positions them well to operationalize the Con- vention in their professional practice in several ways (NASP, 2012). Such arguments have also been articulated via the International School Psychology Association (ISPA) and in the Child Rights Education for Professionals pro- gram (CRED-PRO; 2010).

First, the Convention provides useful guide- lines for the professional practice of school psy- chology. The Convention’s core purpose is to secure and advance the health, well-being, ed- ucation, and safety of children. This purpose is consistent with the guiding principles of the school psychology community to deliver a com- prehensive articulated array of services that pro- motes the well-being of children by ensuring opportunities to attain optimal learning, devel- opment, and mental health. School psycholo- gists are generally prepared to provide this range of services (e.g., assessment, consulta- tion, intervention) in multiple settings, with ser- vices directed at individuals (e.g., students, par- ents, educators) and systems (family, classroom, schools, community organizations). A children’s rights agenda should be central to school psychologists’ work in each of these

contexts, and school psychologists should eval- uate their services accordingly (NASP, 2012).

Second, the Convention calls for systems- level advocacy. From its inception, school psy- chology has held the implicit assumption that a core value of the profession involves serving as advocates to promote the best interests of chil- dren through effective educational and mental health services (e.g., Catterall & Hinds, 1972; Hart, 1991; Hyman & Schreiber, 1974, 1975, 1977; Mearig, 1974). School psychologists act as advocates for children by virtue of their po- sitions within schools and their ethical obliga- tions (McMahon, 1993).

Kahn, Kammerman, and McGowan (1973) defined child advocacy as interventions on be- half of children in relation to those services and institutions that influence their lives. The func- tion of child advocates is to examine the oper- ation of various factors that influence the lives of children and to promote and provide inter- ventions based on children’s needs and rights. To serve as advocates, school psychologists must understand and identify how the rights of children can be used positively to influence services and policies within schools and related environmental systems (e.g., families, neigh- borhoods, other child-serving agencies) to en- sure children’s well-being. They have the re- sponsibility to examine services in these settings and facilitate changes to policies and procedures that ensure the protection and pro- motion of children’s rights (NASP, 2012).

At the public policy level, school psycholo- gists can act as a critical link in translating research into policy and practice at local, na- tional, and international levels. Governments, through both action and inaction, contribute to the protection or disregard for children’s rights. Instead of focusing only on ameliorating viola- tions of children’s rights, school psychologists, through individual and collective advocacy, can help to promote and protect children’s rights and thereby facilitate the optimal development, well-being, learning, and safety of all children.

Third, school psychologists who embrace a children’s right approach must ensure that the child is viewed as the primary client in the service delivery system (Kahn et al., 1973). This approach means viewing the child as the client whose well-being must be advanced through the delivery of professional services (APA, 2002, 2010; NASP, 2010). In this man-

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ner, the interests of the child remain foremost (McMahon, 1993). Understanding and adhering to this principle is crucial, especially when con- flicts of interest arise in the organization with its other clients (e.g., parents, teachers, commu- nity).

Fourth, the notion of children’s rights has also brought increasing attention to children’s right to participation. School psychologists need to continue to recognize the importance of lis- tening to “children’s voices” to facilitate child participation (see Lansdown et al., in press). As articulated further below, the increasing devel- opment and use of empirically validated mea- sures of the subjective experiences and well- being of children should especially contribute to such efforts.

In summary, a children’s rights-based ap- proach provides a conceptual framework as well as specific strategies and opportunities for school psychologists to apply in their work (ISPA & CRED-PRO, 2010). School psycholo- gists must respect and protect children’s rights at all levels of practice, from working with individual children to working with the broader systems in children’s lives to influence public policy. Professional organizations and school psychologists and associated need to work to- gether, as well as collaborate with other school and nonschool professionals, to protect and ad- vance children’s rights and promote well-being (ISPA & CRED-PRO, 2010). Nastasi and Naser (in press) provide a useful framework clarifying the intersection of children’s rights, as articu- lated in the Convention, and school psychology training and practices standards and ethics codes.

Taken together, the development of chil- dren’s rights agenda and a science of children’s well-being have important implications for the roles of school psychologists in general. How- ever, the advances in each area suggest impor- tant implications for the specific roles and func- tions of school psychologists, including their assessment roles. We turn to these implications for school psychologists’ assessment role in the next section.

Implications of Children’s Well-Being for School Psychologists’ Assessment Practices

The Convention requires that all nations eval- uate the effectiveness of the political and legal

structures created to promote Convention re- quirements for children. Such evaluations must take into account the determination of the im- pact of those structures and policies on the well-being of children. The evaluations should involve monitoring the objective conditions of children’s lives, as well as their subjective per- ceptions of their well-being. School psycholo- gists can serve an important advocacy role in promoting respect for and realization of chil- dren’s well-being (objective and subjective well-being), taking advantage of their unique professional expertise and position within chil- dren’s key environments to help develop and implement individual, group, and school sys- tem-wide child well-being assessments as ex- tensions of larger-scale monitoring efforts.

Given the children’s rights movement and the emergence of a science of well-being (Diener, 2000) and positive psychology (Gilman & Huebner, 2003; Jimerson et al., 2004), some school psychologists appear to be moving to- ward a more assets-based, well-being focused orientation (Furlong, Gilman, & Huebner, in press; Huebner & Hills, 2011; Meyers, Roach, & Meyers, 2009). This orientation provides op- portunities for school psychologists, as they ad- dress not only academic outcomes and class- room behavior, but also broader objective and subjective experiences of children’s lives (Gil- man & Huebner, 2003).

The Finnish research team of Randolph, Kan- gas, and Ruokamo (2009) developed a holistic model of well-being, which can incorporate ob- jective and subjective indicators of school-age children’s well-being that should be useful to guide school-based assessment practices at the individual or systems levels. Their model in- cludes four levels in a hierarchy ranging from global to more specific indicators. The highest level represents an unmeasured overall quality of life construct. The second highest level in- corporates Diener’s (1984) three lower-order, measurable components of SWB: positive emo- tions, negative emotions, and global life satis- faction, all of which can be measured through self-reports. It should be noted that global life satisfaction measures are comprised exclusively of items that are domain-free (e.g., My life is going well) versus domain-dependent (My school life is going well). This global, self- report approach allows children to give voice to their life satisfaction judgments based on their

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own unique criteria and standards. This ap- proach contrasts with an alternative approach wherein individuals’ life satisfaction judgments comprise a summation of responses to a variety of domain-specific items, which reflect the con- texts and standards determined by others (e.g., the research “experts” who developed the mea- sure). The third level involves measurable, con- textualized judgments of satisfaction for major, specific life domains, such as family, friends, and school. Thus, given the distinction between global and domain-based measures of satisfac- tion, a child may report high global life satis- faction despite being dissatisfied with experi- ences in a specific domain, such as school (or low global life satisfaction despite being satis- fied with school experiences). The fourth level includes the empirically validated subjective and objective conditions associated with each domain. This level offers the opportunity to link students’ levels of satisfaction with specific do- mains and relevant research-based subjective and objective variables that contribute to differ- ences in the students’ satisfaction levels. Objec- tive variables might include such variables, such as parental socioeconomic status, access to medical services, and recreational opportuni- ties. For a specific example of consideration of both subjective and objective variables, possible determinants of a student’s (or students’) satis- faction with peers should include assessments of the students’ family structure and relation- ships, socioeconomic status, neighborhood characteristics, peer interpersonal trust levels, social skills, victimization experiences, and so- cial self-efficacy (Huebner, Hills, & Jiang, 2013). An empirically supported list of key variables could also be generated for satisfac- tion with family, school, community, and other key domains.

Modifications of the Randolph et al. (2009) model could also prove useful depending upon the purposes of the particular assessment situa- tions. For example, the self-domain of the model could be divided further and organized according to the five domains of the Conven- tion: physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and so- cial development. Alternatively, the self- domain could incorporate the components of the aforementioned assets model developed by Furlong et al. (in press).

School psychologists are particularly suited to assess children’s well-being at the individual,

group, and school levels. They receive substan- tial training in child assessment procedures in general. Perhaps the newest, relevant instru- ments of interest to them would be SWB mea- sures, particularly measures of global and do- main-specific life satisfaction. Such measures have been reviewed extensively elsewhere (Huebner & Hills, 2013; Proctor, Linley, & Maltby, 2009). Several SWB measures are, brief, free, and readily accessible. Examples include Personal Well-being Index-School Children Version (Cummins & Lau, 2005), Stu- dents’ Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner, 1991), Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner, 1994), and Brief Multidimen- sional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (Selig- man, Huebner, & Valois, 2003). Examples of the usefulness of life satisfaction measures can be found for individuals (Huebner, Gilman, & Suldo, 2007), groups (Farrell, Valois, Meyer, & Tidwell, 2003), schools (Gilman & Handwerk, 2003), and national and international surveys (Bradshaw et al., 2011; Tomyn, Norrish, & Cummins, 2013).

Although more research is needed, various SWB measures have demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity for a variety of purposes (Casas, Gonzales, & Navarro, 2014; Huebner & Hills, 2013; Proctor, Linley, & Maltby, 2009). The inclusion of SWB measure should provide useful additional information that goes beyond traditional assessment systems, incorporating the voices of children as encouraged by the Convention. For example, reports of students’ global and school satisfaction and associated conditions can help identify overall well-being and SWB factors that schools can influence ranging from overarching school policies (e.g., school discipline policy) to everyday school activities (e.g., student–teacher interactions, parent–school interactions). Thus, monitoring students’ well-being can inform school profes- sionals about the impact of changes in various policies, practices, and school experiences. The use of comprehensive assessment systems, based on models such as that of Randolph et al. (2009), should also reveal which particular con- ditions are more or less important in how chil- dren experience their lives. For example, such assessments may reveal important data on the group level, such as that positive teacher inter- actions are on the average more important than positive peer relations for students’ school sat-

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isfaction, even among middle school students (Jiang, Huebner, & Siddall, in press). For an- other example, such assessments may yield im- portant data on the individual level, such as that a change in parent occupational status and as- sociated family relocation (e.g., job promotion with higher salary) may improve the life satis- faction of one child but not another.

Facilitating the articulation of students’ “voices,” SWB data can be collected rou- tinely to monitor the effects of academic, behavioral, and medical interventions applied across different levels of school service de- livery, such as the three-tier model for school- based service delivery (Doll & Cummings, 2008). Examples of the use of SWB assess- ments at all three levels can be found in Huebner, Hills, and Jiang (2013). Their rec- ommendations assume that assessments of the impact of interventions or policies should in- clude students’ positive SWB as well as tar- geted behavioral and academic outcomes given that numerous studies have demon- strated the incremental validity of positive measures of well-being in relation to tradi- tional measures of psychological symptoms in understanding children’s school functioning and well-being (Antaramian, Huebner, Hills, & Valois, 2010; Lewis, Huebner, Reschly, & Valois, 2009; Suldo & Shaffer, 2008) as well as school professionals’ expectations (Dono- van & Nickerson, 2007; Wellborn, Huebner, & Hills, 2012). Thus, a program or policy that improves child functioning (e.g., decreases behavior problems), but is perceived to re- duce SWB or maintain low SWB, would be distinguishable from one that improves func- tioning and SWB.

To recapitulate, school psychologists are in a unique position to contribute to the concep- tualization, development and, implementation of developmentally appropriate children’s well-being assessment systems. A compre- hensive child well-being assessment system should include collection of various aspects of well-being data, both negative and posi- tive, using objective sources (e.g., parent and teacher judgments, school records) and asso- ciated conditions (e.g., discipline referrals, grades) that are relevant to the particular as- sessment context, as well as SWB data (Die- ner, 2000; Huebner, Hills, Siddall, & Gilman, in press). The monitoring plan should involve

collection of systematic, ongoing data across multiple time points to fully understand child outcomes. In this manner, school psycholo- gists’ assessment models and associated tech- niques should help fulfill the Convention’s notion of holistic assessments (e.g., Article 29) that reflect a “positive ideology of the child that has been sorely needed throughout the world to guide related care, treatment, and aspirations” (Hart & Hart, in press, p. 32).

Summary

The profession of school psychology is un- dergoing important changes, influenced by larger social, scientific, and political trends. These trends include the emergence of a chil- dren’s rights agenda and the development of a science of children’s well-being measure- ment. We have claimed that these changes can be best addressed by the framework of the children’s rights agenda, which is best ex- pressed in the Convention and which calls for the ongoing monitoring and promotion of children’s well-being. The synergy between a rights-based agenda and associated child well-being assessment methodology can pro- vide the many opportunities for school psy- chology that have been discussed in this arti- cle.

The Convention sets standards for chil- dren’s well-being in the education context. It constitutes a relevant framework for safe- guarding and promoting their well-being in schools. Knowledge of the Convention can help school communities to establish rights- respecting goals and experiences to monitor (and promote) children’s well-being. Along with the establishment of such goals and prac- tices, children’s overall well-being, including their subjective well-being, should be moni- tored to determine the effects of such goals and experiences as perceived by the children themselves. Although children’s SWB reports will not reveal directly whether children’s rights’ policies and practices are being imple- mented with fidelity, SWB reports should provide a window into the experiential impact of the conditions of their lives, giving voice to unique their satisfactions and concerns. School psychologists are ideally situated to contribute to such efforts.

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Received September 13, 2013 Revision received November 22, 2013

Accepted November 26, 2013 �

20 KOSHER, JIANG, BEN-ARIEH, AND HUEBNER

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