Getting people to experience it: a grounded theory of the process of integrating a First Nations wellbeing program within university curricula
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background The wellbeing of university students is crucial for their success. Yet educators struggle with the lack of frameworks to integrate wellbeing into core curricula, and universities often relegate wellbeing initiatives to extracurricular activities. These initiatives frequently fail to engage students and the potential impact to wellbeing is reduced. In Australia, universities are also encouraged to integrate First Nations Knowledge within mainstream curricula, but some academics may be skeptical about the relevance of these knowledge systems in specific disciplinary settings. This study addresses these challenges by exploring the integration of the First Nations-developed Family Wellbeing (FWB) program—a wellbeing-focused soft skills approach—into core university curricula. Methods Using constructivist grounded theory methodology, the authors developed the theoretical model “Getting people to experience it,” drawing on in-depth interviews with eight educators who integrated the FWB program within core university curricula in Australia and internationally. Findings The study examined the challenges, opportunities, strategies, and outcomes of this integration, revealing significant improvements in wellbeing and soft skills for both students and educators. Viewed through the lens of cultural interface, the findings offer valuable insights into bridging First Nations and Western knowledge systems in higher education. Conclusion The theoretical model provides a practical framework for educators to integrate wellbeing and soft skills as core elements of curricula, rather than treating them as optional add-ons. This work has profound implications for addressing student mental health, enhancing soft skills, and creating a more inclusive and effective educational experience.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".