Engaging in social innovation education: Reciprocal relations between student wellbeing and programme wellbeing outcomes

Abstract

Social innovation education (SIE) is a student‐led collaborative process of creating unique solutions to challenges within the community. Through an analysis of pre‐ and post‐surveys completed by 94 post‐primary school students in Ireland, the current study looked at how prior wellbeing (measured using the EPOCH model) influenced change in wellbeing through engagement with the SIE programme. While the models produced indicated that all five dimensions of the EPOCH model (engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness) were impacted by the programme, the results also indicated that students with higher prior wellbeing were more likely to have higher levels of engagement, and as a result gained greater wellbeing‐related outcomes. These findings highlight the benefit that a programme like SIE, which is not designed as a wellbeing intervention, can have on wellbeing, and the importance of considering additional encouragement and support based on the individual needs of each student.