Positive education Bridging the Gap between Career Foundation and Mental Health
One of the positive psychology programs gaining popularity these days is incorporating positive education in Australian schools. This framework might be the answer to bridge the gap between academic achievement and the mental health of the students and educators.
In this article:
What is Positive Education
Why There is A Need for Positive Education
Some Applied Positive Psychology Classroom Approaches
How the Positive Psychology Program for Education is Implemented
Positive Education’s Actual Benefits
What is Positive Education?
Positive education is the incorporation of positive psychology into traditional education models and principles. Using Seligman’s PERMA Model and the Values in Action classification, positive education aims to encourage positive mental health for educators and students to decrease the prevalence of depression and enhance well-being and happiness in the academia. I will briefly discuss how PERMA Model and the VIA Classification were used for Positive Education. The addition of Health (Norrish & Seligman, 2015) further enhances the PERMA Model concept; the PERMAH framework covers aspects like exercise, sleep, and diet to enforce a robust positive education program. Incorporating the VIA Classification, on the other hand, involves the identification of the psychological strengths and letting educators know the character strengths of the students so they can work on them together using strength-based interventions, which are simple tools that surprisingly powerful. Using PERMA and VIA Classification in the educational setting teaches students the skills that help with dealing with stress, building strong relationships, improving confidence, developing balanced thinking, and a healthy lifestyle. By acquiring these skills, children gain tools to become successful both in their academic and personal lives. The Geelong Grammar School (GGS) in Australia is one of the schools that first implemented a positive psychology framework. All the teachers and support staff participate in training programs to learn about positive education; students, on the other hand, get to experience positive education in every course. Strength-based interventions focus on the relationship between teachers and students. As teachers give feedback, they are trained to mention the student’s demonstrated strength, rather than just an unclear “Good job!” The small changes in the teacher-student interaction are examples of a positive psychology program intervention that encourages positive reinforcement. It is essential and supported by Elizabeth Hurlock’s study that found it an effective classroom motivator than punishment and reprimand regardless of age, gender, or ability.
Why There Is A Need for Positive Education
According to Seligman (2009), positive education bridges the gap between what the school teaches and what families want for the children. Most parents want their children to achieve happiness, health –wellness, and confidence, but what the school teaches are mostly about achievement, discipline, and academic skills. What the school teaches is essential in the foundation of their future careers, but there is also a need to consider students’ mental health.
Positive Education enables schools to teach about achievement and accomplishment and hand-in-hand with positive psychology-guided mental health skills to bridge the gap. Therefore, we can define Positive Education as the means to “bring positive psychology’s goals of well-being and mental health support for everyone into the school setting.”
Positive education is not necessarily a revolutionary idea. As far back as Aristotle, philosophers have considered happiness to be the end goal of education (Kristjansson, 2012); psychological interventions in schools have also been around since the 1930s. This shows that positive education is a bridge waiting to be put in the spotlight for years.
Educators believe that there is an inevitable link between their teaching mode and the students’ emotional health and well-being (Kidger et al., 2010). Curby (2013) showed how offering emotional support early in a school year can improve instructional quality later in that school year.
Some Applied Positive Psychology Classroom Approaches
The following are just some applied positive psychology approaches that can be employed in the classroom:
- QQTP ApproachThe QQTP Approach (Connor-Greene, 2005) was used for reading-based classes to increase interaction and participation in the room discussion. The abbreviation stands for “question, quotations, and talking points.”In classes where daily readings are assigned, the QTTP involves students by writing response papers consisting of:- A question about the assigned reading – A “compelling or controversial” quote – An outline of ideas that can be used for discussionStudents and educators can both benefit from the QQTP method. Students found the QQTP method useful, rating the first and third components (a question and an outline of talking points) as the most beneficial approaches. Students’ response papers can be used as conversation starters for class discussions if they are still quiet. This also ensures that students read the previous day’s assigned reading and are ready to participate in the class discussion than passively listening to others talk about it. Offering participation credits are found to increase student discussions. Still, they can be disadvantageous for naturally shy students, but a solution can be used by offering group participation credits. Research by Taylor (2004) looked into students separated into small groups of high-participating and low-participating students and providing recognition to the whole group if all of their members contributed on a given day. The researchers found increased involvement levels in low-participating students with this group-based credit system. This method also had the bonus of high-participating students teaching low-participating students how to contribute more often so that the group would get their points.
- A Happy Teacher Gets a Happy Class and vice versaStudents and educators should both benefit from positive education; happiness should be served both ways. Noddings (2003) notes happy teachers will directly lead to happy students by aiding their students in relating education with cheerfulness and joy as the instructors.If teachers’ happiness is associated with students’ satisfaction, it would mean that educators will also have to look out after their students’ academic sense of achievement and their mental and emotional needs. But as educators are asked to increase their workload, the academe should be fair to also look out for the mentors’ wellness and joy. Research by Cassidy et al. (2017) has shown how teacher wages can affect their teaching outcomes, “Specifically, teachers who felt that their salaries were unfairly low-slung were in classes which were rated having lower levels of emotional support. Teachers who received higher pay ended up with learners who showed more positive emotional expressions and behaviors.”In other words, perceiving oneself as being underpaid and having less financial gain are related to worse student consequences for educators. These findings specify that raising teacher salaries would likely lead to better emotional outcomes for students.
How the Positive Psychology Program for Education is Implemented
In articles about Positive Education, you may find the Geelong Grammar School mentioned as the first school to have implemented the Positive Education framework. Tamara Lechner related her experience when she spent a month at the academy. Before the GGS started being a prime example for implementing positive education, it started out having an imminent problem and high statistics of mental health difficulties among students and staff, up until a team of teachers went to UPenn to be mentored by Martin Seligman. When they went back to GGS with Seligman, the educational branch of positive psychology was formed. But how did they do it exactly?
Classroom Implementation
Positive education or they call it ” Pos Ed” at GGS, is a stand-alone subject. Positive psychology training and lessons revolve around character strengths, having a growth mindset, developing gratitude, and the practice of mindfulness. Aside from being a separate subject, the different concepts are also incorporated into other topics as tools for starting conversations and initiating classroom engagement. Lechner cited an example of how it can be used in literature subjects and History subjects: “Imagine if in your freshman English class you could discuss the character strengths of various literary heroes and heroines. ‘What strengths does Juliet show in the final act?’ Or in history a discussion about the second world war, students are asked to ponder if the shadow-side of strength might have been part of Hitler’s power.” Outside the Pos ed subject, students are still trained in identifying strengths following fiction and non –fiction circumstances.
Staff Implementation
New and current staff are continuously trained to foster positive psychology principles. Lechner mentioned that new teachers are required to attend a positive psychology course (Discovering Positive Education), a 3-day program that teaches and helps them imbibe the language and lifestyle of a positive psychology practitioner and educator. Staff who returned and almost every team (from maintenance to vice-principals) are encouraged to attend a 1-hour positive psychology program entitled “PosEd 4 U” once each term. This is to ensure that they foster and become role model for the students who looks up to the adults in the academic environment.
During Admissions
Prospect students are encouraged to talk about their strengths through the use of the character wheel. Most school admission offices may look just at the transcripts and the parents’ letters. Still, the initial interaction and conversation about the student’s strengths were beneficial for engaging them more.
In Offices
An example of how the GGS implements positive education’s applied positive psychology principles is through their use of aesthetically pleasing structures around the school administrator’s office. Not only does it inspire creativity, but it also encourages appreciation of beauty, which are two character strengths.
In the cafeteria
In the cafeteria and as you are out of a class, you may feel genuine optimism through their heartfelt greetings, and even while eating, you will be reminded both as a student and as a staff how to optimally fuel one’s body.
Outdoor Campus
The Timbertop campus is a unique program at GGS for the first year of high school. In a small, supportive and secure community, students are exposed to intellectual, physical, and emotional challenges under demanding environmental conditions. In total, students camp for between 50 and 55 nights during the year. In terms of time and in the minds of the students, the most critical activity is hiking. Alpine National Park is challenging – the terrain is mountainous, with routes often involving ascents and descents of 1,000 meters, sometimes all in one day. When they get home, the students are busy chopping wood to fuel the hot water or clean the classrooms. Nowhere is resilience more needed, and the campus has more overt reminders of Positive Education than anywhere else.
Positive Education’s Actual Benefits
GGS has the Learn, Live, Teach, Embed model that they implement and is widely researched are shown to bear the following benefits:
Decreased depression rates
Sin and Lyubomirksy (2009) conducted a study involving 4,266 participants; their meta-analysis showed that positive psychology interventions increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms significantly.
Students and educators learn skills to thrive
Green (2015) found that schools using the Positive Education framework could thoroughly learn and understand the ideas that help them thrive and flourish and acquire skills that they can use as practical tools for everyday life.
Develops academic and learning engagement
The research done by Fisher (2015) emphasized the use of positive psychology interventions for education and has been shown to increase engagement, created more curious students, and improved their overall inclination and love of learning.
Creates a more relaxed life for educators
In the first part of this article, it was mentioned that educators could feel burdened by the additional responsibility of looking out for their students’ mental health. Fisher (2015) showed a reduction in teachers’ stress, improved job satisfaction, and fewer behavior problems when an educational environment encourages optimism, care, and hope.
Increased student motivation
According to Fadlemula (2010), optimistically-aligned goals were found to increase student motivations.
Improved resilience
The positive psychology program about resiliency by UPENN showed that out of the 19 controlled studies, there was an increase in the students’ optimism, resilience, and hopefulness. They even had improved scores (11%) on standardized tests and reported less anxiety as the examination approached.
Time and money are needed in the introduction of positive education in schools and institutions. But isn’t this the time to start including this course in institutions? We have long hoped to find balance in academic achievement and mental health, and positive education gives us something to look forward to for future generations.
