THE FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING CHILDREN’S WELLBEING AS RELATED TO THEIR ACTIVE SCHOOL TRAVELING (AST)

Abstract

Investigating wellbeing-related concerns nowadays is greater than ever. This extends to all aspects of human beings’ daily life. In this context, children’s wellbeing is having an increasing interest as they are the core constituents of tomorrow’s world. Studies have affirmed the vital role of children’s physical activities as catalysts for all domains of their wellbeing. Active school traveling is one of these daily activities practiced by children frequently. The way it is practiced, and its interrelated activities are profoundly affecting children’s feeling and accordingly their well-being. However, the paper builds an argument about conceptualizing an applicable understanding of wellbeing. Reviewing several approaches, it exploits the capabilities approach to investigate the correlation between children’s active school traveling and their wellbeing. Using the outlines of children’s mobility framework, a set of domains were concluded within three categories specifying the children's movement from home to school and vice versa, and the fourth one is a general category. Two questionnaires are used to validate the paper’s theoretical approach. They were performed to a sample of two schools in Alexandria, Egypt targeting both students and their parents. The paper findings show the positive attitude of parents towards active school traveling as a means for conveying their children’s wellbeing. The results show the validity of applying resources/challenges balancing approach for understanding wellbeing obstacles while active school traveling is practiced. However, the results concluded in this paper can inform future studies by drawing attention to aspects to contemplate while investigating children’s wellbeing and mobility domain.