Content area
Full text
Background
Introduction
This paper explores the practice of shared lunches within a secondary school context, as an embedded school activity, with its potential to promote school connectedness. Shared lunches are defined as non-habitual, organised events in a class-bound structure that mainly occur during lesson time, and involve teachers. School connectedness, the quality of social relationships within a school community, is important for young people’s physical, mental, and social health (Resnick et al., 1997; McNeely et al., 2002). School connectedness reduces mental health problems, such as depression, stress, and anxiety (Shochet et al., 2006), mitigates against risk-taking behaviours reducing physical health impacts (Springer et al., 2006), and positively affects academic achievement (Bond et al., 2007). Increasingly research has been investigating how school connectedness promotes health assets (Osterman, 2000; McNeely et al., 2002; Jose et al., 2012), including happiness, hope, and life satisfaction (You et al., 2008). Besides improving physical and mental health domains, school connectedness is a core component of social health, where positive social relationships, good interaction skills, and a sense of belonging to groups is crucial for young people’s overall health (Keyes, 1998; Lerner et al., 2005). School connectedness thus has a promising role in young people’s physical, mental, and social health with more evidence-based avenues for promoting school connectedness needed.
Within health promotion, school connectedness has been conceptualised as the quality of social relationships within the whole-school community (Rowe et al., 2007), characterised by commitment, involvement, and attachment (Resnick et al., 1997). Through increased positive social relationships that bridge age and social divisions, a well-connected school community will exhibit a positive, caring school ethos through which school community members feel safe and trusted, tolerate diversity, perceive value in themselves and others, and easily acquire mutual reciprocal relationships, resulting in a sense of community (Rowe et al., 2007; Roffey, 2008). This definition of school connectedness embodies an ecological perspective that acknowledges the interaction between different levels within a school community. For instance, shared teacher practices and values affect classroom practices and values, which again translate into relationships across the school. Thus, a comprehensive, ecological view of school connectedness acknowledges the importance of positive social relationships amongst the whole-school community for creating a...