POSITIVE EDUCATION
Positive psychology, mindfulness and other practices may help teach our youth the resilience they need to succeed in the 21st century.
Positive psychology and mindfulness in schools may help youth gain the resilience they need to succeed in the 21st century.
Imagine this scenario: a class of 14-year- old adolescents, the last of their lunchtime energy fading, scraping chairs and plonking down for an algebra lesson. A minute passes.
“Check that your feet are positioned comfortably on the floor and your hands are cupped over your lower abdomen.” The teacher’s voice vibrates gently on closed eyelids and receptive ears. In the next minute, the class has settled into deep abdominal breathing. “Take your concentration to your breath,” adds the teacher.
You might think this is a training school for Buddhist monks. Rather, it is a public school in a low socioeconomic suburb in Melbourne’s west. Quite likely, the same thing is happening in one of Victoria’s most affluent private schools across the bay, or in a classroom across the Tasman: at any year level, and for any subject.
There is a growing movement to transform an education system long overdue for change. In schools in Australia, New Zealand and around the globe, mindfulness techniques, employing character strengths and building resilience are among the practices complementing the traditional curriculum.
Have you wondered why some people, even in the face of hardship, can forge ahead and live productive, healthy lives? In the 1990s, Martin Seligman – then president of the American Psychological Association – wondered the same thing. Seligman recognised that traditional psychology, primarily concerned with studying how things go wrong, had neglected to study how things can go right. He suggested psychology needed to work towards understanding and building human strengths. He believed that it needed to develop a scientific study of what enabled humans to flourish. And so Positive Psychology was born.
The not-for-profit organisation Beyondblue provides concerning statistics on the mental health status of Australia’s youth – one in five adolescents experience depression by age 18; one in seven between the ages of four and 17 experience a mental health condition in any given year; 50 per cent of mental health conditions emerge by age 14; and depression and anxiety are among the most common mental health problems.
Across the ocean, New Zealand has one of the highest suicide rates in the OECD. The results of the 2018 Ministry of Health study, Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in New Zealand Children, reveal that mental health disorders such as anxiety disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are the largest contributors to disability in those aged 10 to 24.
Seligman determined five core features an individual must have to flourish. Known by the acronym PERMA, they are: positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning and accomplishment. Originating in the US as a result of Seligman’s work, Positive Education applies Positive Psychology’s principles in educational contexts. In education systems, this has led to many schools focusing on a strengths-based approach to mental health and wellbeing.
It is no surprise that education systems in Australia and New Zealand – keen to stem the tide of the alarming statistics on youth mental health – are implementing models such as PERMA to equip youth with the strategies to live happy and productive lives.
The increase in national and international participation at Positive Education conferences suggests that it is spreading widely. In Australia, it was first adopted 10 years ago by Geelong Grammar School – home to the Institute of Positive Education, which offers training courses in Australia and overseas to improve the wellbeing of both educators and their students.
The PENZ (Positive Education New Zealand) conference held in July last year attracted world- class speakers and had a significant rise in attendance in only its second year.
Dr Lucy Hone is the IPEN (International Positive Education Network) representative for New Zealand, and the director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience. She is encouraged by Positive Education’s growth in schools from all around the country, from Northland to Otago. “The appetite for this work is huge as educators come to realise that the traditional model of schools as providers of academic education is insufficient when it comes to equipping students to succeed in the 21st century,” she says.
But what do these wellbeing practices look like in the classroom? Positive Psychology is a scientific study of what strategies can enable humans to flourish. To this end, the methods used in the classroom are based on research evidence.
Positive Education is not a one-size-fits-all model; rather, it is adapted to fit the needs of individual schools. For some, such as Geelong Grammar School, this will mean developing a program integrated into the entire curriculum with, for example, each lesson commencing with a 10-minute mindfulness practice. For others, a weekly focus on developing a growth mindset and building resilience might best serve the students’ needs. It can involve articulating SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely – goals, and taking steps towards their achievement.
In New Zealand, a bi- cultural nation, wellbeing initiatives need to be inclusive at their core. “Indigenous models of wellbeing/ hauora such as
Dr Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Whā [the four cornerstones of Māori health] replace Seligman’s PERMA model of wellbeing, because it makes sense to New Zealanders,” says Hone.
Mindfulness is a wellbeing initiative commonly used in schools for improving mental health. There is research to support that mindfulness techniques reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus, boost memory and decrease reactive behaviour.
In the classroom these techniques are adapted with teacher instruction, but include meditation and relaxation. Of course, incorporating methods under the mindfulness umbrella is nothing new to early learning centres and primary school students, who are usually receptive to them. Introducing them into secondary school classrooms can be more challenging.
Alongside mindfulness, providing creative opportunities for students to experience flow – when time ‘stops’ – is thought to contribute to happiness.
Seligman and fellow co-author of Character Strengths and Virtues, Christopher Peterson, identified 24 character strengths common to all people that develop across a lifetime. In the Positive Education context, promoting strengths might be explored through the English curriculum – where, for example, students studying literature might identify a character’s strengths and then tie this with values in action. Knowing their own strengths – such as courage and honesty – enables students to capitalise on them.
In transition years, such as the first year of secondary schooling, students can learn more about themselves and each other by taking a survey available through the VIA Institute On Character. In some schools, their top five strengths are then laminated and posted on lockers alongside their names. Thus students come to know each other, not only by name, but by character strength combinations.
Geelong Grammar School has a whole school framework of ‘Learn It, Live It, Teach It, Embed It’ built around wellness. In some schools, wellbeing is addressed in individual classes, where teachers will draw on their experience or interest in such approaches. However, other schools struggle to know where to start.
Cath Ferguson of Edith Cowan University says schools with many students from low socio- economic or traumatic backgrounds would benefit from Positive Education. It is not yet offered in teaching programs in universities in New Zealand, but Australia’s Victoria University has introduced a dedicated unit of study in the Master of Education. With the average postgraduate student aged between their late twenties and early thirties, first exposure to its theories and practices occur in lectures or when training or teaching in schools that have adopted wellbeing approaches. These students readily embrace the principles of Positive Psychology.
Doctors Jeanne Carroll and Marcelle Caciattolo of Victoria University explain: “What is working for our postgraduate students is firstly reading the research literature in this field and in Positive Psychology, and identifying strategies leading to increases in wellbeing. Our students then select those that offer potential benefit for them personally and/or professionally and trial them.”
One postgraduate student reflects: “Throughout this unit I feel that I have gained as much for my personal life as I have for my professional life.”
If schools are going to invest a lot of time, money and training into implementing wellbeing practices, the question needs to be asked – does it work? Increasingly, research evidence suggests that it does. At the recent PENZ conference, one headmaster of an Australian school where Positive Education has been implemented since 2010 presented empirical data indicating that depression, anxiety and stress had declined and academic results had significantly improved.
Drawing on international research in her article, ‘Is Positive Education Another Fad?’, Ferguson affirms it does work, but notes that published research has generally been conducted in schools in privileged and middle-toupper-class locations.
In her position as New Zealand’s representative for the international Positive Education Network, Hone says, “We’re fortunate in New Zealand that schools and government are now ready to take wellbeing seriously, to make changes to timetable, curriculum and assessments that promote – not inhibit – wellbeing. I also take heart from the fantastic work my Australian colleagues have done over the last decade, indicating that taking strengths-based, universal and schoolwide approach to building wellbeing really can lead to a reduction in mental distress.”
Quiet has descended upon the students in the algebra class. The students’ eyes remain closed, their foreheads are relaxed and a smile settles on their lips. “When you’re ready, open your eyes,” the teacher instructs and waits. “Now, let’s recap on where we left off last lesson.”
“Schools and government are now ready to take wellbeing seriously.”
DR LUCY HONE