Sustainable education for children who are ill: promoting wellbeing in hospital learning environments

Abstract

In this paper we look at the provision of schooling in hospital for children who are ill and consider it as an example of sustainable education. Since illness is a potential cause of exclusion, we start from the perspective of promoting learning in hospital as a form of inclusive educational policy. We than consider wellbeing as an integral part of a human sustainability paradigm and examine both the characteristics of the hospital as a learning environment and psychological and social factors involved in fostering the resilience and the transformability necessary for a healing process in which learning can play a vital role.