Toward a Well-Being Habitus Framework in Higher Education

• In Event: Attitudes and Politics of Race Through a Bourdieusian Lens

Abstract

While there has been an increase in socio-ecological well-being models that reframe college student well-being as more than an individual experience, the research on well-being is often disconnected from the larger scholarship on college student success. This review focused on the conceptual and methodological approaches to studying well-being research in higher education for Black and Indigenous college students. I demonstrate that critical approaches at times omitted the relationship between individuals and larger social structures, and relational approaches to well-being at times concealed the role of power within relationships. Finally, I offer a critical-relational framework of college student well-being enhanced through the concepts of Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and field as a path forward to in future well-being research and practice.

Author

• Paris D. Wicker, University at Buffalo - SUNY