Exploring wellbeing in the Arab: higher education context A scoping review

Abstract

Academic research on wellbeing and its conceptualization is closely linked to European cultural and intellectual development, from Epicurus’ vision of pleasure, materialistic appreciation, and measurement of human happiness to the non-religious psychological foundation of subjective wellbeing. This Eurocentric academic perspective affects academic research, making Europe and North America the main centers of academic publication on this subject. However, looking at research in other parts of the globe may bring a new dimension to the understanding of wellbeing in higher education (HE). This scoping review aimed to explore published research on wellbeing and HE in the Arab world. The review identified methodological choices, target populations, themes, and interests in academic publications in this region. This chapter further explored whether the academic research in the Arab region appropriated the concept of wellbeing to its specific context, taking into consideration its intellectual, socio-economic, and historical specificities. Main databases including EBSCO, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched with inclusion of peer-reviewed articles published between 2018 and 2023. Main findings include that research across the region attempts to take into consideration its specific context but mainly relies on borrowed data collection tools and intervention framework from American and European contexts while attempting to validate these tools and practices within the Arab context, the use of HE context as pseudo-context for more general research objectives, and the perceived need to develop wellbeing intervention in the region.