ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1611051
This article is part of the Research TopicHolistically healthy humans: championing mental and physical wellbeing in educationView all 8 articles
Building student agency in rural Thailand: Using the Ikigai Framework and Positive Youth Development
Provisionally accepted
- 1Thammasat University, Pathum Thani, Thailand
- 2The University of Auckland, Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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This study used Ikigai philosophy, which aims at improving well-being and life purposes similar to Western Positive Youth Development, to develop agentic qualities and positive development in rural Thai students. The study encouraged students in rural Thailand, a region of high disadvantage and poor schooling outcomes, to develop projects based on their own interests and contexts and on the basis of Ikigai principles. Data from multiple sources were subjected to content analysis against the a priori structure of the Ikigai framework. Texts were coded in semantic units and grouped related to the impact of the project upon student passion, mission, profession, and vocation. Data indicate the students gained greater self-expression, self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-understanding in accordance with Ikigai goals.
Keywords: Conceptualization, methodology, supervision, Writing -review & editing. Sittichai Wichaidit: Funding acquisition, project administration, Writing -review & editing. Pawaluk Suraswadi: Writing -original draft, Writing -review & editing. Sahawarat Polahan: Funding acquisition, resources
Received: 13 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Suraswadi, Wichaidit, Polahan and Brown. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Pawaluk Suraswadi, Thammasat University, Pathum Thani, Thailand
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