This paper explores schools’ new role in promoting children’s mental health, as a key focus for policy makers across the global north. An education policy analysis is conducted for England and Australia, two nations advocating a ‘bottom-up’ approach to mental health promotion, granting flexibility to schools and municipal authorities. Here it is argued that a common policy lexicon is evident where key concepts—wellbeing, resilience, character—are constructed on taken-for-granted assumptions. These are argued to be limited by an emphasis upon the individual constituents of mental health, which is contrasted against a broader conception of wellbeing, evident in recent non-governmental international policy. Empirical data is then presented from two separate studies in England and Australia, where young peoples’ perspectives are used to arbitrate the efficacy of the policy construction of wellbeing, in canvassing a relational and social identity approach as a viable alternative. Both studies privilege the voices of young people on wellbeing and identity, with findings from England highlighting that the dominant schooling narrative of resilience perceived by students, misses the ontological and social dimensions of their wellbeing. Research with Indigenous young people in Australia is then evaluated for the affordances generated by identity building and affirming programmes in schools. Notwithstanding cultural differences, common aspects were evident across both datasets, revealing the centrality to young people of self-authenticity, relatedness, and connectedness to nature, as key to their wellbeing. The paper concludes in advancing a set of principles to underpin a relational and social identity approach to schools’ wellbeing promotion strategy.

中文翻译：

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从适应力到幸福感：身份建设作为学校在促进儿童心理健康方面的作用的替代框架

本文探讨了学校在促进儿童心理健康方面的新作用，这是全球北方政策制定者关注的重点。对英格兰和澳大利亚进行了教育政策分析，这两个国家提倡“自下而上”的精神健康促进方法，给予学校和市政当局以灵活性。这里有人认为，一个共同的政策词汇是显而易见的，其中关键概念——福祉、弹性、性格——是建立在理所当然的假设之上的。这些被认为受到强调精神健康的个体组成部分的限制，这与更广泛的幸福概念形成对比，这在最近的非政府国际政策中很明显。然后提供来自英格兰和澳大利亚的两项独立研究的经验数据，在那里，年轻人的观点被用来仲裁福祉政策构建的有效性，在探讨将关系和社会认同方法作为可行的替代方案时。两项研究都强调年轻人在幸福感和身份认同方面的声音，英格兰的调查结果强调，学生所感知的主要学校教育叙事忽略了他们幸福感的本体和社会维度。然后对澳大利亚土著年轻人的研究进行评估，以确定学校中的身份建立和肯定计划所产生的可供性。尽管存在文化差异，但两个数据集的共同点还是很明显的，这表明年轻人的自我真实性、相关性和与自然的联系是他们幸福的关键。