This study examines how students experience cultural relevance and cultural friction in well-being education, and how teachers adapt their practice, within a culturally diverse international school. Although international schools bring together students from many national, cultural, and family backgrounds, the well-being curricula they deliver are largely shaped by Western educational assumptions that may not align with all students' values and lived experiences. Adopting a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods design, the study was conducted at Britannia International School (BIS), a British-curriculum A-Level school in China. Data were collected through a short Likert-scale questionnaire completed by seven Year 12 students and a semi-structured interview with the school's well-being teacher. Questionnaire responses were summarised using descriptive statistics, and the interview was analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2006) inductive thematic analysis. The findings indicate that students perceived the well-being content as moderately but unevenly culturally relevant, with comfort during sensitive discussion varying widely across the class. Cultural friction was situational rather than constant, emerging most clearly around sensitive topics such as mental health, identity, family roles, and trauma, and was shaped by differing cultural norms regarding emotional expression and privacy. Teacher adaptation focused less on changing the formal curriculum than on managing discussion, setting non-judgemental rules, and creating emotional safety. The study concludes that cultural diversity does not automatically make well-being teaching culturally balanced: cultural relevance must be actively built, friction identified, and teacher adaptation supported through practical training. These context-specific findings offer implications for teachers, school leaders, and curriculum designers.
Conner, J., Mitra, D. L., Holquist, S. E., Rosado, E., Wilson, C., & Wright, N. L. (2024). The pedagogical foundations of student voice practices: The role of relationships, differentiation, and choice in supporting student voice practices in high school classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 142, 104540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2024.104540
Ferrero, D. H. (2024). Methods for cross-cultural curriculum design and implementation in contemporary international schools [Doctoral dissertation, Selinus University].
Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.
Hempkin, M. (2023). Language teacher identity outside the state-school context. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu ?l?skiego. https://doi.org/10.31261/9788367197970
Hernández, M. M., Kornienko, O., Figueroa, J. M., et al. (2025). Identifying culturally relevant school support profiles and links to academic functioning in adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 54, 785–806. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-02098-0
Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Williams, B. (2019). Transformative social and emotional learning (SEL): Toward SEL in service of educational equity and excellence. Educational Psychologist, 54(3), 162–184. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1623032
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465
Le, H. V. (2024). Silence in the classroom: Unraveling the cultural dynamics affecting participation and critical thinking in Malaysian and Vietnamese engineering education. Cogent Education, 11(1), Article 2404780. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2404780
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12441244
Piipponen, O. (2023). Students' perceptions of meaningful intercultural encounters and long-term learning from a school story exchange. International Journal of Educational Research, 119, 102169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102169
Rogelberg, S. L., Summerville, K., & Ruggs, E. N. (2020). I-O psychology for everyone: Use of culturally responsive teaching to increase diversity and inclusion in undergraduate classrooms. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 13(4), 509–514. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2020.78
St. George, S. M., Velez, C. V., Ahn, Y. A., Phillips, D. A., Pulgaron, E. R., et al. (2024). Community recommendations for adapting an evidence-based mental health intervention for racially/ethnically diverse schools: A qualitative study. School Mental Health, 16, 1197–1211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-024-09686-2
Tan, C. (2025). A review of educational reforms aiming to advance students' personal wellbeing in Singapore schools. Issues in Educational Research, 35(4), 1706–1726.
Tawil, S. (2013). Education for “global citizenship”: A framework for discussion. UNESCO Education Research and Foresight Working Papers, 7.
Ulbricht, J., Schareika, N., Scheunpflug, A., & Civitillo, S. (2022). Teachers' acculturation in culturally diverse schools. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 953068. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.953068
Jiamin, C., & Jamaludin, K. A. (2026). Cultural Friction and the Shaping of Well-Being Curriculum in International Schools: A Mixed-Methods Study. International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 15(2), 1492–1511.
Copyright: © 2026 The Author(s)
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
