Going upstream with positive psychology in our schools

A famous quote, often attributed to Desmond Tutu, says, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” Positive psychology is our invitation to go upstream, by adopting a strength-based approach to provide individuals, groups and communities with strategies and interventions that promote wellbeing and prevent mental health problems. Despite decades of positive psychology research showing its significant impact on student wellbeing, uptake in schools still varies. This article will explore the application and benefits of positive psychology for education and highlight, particularly in the current global pandemic, how going upstream has never been more important.

Why is positive psychology needed in schools?

Chronic mental ill health was one of the top three most prevalent health conditions reported in the 2021 Australian census with 1 in 10 Australians affected. The census also highlighted the extent of mental illness and distress for children and teens in our country with more than 235,000 young people aged under 19 (that’s 7%) recorded in the census as suffering a long-term mental health condition. The 2020 Australian Inquiry into Mental Health conducted by the Productivity Commission found that the age bracket with the highest rates of mental illness across the life span was 15-19 years (24%). The census (2021) also highlighted mental health problems occurring in the early years with parents reporting children as young as five years old experiencing distress.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has amplified the already high rates of youth mental illness. Indeed, mental health researchers investigating student outcomes in the pandemic have identified high levels of depression and anxiety in young people across the globe (Nearchou et al., 2020). A national survey of 14–25-year-olds found that more than 60% reported feeling depressed, worried and anxious due to the COVID-19 crisis. This national study also found that, as the pandemic continued, concerns about their mental health increased from 32% to 45% (YouthInsight, 2020). In another national study of young Australian adults (18–24 years), depression, stress and anxiety had more than doubled compared to pre-COVID levels (Medical Xpress, 2020). Furthermore, in a study conducted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2020) using a sample of young Australians (aged 12–24), 47% reported that the pandemic had led to a negative impact on levels of stress and anxiety and 30% reported that it had reduced their levels of hope.

The alarming rates of youth distress in Australia challenge us to consider pathways beyond intervention to also look at prevention-oriented approaches. The school system presents us with opportunities and provides a vehicle for change. Positive psychology, a prevention-oriented field, holds a promise to help meet the challenge.

Even after more than two decades of solid evidence that positive psychology has a role in helping students thrive (Clonan et al., 2003; Durlak et al., 2010; Waters & Loton, 2019) this field has wavered in and out of popularity (White, 2016). Yet there is little doubt about its importance in offering a preventative lens to mental health problems in young people (see Waters & Loton, 2021 and Allen et al., 2022 for a comprehensive overview of the field). When applied to education, positive psychology aims to ultimately promote improved learning and wellbeing outcomes for students, offering evidence-based frameworks and interventions for schools to meet these objectives.

What exactly is positive psychology?

In many ways the field of psychology has traditionally focused on problems and pathology. Positive psychology extends this focus by conducting research into the factors that enhance our ability to cope with life’s problems whilst also amplifying life’s potential and maximising our positive outcomes. It’s a capacity-building approach that emphasises strengths.

Martin Seligman, credited as the founder of positive psychology, encouraged psychologists to ask the question “What is right in people’s nature, relationships and lives?” At the heart of positive psychology, this question has led to widespread international research and practice on the positive end of the mental health continuum. Seligman and his colleague Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2000) describe positive psychology in the following way:

At the personal level positive psychology is about having experiences that are valued, having a sense of wellbeing, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and happiness (in the present). At the individual level, it is about having a capacity for love and endeavour, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic (p. 5).

This frequently cited definition highlights how positive psychology is concerned with achieving high states of wellbeing, strength-potential and good citizenship.

Initially, Seligman identified the two levels of analysis and application for positive psychology:

1. Individual: which includes a) positive emotion and experience, such as satisfaction, pleasure and hope, and b) positive characteristics, such as strengths, virtues and abilities

2. Institutional: which seeks to create resilience-building/wellbeing-enhancing communities, workplaces, schools and families (Seligman, 2002, p. xiv).

More recently, a third level of analysis and application has been explored in the field of positive psychology, that of positive systems (Kern et al., 2020) and has extended its focus from positive content (e.g. mindfulness, meaning, gratitude, compassion) to positive contexts with an understanding that environmental conditions play a large role in a person’s ability to flourish (or not) (Lomas et al., 2021).

For both adults and children to flourish, positive psychology researchers articulate four main requirements: goodness, generativity, growth and resilience (Fredrickson and Losada, 2005).

Goodness is value-laden, just as philosophy or any other system of thought is. Here the implication is that leading a ‘good life’ – doing good deeds and caring for others – brings meaning and satisfaction. Gratitude features strongly in positive psychology in that appreciating what one has helps to promote a perspective on life that aids coping and mental health. Generativity is a term coined in 1950 by Erik Erikson to reflect a concern and guide for the next generation. One example of this is the period of middle adulthood when parents are concerned about their children’s future.

In broader community terms, it is about sustainability, thinking about what’s left behind for future generations. It is also about social responsibility. Growth is readily recognised in children, in all facets of development. In adulthood it is more about stimulation, achievement and satisfaction. And finally, resilience is the outcome of how we cope and the subsequent building up of a pool of resources that we can draw on to face challenges. All these core elements of positive psychology are building blocks that can be incorporated into the educational system and make-up of the field known as ‘positive education’ (Frydenberg, 2022).

Positive education and school psychology

Positive education can be defined as an approach that combines the science of positive psychology with the science of teaching and learning (Slemp et al., 2017). In recent years, researchers have argued for the inclusion of positive psychology interventions in schools alongside conventional psychological approaches (Owen & Waters, 2021) in order to create positive upstream effects. It follows the old adage that it is better to build a protective fence at the top of the hill than park an ambulance at the bottom.

Positive education practices seek to teach skills to students such as positive reframing, mindfulness, strengths use, savouring, emotional processing, gratitude expression, goal-setting and kindness (Chodkiewicz & Boyle, 2017; Owens & Waters, 2020; Shankland & Rosset, 2017). The interventions are designed to protect students against mental illness and promote high levels of mental wellness.

Benefits of positive education during the pandemic

Although positive education was initially categorised as a prevention-based approach designed to stop youth distress before it occurs, recent research during the global pandemic has shown that it also plays a role in times of crisis to reduce distress once it has arisen. For example, research by Waters et al. (2021) on a sample of Australian high school students during the first round of lockdown in 2020 identified that the degree to which the students had been taught positive education skills (i.e. use their strengths, manage their emotions, practise mindfulness) was a significant predictor of stress-related growth during lockdown (i.e. the experience of deriving benefits from encountering stressful circumstances). Similarly, in the USA, online mindfulness interventions for high school students during remote learning significantly improved student resilience and emotional intelligence (Yuan, 2021).

Other researchers have shown that reframing to look for the silver lining, knowing how to process emotions, levels of gratitude, compassion and grit have boosted students’ ability to successfully adapt during the pandemic. Hartnell-Young (2020) suggests that positive education has provided a fruitful approach to helping students during COVID-19 and, more broadly, to rebuilding and reimagining the Australian education system post-pandemic.

How do we incorporate positive education in schools?

There are many ways to bring positive education approaches into schools (e.g. Slavin et al., 2012; Waters, 2020) to boost both academic learning and student wellbeing. Indeed, positive education approaches can be used in classrooms, staff rooms, co-curricular, school assemblies, parent-teacher evening and during yard duty.

What would this approach look like from the eyes of a student? Picture the student who is exposed to a wellbeing curriculum (e.g. Penn Resiliency Program, Brainology, MindUp etc.) who then has resilience reinforced on the school sport field by the coach after a game loss; experiences flow during music or art studies; explores the cultural differences in positive emotions as part of the geography curriculum; learns about character analysis in English through the application of character strengths; has a teacher praise them for effort in addition to performance; receives merit points for positive behaviour (as compared to the traditional demerit system); enacts meaning through a service learning project; observes staff responding in active-constructive ways and hears staff using strength-based language. This kind of culture is highly transformational.

Beyond the student experience, the whole-school approach emphasises the creation of a ‘positive institution’ for staff, parents, school leaders and the school board. Systems approaches in positive education mean the principles of positive psychology are modelled and supported throughout the entire fabric of the school (Allison et al., 2021). When teachers and school staff have high levels of social and emotional wellbeing, this has a positive influence on the students (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). School leaders can draw on fields such as positive organisational scholarship to inform a strength-based approach to staff recruitment, orientation, training and staff performance appraisal.

Why isn’t positive psychology part of many school curricula?

While growing evidence exists to show positive psychology and educational wellbeing programs work in schools around the world (Allen et al., 2022), integration of research findings at a practice and policy level has not been met with the full expected uptake. Some of the most critical issues that have been speculated to have caused delayed integration of positive psychology in schools include the perceived additional workload of teaching staff, a lack of perceived skill or ability in delivering the content, and perceptions that a large budget is necessary to deliver positive psychology interventions which can be perceived as clouding other priorities (Huebner et al., 2022).

Of course, there are counterarguments that demonstrate how positive education is cost-effective and provides complementary skills that help teachers to do their job, rather than adding to their workload (see Waters, 2021). Teachers can benefit from a dedicated knowledge base or skill set which helps them integrate wellbeing into various subjects such as English, History and Health, rather than providing learning solely through a wellbeing curriculum. A person- or student-centred pedagogy can make all the difference. Teachers’ instructional practices, classroom climate and school environment matter. When implementing, for example, a Visible Wellbeing model (Waters, 2021) teachers and students can become increasingly comfortable using visible learning practices in class. They are more willing to take wellbeing practices outside of the classroom and create positive changes to their relationships across the school. Benefits have been found to also flow from the individual to the educational team through to the educational environment.

Bringing positive psychology upstream

Positive psychology has many obvious implications for schools and school systems. Even though it is not a new concept, the idea of promoting student wellbeing via education is one that many parents, teachers, student support workers and school psychologists support. Positive education provides research and practice that aims to make positive upstream changes for more effective prevention-based educational systems that tackle the mental illness statistics reported at the start of this article.

Contact the first author

 

¹ Associate Professor and Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Monash University, Honorary Principal Fellow and Board Director, Centre for Wellbeing Science, University of Melbourne, Treasurer of the Positive Psychology Interest Group

² Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Melbourne, Secretary of the Positive Psychology Interest Group

³ Professorial Fellow, Professor and Founder of Centre for Wellbeing Science, University of Melbourne; Convenor of the Positive Psychology Interest Group. Past President and Fellow of the International Positive Psychology Association

The Positive Psychology Interest Group of the Australian Psychological Society under the leadership of Professorial Fellow Lea Waters is ready to lead the charge to invigorate psychologists and allied professionals in bringing best practice principles within the positive psychology framework into their work, whether it be with children, adolescents, adults or community systems. It is a matter of bringing the educational community on the journey collaboratively and collectively.