Authors: Mst. Nadia Sultana
Abstract: There is growing interest in understanding how students' overall happiness and their enjoyment of learning are connected, especially at the secondary school level. In cities like Kolkata, students face a lot of academic pressure, which can affect both their mental health and how engaged they feel in school. The main goals of this study were to measure how secondary students in Kolkata feel about their overall wellbeing and how much joy they find in learning. The study also looked at whether there are differences between boys and girls, and explored the connection between these two aspects. A quantitative descriptive survey method was used. The researchers selected 250 secondary students from both government and private schools in Kolkata using purposive sampling. A bilingual and validated version of the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (SSWQ), originally developed by Renshaw in 2022, was used to collect the data. The findings showed that female students scored significantly higher than male students on both joy of learning and subjective wellbeing. There was also a strong positive link between the two; students who found more joy in learning also reported feeling better about their lives overall. Gender clearly makes a difference in how students experience both joy in learning and overall wellbeing. The strong connection between the two suggests that helping students enjoy learning more could be a meaningful way to support their mental and emotional health in Kolkata's secondary schools.
