Editorial: Toward 2030: Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good health and wellbeing. An educational perspective

Editorial on the Research Topic
Toward 2030: Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good health and wellbeing. An educational perspective

In 2015, the United Nations launched its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were meant to be a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future” (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). As part of these SDGs, this journal in particular is concerned with SDG3, which is “Global health and wellbeing.” Due to the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, it has been found by a report from the UN itself that there has been a “‘deeply negative impact' on health and ‘wellbeing'; employment, businesses, incomes, education;” (https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1095942). This has been particularly felt on the educational front, both by students and educators. The move to a completely different model of learning, which was in most cases remote learning, took everyone by surprise and lead to a significant amount of extra stress and heavier workloads, which in turn had a direct impact on health and wellbeing. From the educators' perspective, this extra workload came about due to the new environment, adapting to new teaching modes and ensuring that learning outcomes were still met. For students, being isolated from their classmates and not able to take advantage of peer learning, as well as not being able to partake in the wider university environment, proved to be a difficult challenge and they also experienced an increase in stress, which had a direct impact on their wellbeing.

It has to be reiterated here that the pandemic just lay bare some of the issues which were already cropping up, an instance of it being the additional workload on educators, while also an increase in the amount of students seeking help during their studies. This Research Topic in that sense is very topical as it aims to look at SDG 3, which is “Good Health and Wellbeing,” but framing it in the context of education. Through the six papers that have been selected for this special edition, we will aim to get a better understanding of the various factors that affect a teacher's and a student's wellbeing.

Bai et al. have done an interesting review of the effectiveness of Plaza dancing (a form of group exercise practiced in China) on mental wellbeing. It is an exercise with simple movements that can be picked up quickly by beginners and is performed by members across different age groups. While this is not directly related to educational wellbeing, general wellbeing if anything is equally (if not more) important, and some of the ideas described in this paper could go a long way to help both teachers and students.

The works by Nong et al. and Mamo look into the wellbeing of primary school teachers. Nong et al. focussed on factors outside of the classroom that may affect stress and ongoing wellbeing of primary school teachers. This is an interesting extension on past work, since usually it has been seen that a healthy lifestyle outside of the classroom does improve social and emotional wellbeing. However, what was less clear was whether this was related to the type of leisure activity being practiced. As part of this work, the authors have argued that the higher the emotional and cognitive engagement in the leisure activity, the more effective it is to improve the wellbeing of primary school teachers. This is interestingly complemented by the work done by Marno, who has looked at professional burnout amongst primary school teachers in Dire Dawa (a town in Ethiopia). The statistics presented and the reasons behind make for dire reading, with high levels of burnout amongst primary school teachers. It is important to address this and the author provides some guidelines on how to do so. This clearly shows that the educational wellbeing of teachers should be at the forefront of policy making.

While the previous two papers looked into teachers' wellbeing in primary school, the works by Pei et al. and Liang et al. look at how job-related stress, changes to elements in their everyday job and external support directly impact this wellbeing. Pei et al. have looked at the direct impact of teaching activities on a teacher's wellbeing. This is very interesting since motivation and enjoyment are important factors in our work and if both can be maintained at a high level, then general wellbeing significantly improves. This is directly reflected in the result of Pei et al.'s work as they found that “the more teachers identify with and feel accomplished by teaching, the more they invest time and energy in teaching'. This clearly shows that, if well supported, teachers can flourish and their wellbeing improve as well. In this, Pei et al. also acknowledge the external factors that can improve the teaching experience, such as providing more teacher-student communication after class, giving teachers more autonomy in their teaching, and finally reducing their teaching burden while also allowing teachers to be more involved with their teaching. These elements are also explored in Liang et al.'s work where they looked at job-related stress and township teachers' professional wellbeing, which has a direct impact on overall wellbeing. The authors have conducted a comprehensive survey in order to get a better understanding of a teacher's wellbeing and identified that it is not only impacted by their job, but also by external factors such as organizational support.

Finally, we have Sofyana et al.'s work which looks at student wellbeing, ability to learn and the impact on academic performance amongst university students in Indonesia. The authors have particularly looked at the link between sleep, learning and memory. This is especially important since sometimes university students don't prioritize sleep. The analysis included multiple students and the authors found clear evidence between wake-up times and grade point average. Looking a bit more deeper, it was clear from their study that having policies that are more sleep-friendly for students would go a long way toward their wellbeing as well as help improve their academic performance.

To summarize, the papers that have been mentioned above represent research that is topical and presents interesting data across different geographies. These works also show that there are still very many aspects left to be explored going forward.

Author contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.