The evolution of positive education: students, schools and systems

The evolution of positive education: students, schools and systems

+S3 Centre of Positive Psychology The growth of Positive Psychology
Road Map Centre of Positive Psychology The growth of Positive Psychology Positive Students Positive Schools Positive Systems +S3

The Centre for Positive Psychology
Been in genesis for the past 5 years I came across in 2010 under invitation of he Dean with the embryonic idea of setting up a centre. We started our first teaching offering in 2013, started he MAPP in 2014 and really this year are in full swing

Centre for Positive Psychology
Our purpose is to advance the science and practise of positive psychology for students, teachers and education systems (primary, secondary and tertiary)

36 team members (core, adjunct, casual)

+S3 Students, Schools, Systems

Positive Psychology is a growing field
Rusk, R., & Waters, L. (2013). Tracing the size, reach, impact and breadth of positive psychology. Journal of Positive Psychology 8(3),

1.7 MILLION 233 Titles, Keywords, abstracts PsycINFO documents Key
PP terms To start with, we collected the metadata for 1.7 million articles from the PsychINFO database, using the Web of Science. We analysed the [1] titles, keywords and abstracts of all these to identify terms that frequently appear together with the phrase “positive psychology”. In total, we identified 233 key terms that often appear in that context. I’ll shown you [3] a Wordle of these now…

The size of these words relates to how frequently they appear in PP literature. These were the terms we used in the next step…

1.7 MILLION 233 18,401 Titles, Keywords, abstracts 2+ key terms
PsycINFO documents Key PP terms PP-related documents We identified all the documents in my sample that contained [1] 2 or more of these key terms. That gave us just over [2] 18 thousand documents. And now we’ll [3] explore these…

410% increase

Based on co-citations. What are some areas we should focus on Again, we can turn to the research done by Reuben and myself to look for the growing areas in the field of PP. Where can we get in ‘on the ground’ (so to speak) and really become known as experts and write some of the foundation papers that end up with high impact b/c they are always cited? A strength is that we are housed in Grad school and so it make sense that we are conducting PP research Education which is serendipity b/c Pos Ed is a growth area in PP but still small enough that our centre really can make an impact and we can become known globally as an ‘intellectual house’ for Pos Ed research. To other fields that are growing and in which we will gain institutional support Public health Business Marty’s point of BIG DATA. PP IS MOVING INTO EDUCATION Quantitative literature analysis methods Methods of citation-based and textual analysis have been widely used to analyze academic literature (see, for example, the journal Scientometrics), and these methods are particularly well suited to quantify the size, reach, impact, and breadth of PP. Two commonly used methods are co-word analysis and bibliographic coupling. In co-word (or co-term) analysis, the strength of the link between two terms is related to the frequency with which the two terms appear within the same documents. Co-word analyses have been used since the 1980s to map and analyze specific research specialties such as biotechnology Bibliographic coupling was first proposed by Kessler (1963) to estimate how similar a document is to another based on how many references those documents share. Bibliographic coupling has become widely used to identify related documents in online databases, such as Scopus® and Web of Science®. Porter and Youtie (2009) used bibliographic coupling to identify emerging trends within nanotechnology research. The present analysis uses bibliographic coupling to generate maps of the literature, to identify where PP documents are located with respect to other fields and to determine the central topics within the field of PP. Methodology The four key steps in the method were: (a) selection of documents, (b) identification of PP documents, (c) impact factor calculation, and (d) document mapping. The computational processing required was performed using MATLAB®. analyzed bibliometric data of documents from 700 journals listed in the PsycINFO ® database. The 1.7 million documents analyzed represented approximately 50% of the total number of documents in the database. How did we identify terms? Other have done aprior terms. The probl with that is that PP is an emergin field so we cannot assume we now all the terms to plug into the analsysis. And even if one can identify all the appropriate terms, many documents may only make passing reference to these terms and may not focus on PP-related topics. So we used the data base itself to decide on relevant terms (not a prior) and to ensure it really was an article that adopted a PP approach we made sure we weren’t just selecting papers that used a PP term in passing rather than the PP construct being the focus of the papaer avoiding a priori assumptions about the boundaries of the field, and instead deriving the terms used to identify PP-related documents more directly from the literature itself using co-term analysis. The first step was to analyze All of the words within the abstract, keyword, and title fields of all 1.7 million records. We started with 27 key PP terms e.g., PP, PP movement, Positive institution, Optimism, Flourishing, Positive emotion, Positive psychologist and then we analysed the journals to look for cosine similarity between other terms and their relevance to ‘positive psychology’ ended up generating 233 PP terms .This kind of automated identification is less accurate than the manual methods employed by Donaldson and Ko (2010). However, the automated method allows for coding of much larger data-sets of the size used in this study, where manual coding would have been impractical. Our list of 233 terms were which were then shown to 9 PP experts – James P was one of them  Documents were only identified as PP related if they included two or more different PP terms. The aggregate impact factor for PP in 2011 was 2.64.

What is positive functioning?
Rusk, R., & Waters, L. (2015). Exploring the underlying components of positive psychology interventions: Five domains of positive function. Journal of Positive Psychology, 10,

1.7 MILLION 18,401 PsycINFO PP-related documents documents
We went a step further…

20,000 3466 Count term frequency Filter out general terms Most common
Terms of interest b/c we wanted to know what are they We counted ALL the words in those PP documents and we set a cut off point at 20,000 words (so as to make the data base manageable) and selected the most common 20 thousand ones. Then, we [2] filtered out general terms that weren’t related to psychological or social functioning, and that gave us over [3] 3 thousand terms of interest. Then we [4] mapped and clustered these… So let’s head back here… General terms likes adolescents, neuroscience – terms that had no relevance to our research questions Rusk, R., & Waters, L. (2015). Exploring the underlying components of positive psychology interventions: Five domains of positive function. Journal of Positive Psychology, 10,

PP terms We [1] extract the terms from these documents, count the frequency of them, select the most common 20 thousand, filter them, then map them out, and we get this… Mapping out the 3,466 – their place on the map is based on co-term analysis and it visually shows that way researchers are using the terms. Terms that frequently occur together are located closer together. Terms that seldom appear together are further apart. The colours represent different clusters which are ut together through an alogrynthm Intra-cluster links – vs – inter cluster links. We extracted the terms from the documents We counted their frequency Selected the 20,00 most common terms Filtered out the non-relevant terms Then mapped out the results….and this is what it looks like

So, there are [5] five main clusters on this map
So, there are [5] five main clusters on this map. We investigated each one, and distilled them down to their dominant themes…

5 DOMAINS OF POSITIVE FUNCTIONING Attention & Awareness Virtues &
Relationships Emotions Goals & Habits If you hit all five of these then you’ve covered what the researchers have told us will increase your psycho-social functioning. So we call these the five domains of positive functioning. Here’s what they’re about: [1] attention and awareness; how we [2] comprehend and cope with the world; [3] social virtues and relationships; our [4] goals and habits; and our [5] emotions. Now we can go back the other way, and overlay these domains onto the documents… Comprehension & Coping

Attention & Awareness Virtues & Relationships Emotions Goals & Habits
If you hit all five of these then you’ve covered what the researchers have told us will increase your psycho-social functioning. So we call these the five domains of positive functioning. Here’s what they’re about: [1] attention and awareness; how we [2] comprehend and cope with the world; [3] social virtues and relationships; our [4] goals and habits; and our [5] emotions. Now we can go back the other way, and overlay these domains onto the documents… Comprehension & Coping

See it Share it Use it Grasp it
Feel it Use it If you hit all five of these then you’ve covered what the researchers have told us will increase your psycho-social functioning. So we call these the five domains of positive functioning. Here’s what they’re about: [1] attention and awareness; how we [2] comprehend and cope with the world; [3] social virtues and relationships; our [4] goals and habits; and our [5] emotions. Now we can go back the other way, and overlay these domains onto the documents… Grasp it

The DPF-5 at Hamilton and Alexandra College

Also attached is a powerpoint containing 3 photos taken during a Yr 6 Well-being lesson on Monday. Students were in the planning process of Using it for the development of the Character Strength of Perseverance. The class is completing their if…. then…. implementation intentions for the development of perseverance – the activity was based on Gabrielle Oettingen’s WOOP process (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle and Plan). My role is: Head of Learmonth House. I’m also a Maths Science and Well-being teacher. Mr Ben Hawthorne

Mr Ben Hawthorne

Mr Reuben Rusk rrusk@student.unimelb.edu.au

Positive Students Two state schools - Ringwood High and Northcote High ASSESSED THE IMPACT OF 3 RESEARCH PROGRAMS: HEROES DAY, SECONDARY SCHOOL WORKSHOP, FUSE BEHAV – ESM VAI APPS GGS IS ALSO USING THE APPS AND THE CORTISOL SWABS – they have also included heart rate variability Reporting Brief The research team led by Dr Dianne Vella-Brodrick and Associate Professor Nikki Rickard from the Emotion and Well-Being Research Unit at Monash University was contracted by the Reach Foundation to undertake independent research to evaluate the effects of three Reach programs on participant mental health and well-being. The directive from Reach executive personnel was to (1) provide an evaluation of whether Reach programs had measurable benefits for participants, and (2) to report on whether certain programs were more efficient than others to assist them in future planning. This final report details the findings from a comprehensive assessment of well-being changes following implementation of Reach programs over a six month period in While all efforts were made to sample representative groups from the target population of Reach programs, and to retain large numbers, findings should be interpreted with some caution as sample sizes and the number of schools participating in the study was smaller than anticipated. The Sample Two hundred and twenty-nine participants (138 females; 91 males) aged 13 to 16 years were recruited from various schools. There were 56 females and 46 males in the ‘Secondary School Workshops’ group, 45 females and 39 males in the ‘Control’ group, and 37 females and 6 males in the ‘Heroes Day’ group. Participants in Reach’s ‘Fused’ programs were also recruited, but difficulty was encountered in liaising with this more dispersed group to provide research instructions and maintain data monitoring integrity. The Reach Foundation personnel therefore advised that the data for this group be limited to qualitative information only. Participants were recruited from secondary schools which had expressed an interest in participating in Reach programs. Schools were contacted via phone and invited to participate. Where relevant permission from the school principal was obtained as well as from parents and the young people themselves. Allocation of participants to each group was limited by school availability during testing periods, but all selected schools were within the midrange of socioeconomic status school ratings according to the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) (2012) data (range of ICSEA scores ), with 46-62% of students within the middle quarter range. Most schools had a similar distribution of boys and girls participating in the study, although more girls participated in the Heroes Day (one of the participating schools was an all-girls school). Participating students were aged between 13 and 16 years, with a median age of 14 years. Students participating in the Secondary School workshops (recruited from Year 8 classes) were approximately one year younger than the participants of the other groups (recruited from Year 9 classes), so differences in this group must be interpreted with this age difference in mind. Rickard, N., Chin, T., & Vella-Brodrick, D. (submitted). Cortisol Awakening Response as an index of mental health and well-being in adolescents. Journal of Happiness Studies

Cortisol: stress hormone
Daily Cortisol Slope Control had a flatter slope. The REACH intervention groups had steeper slopes – means they dropped in cortisol more dramatically over the day indicating that they were less stressed (thus did not need to maniufacture more cortisol) thus suggesting high wellbeing. You can see this pattern for both interventions. Consistent with psych surveys – enhanced life meaning and engagement with life. Heroes group – life sats, pos affect, increased perserverance

Only those who participated in the hereos day maintain the profile – so the skills they learnt in hereos day had more long term effects and they were able to draw on these skills to buffer themselves from stress and thus did not need t produce as much cortisol – as compared to their level at baseline AND as The control and workshop flattened – so they were wake up with a certain level of cortisol and it wasn’t dropping significantly over the course of the day. This is consistent with the psych surveys where students reported higher level so engagement and meaning

Free download Waters, L., Barsky, A., Ridd, A. & Allen, K. (2015). Contemplative Education: A Systematic, Evidence-Based Review of the effect of Meditation Interventions in Schools. Educational Psychology Review, 27(1), Allen, K., Ryan, T; Gray, D; McInerneyl D., & Waters, L. (2014). Social media and social connectedness in adolescents. Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 31, Kern, M., Waters, L., Adler, A., & White, M. (2015). A multifaceted approach to measuring wellbeing in students: Application of the PERMA framework. Journal of Positive Psychology

308 secondary schools in Victoria
What do schools prioritise? Thematic analysis used to assess schools’ priorities as reflected in their vision and mission statements. 308 secondary schools in Victoria stratified random sampling Government, Independent, Catholic Boys, Girls, Co-ed There are 2223 schools in Vic (July 2014). Here's a quick summary: Government: 1526 Catholic: 488 Independent: 209 Using raw data derived from the Victorian Government Data Directory website ([ State Government of Victoria, 2012), the names, contact details, and demographic information of 2, 274 schools in Victoria were examined. Primary schools and special development schools were removed from the sample, which left 579 secondary schools in Victoria. The resultant sample of secondary schools in Victoria defined by school type, region, and gender composition are displayed in Table 27. As seen in the table, approximately half the schools were Government-run institutions (n = 318; 54.9%). The majority of schools in both metropolitan and rural regions were co-educational. Due to restrictions on the feasibility of securing the vision and mission statements in light of time and resources, the potential sample size was further reduced by stratification. According to Bartlett, Kotrlik, and Higgins (2001), a sample of between 286 and 316 should be taken on a population of 500 to 600 to achieve a margin of error of .05. Specifically, the authors suggest that for a sample size of 600 a minimum returned sample size for categorical data is 235, or 53% of the original sample (p = .50, t = -1.96). Using this formula for the present sample of 579, a stratified sample would be 308, or 53%. The sample was randomised using Microsoft Excel software and stratified based on: a) school type— Catholic, government, or independent (as defined by the educational governing entities in Australia); b) gender composition of school— female, male, or co-educational, and: c) location— rural or metropolitan. School location was defined by an online mapping tool, which determined whether a school was metropolitan or rural (Brain Link, 2012; Appendix G). The sample after stratification is displayed in Table 28. School vision and mission statements outline a school’s purpose. They “arise from a set of values that answer fundamental questions about the purpose of education and how the educational programs should be carried out” (Boerema, 2006, p. 182) and typically define the physical, social and political contexts that govern an institution. According to Fritz (1996), vision statements exist to aid school improvement and provide insight into the daily operations of the school. Jones and Crochet (2007) considered vision statements vital for school improvement because they identify desired functional levels, provide a framework for actions, promote teamwork and incorporate goals for the future. Stemler, Bebell, and Sonnabend (2011) outline four main reasons, relevant to the current study, as to why school vision and mission statements are a suitable means to obtain data for school research. First, nearly all schools have a mission or vision statement. Many schools seek accreditation from various organisations (e.g., Council of International Schools [CIS], 2006), which obliges them to create a shared direction defining their core values and addressing the needs of students. The fact that nearly all schools have vision and mission statements allows researchers to use this data to make comparisons across schools. Secondly, school mission statements tend to be accessible through school websites, making them a publicly available source of information and an opportunity for collecting data. Third, Stemler et al. (2011) suggest that mission and vision statements can be reliably coded to allow quantitative analyses of independent traits across a sample of schools (see Appendix F for an example of a Coding Rubric for examining vision and mission statements). Finally, the analysis of school vision and mission statements is based on the importance of these documents for educational outcomes. Researchers who have identified factors that create effective schools have shown that mission or vision statements are important features in an educational setting (Perkins, 1992; Rutter & Maughan, 2002; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000). To determine the most salient and up-to-date areas that educational establishments prioritise, numerous researchers (e.g., Stemler et al., 2011; Stemler & Bebell 1999) have investigated school vision and mission statements to see how they relate to the goals of the institutions that uphold them Content analysis through emergent coding by quantitative means (Haney, Russell, Gulek, & Fierros, 1998) was used as a guiding methodology for the data analysis. With emergent coding, categories are established following the preliminary examination of the data and then the researcher seeks to examine these themes by an iterative data mining process. Quantitative data coding is useful for obtaining information on frequency of occurrence and for making group comparisons. This study used emergent coding methodology adapted from the process described by Stemler and Bebell (1999). This is outlined in four main steps: A random stratified sample of school mission statements was selected from secondary schools in Victoria. Two researchers independently extracted the dominant themes emerging from the sample of statements. The two The results identified that academic motivation (88%) was the theme that was endorsed most frequently, followed by mental health promotion which was reported by 66.2% of schools, and belongingness was identified in 57.5% of school vision and mission statements. Other support was the least frequently reported theme (21.1%). Allen, K., Waters, L., Kern, M., & Vella-Brodrick, D. (in prep). What do schools prioritise? An analysis of school vision and mission statements

What do schools prioritise?
Mental health promotion: Social and emotional learning and pos ed was the subtheme present most frequently in school statements Personal chx: While it has been generally understood that personal characteristics such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, and confidence are important features associated with wellbeing and school belonging Teacher support: subthemes of teacher social support and teacher caring were reported most frequently Other support: peers and parents Env : the subthemes safe and nurturing environment Individual Needs The theme of individual needs, described as a school’s inclusiveness of individual needs irrespective of ability

What do schools prioritise?
Themes Frequency Percent Academic Motivation 271 88.0 Mental Health Promotion 204 66.2 School Belonging 177 57.5 Teacher Support 148 48.1 Personal Characteristics 95 30.8 Future 98 31.8 Nurturing Environment 86 27.9 Individual Needs 84 27.3 Christianity Other Support 65 21.1 Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society Social marketing is an approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or maintaining people's behaviour for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole. vision and mission statements have been used as a social marketing tool for schools, which is also a central element of successful public health change programs (Donovan, 2011). Social marketing, through the use of school vision and mission statements allows schools to persuade and communicate to the school community the value of school belonging. Vision and mission statements may serve as a public declaration of a school’s objectives, aims and priorities towards school belonging and population-based prevention initiatives. They may also be used to encourage individuals to adopt healthy behaviour alongside a school’s whole-school approach towards fostering wellbeing

Mental health promotion and NAPLAN
Lexica Analysis Used the ‘Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count’ Program (Pennebaker, Chung, Ireland, Gonzales, & Booth, 2007) to count of the relative frequency of words within school vision and mission statement. Wellbeing lexicon library devised by researchers at the Positive Psychology Centre, UPenn (Schwartz et al., 2013). University of Melbourne team added to the word list

School Vision & Mission Statements
Based on the raw data of the mental health promotion words used in the school mission and vision statements. The bigger the size of th word the larger the times that word was mentioned.

Mental health promotion and NAPLAN
.08** .09** This study reveals important findings for the use of mental health promotion in school vision and mission statements. Schools that use school vision and mission statements as a vehicle to promote mental health may positively affect the academic outcomes of their students. While the effect size for the relationship between mental health promotion and achievement is small, it is meaningful and relevant. Previous literature has demonstrated that an effect of such size can be helpful and incorporated into educational practices even if only a weak correlation is observed. For example, the impact of divorce on a child’s wellbeing reports a very weak effect size of .09, yet most schools would ensure appropriate support and intervention is in place given the circumstances (Amato & Keith, 1991 as cited in Meyer eta al., 2001). More apparent examples can be derived from the medical literature, for example, aspirin and the reduced risk of heart attack reports a correlation of r= .02 and chemotherapy and surviving breast cancer r= .03, yet both of these interventions are widely practiced and accepted (Steering Committee of the Physician Health Study Research Group, 1988; Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group, 1988; both cited in Meyer et al., 2001). Even the batting skills as a professional baseball player and hitting success is r = .06, yet it is unlikely batting skills would be discouraged in Major League Baseball players (Abelson, 1985). Therefore, effect sizes, however small can make valuable contributions. For this study, when emphasis is placed on the effect size, over the level of significance, it is clear that mental health promotion in school vision and mission statements has a positive and meaningful relationship with achievement. Whilst this effect was small, it is apparent from other studies YEAR 7 NAPLAN SCORES YEAR 9 NAPLAN SCORES

Free download Kern, M., Waters, L., White, M., & Adler, A. (2014). Workplace wellbeing: A multifaceted approach to assessing psychological, physical and workplace wellbeing in school staff, Psychology, 5, Waters, L., & White, M. (2015). Case study of a school wellbeing initiative: Using appreciative inquiry to support positive change. International Journal of Wellbeing, 5(1), Waters, L. & Stokes, H. (2015). Positive Education for school Leaders: Exploring the Effects of Emotion-Gratitude and Action-Gratitude. Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist

action-research project
Positive Systems 100 State Schools 50% primary 50% rural Disadvantage Elite 2 year Pos Ed action-research project (12,000 word report) Waters, L., & Stokes, H (2013). A systems approach to Positive Education. Teaching and Learning Network, 20(3), 8-10.

Parent relationships School council School strategy
Area of Focus Student-focus Staff Pedagogy Curriculum Behaviour Management Pastoral care Exam preparation Student relationships Team building Leadership training Classroom observation Strategic planning Parent relationships School communication STUDENTS Curriculum Optimism and resilience have now been incorporated into mental health unit in year’s 7, 8 and 9 VIA character strengths now taught in ‘Health and Development’ studies in grade 5 6 lessons explicitly on PP in year 10 Health Curriculum VCAL ‘Personal skill and further studies’ unit now incorporates character strengths Pedagogy Three good things at the end of domestic science classes Virtues language in VCAL Gratitude trees/letters/notes in primary school Mood boosters at the start of classes One good thing in year 8 English Behaviour Management School Wide Positive Behaviour Program From a de-merit system to a merit system Go to the Principal for good behaviour Student learning and exam preparation Individual learning plans place an emphasis on student strengths Mindfulness in the examination hall prior to the exams Year 12 are taught about growth mindsets Year 7 transition program Students are introduced to each other via their character strengths Student relationships Pay it forward Gratitude letters Using character strengths to resolve disputes Thank you box Year 12 mentor junior students Pastoral care PP used in vertical House System to foster positive relationships Well-being team with students representatives has now been formed STAFF Staff relationships Gratitude board in the staff rooms, Anonymous nice deeds Secret admirer exercise Positive recognition slips Leadership training & Team building AI, character strengths, active-constructive responding, WWW for staff meetings and other mood boosters at start of meetings, well-being is a formal meeting agenda item now Classroom observation & professional learning Understanding the negativity bias Using process praise PP readings in professional learning teams Parent relationships Character strengths family tree School diary teacher & parent identifying and communicating about strengths School council Character strengths Positive reframing of questions in council meetings School strategy AI with leadership team AI summit School communication Regular College Newsletter articles around positive psychology Sending home postcards Phone calls when students do something well Common themes: Gratitude; Hunting for Good; Virtues Language; Character Strengths and Appreciative Inquiry

Positive Education 3.0 Extending the field Moving beyond students to study the impact at 3 levels of analysis Moving beyond self report surveys Bibliometric analysis Bio data Qualitative Methods Lexicon Analysis Case study Experiential Sampling Methodology +S3

I am presenting on behalf of my team & my students 

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