This study looked at how 4-year-old children perceive their experience of psychological, social and emotional, and physical well-being in social-constructivist and direct-instruction preschools. The underlying focus was to compare children's perspectives of their days between the preschools. Four primary questions guided this study. A central feature of this study was getting directly at children's perspectives rather than relying solely on the perspective of adults.

Two schools participated in the study. The Early Childhood Classroom Observation Measure was used to determine the difference between the two schools and the degree to which they represented direct-instruction or social-constructivist practice. Twelve children, 6 from each school (3 boys and 3 girls), participated in the study.

The design for the study was a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. Data were collected through observations, interviews with children, and artifacts. The qualitative framework for the study was a multiple case study. The primary source of qualitative data came from transcripts of interviews with the children. Domain, taxonomic, and constant comparative analyses were used to analyze the transcripts. Quantitative data were collected in the form of descriptive statistics by tracking how long children spent in activities, how often they participated in activities, and how they scored activities based on how the activity influenced their sense of well-being. These data were also used together to conduct a time measurement that determined how much time children spent in activities that either positively or negatively influenced their sense of well-being. Additional quantitative data included frequency counts of particular themes that emerged from the qualitative data.

Results indicated that children from both schools shared similar and different experiences of well-being. Although a positive sense of well-being was expressed by children from both schools, children from the direct-instruction school indicated experiencing a negative sense of well-being more often than children from the social-constructivist school. These negative experiences were most commonly associated with teacher-directed activities, which were more prevalent at the direct-instruction school. Children from the social-constructivist school indicated experiencing particularly high levels of psychological well-being.