Positive education positive psychology and classroom interventions积极心理学与教室干预

Vol. 35, No. 3, June 2009, pp. 293–311

Positive education: positive psychology and classroom interventions

University of Pennsylvania; bLincoln (Nebraska) Public Schools; cSwarthmore College and University of Pennsylvania; dWallingford-Swarthmore (Pennsylvania) Public Schools, USA

0Martin E. P. Seligmana*, Randal M. Ernstb, Jane Gillhamc, Karen Reivicha and Mark Linkinsd

a

Positive education is defined as education for both traditional skills and for happiness. The highprevalence worldwide of depression among young people, the small rise in life satisfaction, and thesynergy between learning and positive emotion all argue that the skills for happiness should betaught in school. There is substantial evidence from well controlled studies that skills that increaseresilience, positive emotion, engagement and meaning can be taught to schoolchildren. We presentthe story of teaching these skills to an entire school—Geelong Grammar School—in Australia, andwe speculate that positive education will form the basis of a ‘new prosperity’, a politics that valuesboth wealth and well-being.

Introduction

First, a quiz: In two words or less, what do you most want for your children? If you arelike the hundreds of parents I’ve asked, you responded, ‘Happiness’, ‘Confidence’,‘Contentment’, ‘Balance’, ‘Good Stuff’, ‘Kindness’, ‘Health’, ‘Satisfaction’, and thelike. In short, you most want well-being for your children.

In two words or less, what do schools teach? If you are like other parents, youresponded, ‘Achievement’, ‘Thinking Skills’, ‘Success’, ‘Conformity’, ‘Literacy’,‘Mathematics’, ‘Discipline’ and the like. In short schools teach the tools ofaccomplishment. Notice that there is almost no overlap between the two lists.

The schooling of children has, for more than a century, been about accomplish-ment, the boulevard into the world of adult work. I am all for accomplishment,success, literacy, and discipline; but imagine if schools could, without compromising

*Corresponding author. University of Pennsylvania, Positive Psychology Center, 3701 MarketStreet, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Email: seligman@psych.upenn.eduISSN 0305-4985 (print)/ISSN 1465-3915 (online)/09/030293–19© 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/030980902934563

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either, teach both the skills of well-being and the skills of achievement. ImaginePositive Education.

Should well-being be taught in school?

The prevalence of depression among young people is shockingly high worldwide.Nearly 20% of youth experience an episode of clinical depression by the end of highschool (Lewinsohn et al., 1993). By some estimates depression is about ten timesmore common now than it was 50 years ago (Wickramaratne et al., 19). In addi-tion, several studies suggest that the age of first onset has decreased from adulthoodto adolescence (Weissman, 1987; Lewinsohn et al., 1993). Although researchersdebate whether these findings reflect increases in rates of depression, increasedawareness of depression, or methodological problems such as memory biases (seeCostello et al., 2006), virtually all investigators are dismayed by how much depressionthere is now and how mostly it goes untreated (Twenge & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2002;Costello et al., 2006).

This is a paradox; particularly for those who believe that well-being comes fromthe environment. Almost everything is better now than it was 50 years ago: there isabout three times more actual purchasing power, dwellings are much bigger, there aremany more cars, and clothes are more attractive (Easterbrook, 2003). Progress hasnot been limited to the material: there is more education, more music, and morewomen’s rights, less racism, less pollution, fewer tyrants, more entertainment, morebooks, and fewer soldiers dying on the battlefield (e.g., Schuman et al., 1997; U.S.Environmental Protection Agency, 2006; Snyder et al., 2008).

Everything is better, that is, everything except human morale. Depression and anxi-ety are rampant, and average individual and average national happiness, which hasbeen measured competently for half a century, has not remotely kept up withimprovement in the world. Happiness has gone up only spottily, if at all. The averageDane, Italian and Mexican is somewhat more satisfied with life than 50 years ago, butthe average American, Japanese or Australian is no more satisfied with life than he was50 years ago, and the average Briton or German is less satisfied (Inglehart et al.,2007).

Why this is is a matter of contention. It is certainly not biological or genetic. Noris it ecological (the Old Order Amish who live 30 miles down the road from me inPhiladelphia have only one-tenth our rate of depression, even though they breathe thesame air, drink the same water, and make much of the food we eat (Egeland &Hofstetter, 1983). It has something to do with modernity and perhaps with what wemistakenly call ‘prosperity’.

Not only is there widespread depression and spotty increases in happiness, twogood reasons that well-being should be taught—if it could be taught—but there is athird good reason. More well-being is synergistic with better learning. Increases in well-being are likely to produce increases in learning, the traditional goal of education.Positive mood produces broader attention (Fredrickson, 1998; Bolte et al., 2003;Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Rowe et al., 2007), more creative thinking (Isen et al.,

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1987; Estrada et al., 1994), and more holistic thinking (Isen et al., 1991; Kuhl, 1983,2000), in contrast to negative mood which produces narrower attention (Bolte et al.,2003), more critical thinking, and more analytic thinking (Kuhl, 1983, 2000). Bothways of thinking are important, but schools emphasise critical, rather than creativethinking, and the negative mood so often found in the classroom facilitates onlycritical thinking.

We conclude that, were it possible, well-being should be taught in school on threegrounds: as an antidote to depression, as a vehicle for increasing life satisfaction,and as an aid to better learning and more creative thinking. Because most youngpeople attend school, schools provide the opportunity to reach them and enhancetheir well-being on a wide scale.

Schools are an excellent location for well-being initiatives for several reasons.Children and adolescents spend much of their waking time in school. For example,in the United States, 6–17 year-olds typically spend 30–35 hours per week inschool (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001). Thus, students’ day-to-day interactions andexperiences with peers, teachers and coaches are integral to their well-being and areimportant targets for well-being programmes. In addition, most parents and educa-tors see the promotion of well-being and character as an important, if not central,aspect of schooling (Cohen, 2006). Surveys of American parents over the past 30years indicate that their most important goal for education was to prepare children tobecome responsible citizens (Cohen, 2006).

Most schools are already engaged in this work to some degree. In recent years,there has been increasing recognition of this promise. American schools are a majorprovider of mental health services (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2004; Fosteret al., 2005). Schools also have enormous (largely untapped) potential for preventionand well-being initiatives (Pfeiffer & Reddy, 1998; American Academy of Pediatrics,2004; Weist, 2005). In the USA, most states now mandate or encourage charactereducation, and many have standards related to social and emotional learning (Cohen,2006; CASEL, 2009). Britain’s education policy also includes the promotion ofmoral or character development (Arthur, 2005).

Despite the potential, there is considerable debate about school-based well-beinginitiatives. Many parents are concerned that programmes will teach values that aredetermined by educators or politicians and that bear little resemblance to the valuesthey hope to instil in their children (Arthur, 2005). Researchers are often concernedabout the lack of empirical evidence for most programmes (Spence & Shortt, 2007).Parents, educators and politicians are often concerned that programmes will wastemoney or (worse) lower students’ achievement by diverting time and money awayfrom academic subjects (Benninga et al., 2006; Financial Times, 2007). We arguebelow that well-being programmes can: 1) promote skills and strengths that arevalued by most, and perhaps all, parents; 2) produce measurable improvements instudents’ well-being and behaviour; and 3) facilitate students’ engagement in learningand achievement.

What follows is the framework that guides us when we teach well-being inschools.

296M. E. P. Seligman et al.What is happiness?

‘Happiness’ is too worn and too weary a term to be of much scientific use, andthe discipline of Positive Psychology divides it into three very different realms, eachof which is measurable and, most importantly, each of which is skill-based and canbe taught (Seligman, 2002). The first is hedonic: positive emotion (joy, love,contentment, pleasure etc.). A life led around having as much of this good stuff aspossible, is the ‘Pleasant Life’. The second, much closer to what Thomas Jeffersonand Aristotle sought, is the state of flow, and a life led around it is the ‘Engaged Life’.Flow, a major part of the Engaged Life, consists in a loss of self-consciousness, timestopping for you, being ‘one with the music’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Importantlyengagement seems to be the opposite of positive emotion: when one is totallyabsorbed, no thoughts or feelings are present—even though one says afterwards ‘thatwas fun’ (Delle Fave & Massimini, 2005). And while there are shortcuts to positiveemotion—you can take drugs, masturbate, watch television, or go shopping—thereare no shortcuts to flow. Flow only occurs when you deploy your highest strengthsand talents to meet the challenges that come your way, and it is clear that flowfacilitates learning.

The third realm in the framework of Positive Psychology is the one with the bestintellectual provenance, the Meaningful Life. Flow and positive emotion can befound in solipsistic pursuits, but not meaning or purpose. Meaning is increasedthrough our connections to others, future generations, or causes that transcend theself (Durkheim, 1951/17; Erikson, 1963). From a Positive Psychology perspective,meaning consists in knowing what your highest strengths are, and then using them tobelong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self (Seligman, 2002).The framework of Positive Psychology, we want to emphasise, is an empiricalresearch endeavour and not mere grandmotherly common sense. Among its moresurprising recent findings:

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Optimistic people are much less likely to die of heart attacks than pessimists,controlling for all known physical risk factors (Giltay et al., 2004).

Women who display genuine (Duchenne) smiles to the photographer at ageeighteen go on to have fewer divorces and more marital satisfaction than those whodisplay fake smiles (Keltner et al., 1999).

Positive emotion reduces at least some racial biases. For example, although peoplegenerally are better at recognising faces of their own race than faces of other races,putting people in a joyful mood reduces this discrepancy by improving memory forfaces of people from other races (Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005).

Externalities (e.g., weather, money, health, marriage, religion) added togetheraccount for no more than 15% of the variance in life satisfaction (Diener et al.,1999).

The pursuit of meaning and engagement are much more predictive of life satisfac-tion than the pursuit of pleasure (Peterson et al., 2005).

Economically flourishing corporate teams have a ratio of at least 2.9:1 of positivestatements to negative statements in business meetings, whereas stagnating teams

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have a much lower ratio; flourishing marriages, however, require a ratio of at least5:1 (Gottman & Levenson, 1999; Fredrickson & Losada, 2005).

Self-discipline is twice as good a predictor of high school grades as IQ (Duckworth& Seligman, 2005).

Happy teenagers go on to earn very substantially more income 15 years later thanless happy teenagers, equating for income, grades and other obvious factors(Diener et al., 2002).

How people celebrate good events that happen to their spouse is a better predictorof future love and commitment than how they respond to bad events (Gable et al.,2004).

People experience more ‘flow’ at work than at home (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre,19).

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So there is a growing scientific basis for understanding positive emotion, engagementand meaning. These states are valuable in their own right, they fight depression(Seligman et al., 2005), they engender more life satisfaction (Peterson, Park, &Seligman, 2005; Seligman et al., 2005), and they promote learning, particularlycreative learning (Fredrickson, 1998). So we conclude that well-being should betaught in school. But can it?

Can well-being be taught in school?

Our research team has devoted much of the last 15 years to finding out, usingrigorous methods, whether well-being can be taught to school children. We believethat well-being programmes, in parallel with any medical intervention, must beevidence-based, so we have tested two different programmes for schools, the PennResiliency Program (PRP) and the Strath Haven Positive Psychology Curriculum.Here are our findings. First PRP:

The major goal of the PRP curriculum is to increase students’ ability to handle day-to-day stressors and problems that are common for most students during adoles-cence. PRP promotes optimism by teaching students to think more realistically andflexibly about the problems they encounter. PRP also teaches assertiveness, creativebrainstorming, decision making, relaxation, and several other coping and problem-solving skills.

PRP is one of the most widely researched programmes designed to prevent depres-sion in young people. During the past 20 years, 17 studies have evaluated PRP incomparison to a control group. Most of these studies used randomised controlleddesigns. Together, these studies include over 2,000 children and adolescents betweenthe ages of 8 and 15. By comparison, a recent meta-analysis of research on depressionprevention programmes for young people found 30 studies in total (including manyPRP evaluations) (Horowitz & Garber, 2006).

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Diverse samples. PRP studies include adolescents from a variety of racial/ethnicbackgrounds, community settings (urban, suburban and rural) and countries (e.g.,United States, United Kingdom, Australia, China and Portugal).

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Variety of group leaders. Across the PRP studies, group leaders include teachers,counsellors, psychologists, social workers and graduate students in education andpsychology, as well as the programme developers in some studies.

Independent evaluations of PRP. The PRP research team at the University ofPennsylvania conducted many of the PRP evaluations; however, several indepen-dent research teams have also evaluated PRP.

Here are the basic findings for PRP compared to control groups:

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PRP reduces and prevents symptoms of depression. Of the 17 PRP studies, 15examined PRP’s effects on depression symptoms. A meta-analysis of these studiesrevealed significant benefits of PRP at all follow-up assessments (immediatelypost-intervention as well as six and 12 months following the programme) (Brun-wasser & Gillham, 2008).

PRP reduces hopelessness. The meta-analysis also found that PRP significantlyreduced hopelessness and increased optimism (Brunwasser & Gillham, 2008).PRP prevents clinical levels of depression and anxiety. In several studies, PRP hasprevented moderate to severe levels of depressive symptoms. For example, in thefirst PRP study, the programme halved rates of moderate to several levels ofdepressive symptoms through two years of follow-up (see Figure 1). In a primarycare setting, PRP prevented diagnoses of depression and anxiety disorders amongadolescents with high levels of depressive symptoms at baseline (see Figure 2). Inthat study, diagnostic information was obtained from medical records (withconsent) and reflected independent evaluations by clinicians who were notinvolved in the study.

PRP reduces and prevents anxiety. There is less research on PRP’s effects on adoles-cents’ anxiety symptoms, but most studies found significant and long-lasting effects.PRP may reduce behavioural problems. There is less research on PRP’s effects onadolescents’ behavioural problems (aggression, delinquency), but a few studiesfound significant effects. For example, a recent large-scale programme evaluationfound significant benefits on parents’ reports of adolescents’ behavioural problemsthree years after the programme (see Figure 3).

PRP works equally well for children of different racial/ethnic backgrounds. The meta-analysis found no evidence that PRP’s effects varied by race or ethnicity(Brunwasser & Gillham, 2008).

Training and supervision of group leaders is critical. Recent reviews of PRP researchindicated that PRP’s effectiveness vary considerably across studies (Gillham et al.,2007). On average, effects were small; PRP had moderate to large effects in somestudies and no effect in others. This variability in effectiveness appeared to berelated, at least in part, to the level of training and supervision that group leadersreceive. Programme effects were strongest when group leaders were members ofthe PRP team, or trained by the PRP team and closely supervised by the PRP team.Programme effects were smaller and less consistent when group leaders receivedminimal training and supervision. The quality of curriculum delivery also appearedcritical. For example, a study of PRP in a primary care setting revealed significant

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50%45%40%35%30%25%20%15%10%5%0%Pre 12 Months 18 Months 24 Months7%12%24%24%33%29%22%PRPControl% of participants with CDI>=14%TimeFigure 1.

Prevention of moderate to severe depressive symptoms (% of participants with

CDI>=15) (from Gillham et al., 1995)

60ControlPRP50Cumulative Percentage4030201001 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31Months after baselineFigure 2.Prevention of depression, anxiety and adjustment disorder diagnoses among partic-ipants with high levels of baseline symptoms: cumulative percent diagnosed with disorder (from

Gillham et al., 2006)

(Note: intervention is from one month to approximately six months after baseline)

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1210820Pre 12mos 24mos** 30mos** 36mos**PRPControlMean CBCL raw scoreTimeFigure 3.

Prevention of conduct symptoms: Mean CBCL externalising raw scores (from

Cutuli, 2004; Cutuli et al., forthcoming)

reductions in depression symptoms for adolescents in groups with high adherenceto the programme. In contrast, PRP did not reduce depressive symptoms relativeto control in groups with lower programme adherence (Gillham et al., 2006).Thus, we believe that current best practices for PRP include intensive training andsupervision of group leaders.

In summary, the existing research indicates that PRP produces positive and reliableimprovements in students’ well-being. To date, most studies of PRP examineeffects on self-reported pessimism and depressive symptoms. Although self-report isconsidered the most accurate method for measuring internalising symptoms such asdepression, it will be important to document PRP’s effects on observable behavioursand a broader range of outcomes, including students’ social skills, positive emotionand engagement in learning.

Next we review the Positive Psychology Programme which is the first empirical studyof a Positive Psychology curriculum for adolescents. With a $2.8 million grant fromthe US Department of Education, our research group recently completed arandomised controlled evaluation of the high school positive psychology curriculum.We randomly assigned 347 Year 9 students to Language Arts classes that containedthe positive psychology curriculum (Positive Psychology Condition) or did notcontain the positive psychology curriculum (Control). Students, their parents andteachers completed standard questionnaires before the programme, after theprogramme, and through two years of follow-up. Questionnaires measured students’strengths (e.g., love of learning, kindness), social skills, behavioural problems andenjoyment of school. In addition, we examined students’ grades.

The major goals of the positive psychology programme are 1) to help studentsidentify their signature character strengths and 2) to increase students’ use of these

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strengths in day-to-day life. The programme targets strengths (e.g., kindness, cour-age, wisdom, perseverance) that are described in the VIA classification (Peterson &Seligman, 2004) and that are valued across cultures and throughout history (Peterson& Seligman, 2004; Dahlsgaard et al., 2005). In addition to these goals, the interven-tion strives to promote resilience, positive emotion and students’ sense of meaning orpurpose.

The curriculum consists of approximately 20–25 80-minute sessions delivered overthe 9th grade year. Most lessons involve the discussion of character strengths (orother positive psychology concepts and skills), an in-class activity, a real-world home-work activity that encourages students to apply concepts and skills in their own lives,and a follow-up journal reflection.Exercises

Here are two examples of the exercises we use in the curriculum:

Three Good Things. We instruct the students to write down three good things thathappened each day for a week. The three things students list can be relatively smallin importance (‘I answered a really hard question right in Language Arts today’) orrelatively large in importance (‘The guy I’ve liked for months, asked me out’). Nextto each positive event listed, they write a reflection on one of the following questions:‘Why did this good thing happen?’, ‘What does this mean to you?’, ‘How can youincrease the likelihood of having more of this good thing in the future?’

Using Signature Strengths in a New Way. We believe that students can get moresatisfaction out of life if they learn to identify which of these character strengths theypossess in abundance and then use them as much as possible in school, in hobbies,with friends and family. Students take the VIA Signature Strengths test for children(www.authentichappiness.org) and several lessons in the curriculum focus on helpingstudents to identify characters strengths in themselves and others, using strengths toovercome challenges, and applying strengths in new ways.

Here are the basic findings of the positive psychology programme relative tocontrol:

Engagement in learning, enjoyment of school, and achievement. The positive psychol-ogy programme increased students’ reports of enjoyment and engagement in school.According to teacher reports, the positive psychology programme improved strengthsrelated to learning and engagement in school (e.g., curiosity, love of learning, creativ-ity) (see Figure 4). These findings are especially encouraging because teacherswho completed measures did not deliver the positive psychology curriculum andwere blind to whether students participated in the programme or the controlclasses. Effects on these outcomes were particularly strong for students in regular

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Learning Strengths (OSS)25.0024.0023.0022.0021.0020.0019.0018.0017.0016.00Pre Post 6 months 18 monthsPositive PsychologyControlFigure 4.Learning strengths (reported by teachers)

(non-Honors) classes. Among students in non-honors classes, the positive psychologyprogramme increased Language Arts achievement through 11th grade. It is importantthat increasing the skills of well-being does not antagonise the traditional goals ofclassroom learning, but rather enhances them.

Social Skills. The positive psychology programme improved social skills (e.g.,empathy, cooperation, assertiveness, self-control) according to both mothers’ andteachers’ reports (see Figures 5 and 6).

Other Outcomes. The positive psychology programme did not improve otheroutcomes we measured, such as students’ reports of their depression and anxietysymptoms, character strengths, and participation in extra-curricular activities. Bettereffects may be obtained through combining the PRP and positive psychologyprogrammes, or through more intensive interventions.

As this is the first study of the positive psychology curriculum, it will be importantto replicate our findings and to determine whether the programme is effective withstudents from a variety of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.

Based on this research, we conclude that well-being should be taught and that it canbe taught in school. But can an entire school be imbued with positive psychology?The Geelong Grammar School Project

The Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania has been trainingAmerican and British teachers in these techniques and we have just reviewed the

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Cooperation (Mother SSRS)12.011.511.0Positive PsychologyControl10.510.09.5Pre Post 6 months 18 monthsFigure 5.Adolescents’ cooperation (reported by mothers)

Social Skills (Teacher SSRS)47.0045.0043.0041.0039.0037.0035.00Positive PsychologyControlPre Post 6 months 18 monthsFigure 6.Social skills (reported by teachers)

findings from these controlled studies of individual classrooms. But we never beforehad an entire school—from the classrooms to the playing fields to the houses to thecounselling centre—to infuse. One of Australia’s great schools, Geelong GrammarSchool (GGS), located about an hour south of Melbourne, invited us in 2008 to doexactly this.

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GGS has four campuses with about 1500 students (coeducational) and about 200faculty members. In January of 2008, we assembled 15 of our Penn trainers to teachthe skills of positive psychology (resilience, character strengths, gratitude, positivecommunication, optimism) to about 100 members of the faculty. In a nine dayprogramme, we emphasised how the teachers could use the skills in their own lives—personally and professionally—and we gave examples and detailed curricula of howto teach them to children. The principles and skills were taught in plenary sessions,and reinforced through exercises and applications in groups of 30, as well as in pairsand small groups. Following the training, several of us were in residence for the entireyear and about a dozen visiting scholars (e.g., Barbara Fredrickson, Roy Baumeister,Stephen Post, Diane Tice, Christopher Peterson, Kate Hays, George Vaillant,Nansook Park and Ray Fowler) came to GGS, each for a week or more, to instructfaculty in their positive psychology specialities.

We have no systematic data to report at this early stage, but our impression and thatof the faculty is that the programme was enormously successful. So we confineourselves to the narration of what ensued and to illustrative anecdotes. These divideinto ‘Teaching Positive Education’, ‘Embedding Positive Education’ and ‘LivingPositive Education’.

Teaching Positive Education (the explicit courses developed)

Stand alone courses and course units have now arisen at GGS in several grades.These teach the elements of positive psychology: resilience, gratitude, strengths,meaning, flow, positive relationships and positive emotion. The 200 10th-gradestudents on the Corio campus (the upper school) attended a Positive Education classtaught twice weekly by the heads of the ten boarding houses, most of whom are math-ematics teachers. Students heard several lectures tailored to secondary students bythe visiting scholars, but the backbone of the course centred on discovering and usingsignature strengths. During the first lesson, prior to taking the VIA signaturestrengths test (www.authentichappiness.org), students wrote narratives about timeswhen they were at their very best. Once they got back their own VIA results, studentsreread their narratives looking for examples of their signature strengths. Nearly everystudent found two, and a majority found three, of their signature strengths in theirwritings.

Other signature strengths lessons included interviewing family members to developa ‘family tree’ of strengths, learning how to use strengths to overcome challenges, anddeveloping a strength that was not among an individual’s top five. For the finalstrengths lesson, students identified campus leaders (students or teachers) whom theyconsidered paragons of each strength. The process of identifying and developingstrengths has given teachers and students a common language for discussing theirlives.

After Signature Strengths, the next series of lessons for the 10th grade focused onbuilding positive emotion. Students wrote gratitude letters to parents, learned how tosavour good memories, how to overcome negativity bias, and how gratifying kindness

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is to the giver. The blessings journal, in which students nightly kept track of whatwent well (WWW) that day, is now a staple at GGS.

The Timbertop campus is built on a mountain near Mansfield, Victoria, and all220 9th-grade students live a rugged outdoor life for an entire year there, whichculminates in running a marathon through the mountains. The stand-alone positiveeducation course at Timbertop emphasised resilience (Seligman, 1992). First,students learned about the ABC model (Ellis, 1962): how beliefs (B) about an adversity(A) influence the consequent (C) feelings. Then students learned how to slowdown this ABC process through more flexible and more accurate thinking. Finally,students learned ‘real-time resilience’ (Reivich & Shatte, 2003) in order to deal withthe ‘heat-of-the-moment’ adversities that 9th graders so often face at Timbertop.After resilience, the next Timbertop lessons addressed active constructiveresponding (ACR) to the report of good events by a friend (Gable et al., 2004) andthe importance of a 3:1 positive-to-negative ratio (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005).Both the first and second units were taught by the health and physical educationteachers, a natural fit given the overarching goals of Timbertop.

In 2009, Corio and Timbertop will both have a year-round Positive Educationcourse, and while these stand-alone courses teach content and skills leading to well-being, there is much more to positive education than simple stand-alone courses.Embedding Positive Education

GGS teachers and administrators have now begun the process of embedding PositiveEducation into most academic courses, on the sports field, in pastoral counselling, inmusic and in the chapel. First some classroom examples:

English teachers use signature strengths and resiliency to discuss novels. Eventhough Macbeth is a pretty depressing read, students hypothesise the strengths of themain characters, and how these strengths have both a good and a shadow side.English teachers also use resiliency concepts to demonstrate more and less accuratethinking about setbacks faced by characters in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesmanand Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Teachers changed speaking prompts from ‘Give a speech on a time you wereembarrassed or made a fool out of yourself’ to ‘Give a speech about when you wereof value to others’. Student preparation for these speeches took less time, studentsspoke more enthusiastically and fluently, and teachers reported that listening studentsdid not fidget as much during the speeches.

Religious Education teachers asked students to explore the relationship betweenethics and pleasure. Students considered perspectives from Aristotle, JeremyBentham and John Stuart Mill in light of the most current brain research on pleasureand altruism. Students also examined a variety of perspectives (including theirown) about what gives life meaning and purpose. Students and their parentsengaged in a ‘Meaning Dialogue’, which consisted of a series of e-mail reflectionsabout what makes life meaningful and purposeful. Students and parents received apacket of 60 quotations on meaning and purpose, written by a wide range of famous

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and not-so-famous figures. These quotations served as prompts for students and theirparents as they began their own personal dialogue about meaning.

Geography teachers asked students to consider how to measure the happiness of anentire nation, and how criteria for well-being might differ from Australia to Iran toIndonesia. They also researched how the physical geography of a place (e.g., greenspace) might contribute to well-being. LOTE (Language other than English) teachersasked students to examine character strengths in the context of Japanese, Chinese andFrench folklore and culture. Elementary teachers started each day with ‘What wentwell?’ (WWW; Eades, 2005) and had students nominate classmates who had donesomething displaying the ‘strength of the week’. Music teachers used resilience skillsto build optimism from the very frequent experience of a performance that did not gowell. Art teachers at all levels taught savouring of beauty.

Athletic coaches, while eager, found it challenging to embed Positive Educationinto their instruction given the time factor required to teach the ball, bat or racquetskills needed for the next game. Coaches taught the skill of letting go of grudgesagainst team-mates who performed poorly. Others used the guided imagerytechniques taught by Frank Mosca, one of our visiting scholars, to become calmbefore a contest. Some coaches used refocusing skills to remind team members of thegood things they had done on the field and these coaches reported more consistentplay among those students who thus overcame their negativity bias. One coach devel-oped a character-strengths framework and accompanying rubric to be used to debriefhis team following each game. During the debrief session, students review the game’ssuccesses and challenges through the lens of character strengths. Team membersidentify—in themselves, in their team-mates, and in their coaches—examples whenspecific strengths were called upon during the game. In addition students identify‘missed opportunities’ for using certain strengths, the idea being that identifying these‘missed opportunities’ will increase awareness of future opportunities to usestrengths.

The chapel services became another locus of Positive Education. Scripturalpassages on courage, forgiveness, persistence, and nearly every other strength werereferenced during services, reinforcing classroom discussions. When, for example,gratitude was the 10th grade classroom topic for a given week, the chaplain’s sermonand biblical readings were about gratitude.

In addition to stand-alone courses and embedding Positive Education into theday, many students and teachers found themselves living it in ways they had notanticipated.

Living Positive Education

Like all Geelong Grammar School six-year-olds, Kyle starts his day in a semi-circlewith his uniformed, first-grade classmates. Facing his teacher, Kyle’s hand shot upwhen his teacher asked, ‘Children, what went well last night?’. Eager to answer, severalfirst-graders shared brief anecdotes such as ‘We had my favourite last night—spaghetti’ and ‘I played checkers with my older brother and I won.’

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Kyle said, ‘My sister and I cleaned the patio after dinner, and mum hugged us afterwe finished.’

The teacher followed up with Kyle. ‘Why is it important to share what went well?’He didn’t hesitate. ‘It makes me feel good.’‘Anything more, Kyle?’

‘Oh, yes, my mum asks me what went well when I get home every day, and it makesher happy when I tell her. And when mum’s happy, everybody’s happy.’

Heather had just returned from a nursing home where she and her fifth-grade class-mates had just completed their ‘Breadology’ project, in which Jon Ashton, a televisioncelebrity and one of our visiting scholars, taught the fourth grade how to make hisgranny’s bread, and then they all visited a nursing home and gave the bread away tothe residents. Heather explained the project.

‘First, we learned about good nutrition,’ she said, ‘Then we learned how to cook ahealthy meal, but instead of eating, we gave the food to other people.’

‘Did it bother you to not eat the food you’d spent so much time preparing? Itsmelled really good.’

‘No, just the opposite,’ she declared, smiling broadly, ‘At first I was scared ofthe old people, but then it felt like a little light went on inside me. I want to do itagain.’

Heather’s best friend quickly chimed in, ‘Doing something for others felt betterthan any video game.’

Kyle and Heather are two of the threads sewn into the ‘living it’ tapestry at theGeelong Grammar School in 2008. Kyle’s class starts every day with ‘What wentwell?’, but Kyle goes home and he lives Positive Education. No courses or units aredisplaced by WWW, but with this enhancement the days start better, and the studentsseem to learn with more eagerness. Heather experienced ‘helper’s high’ from learningand using a skill for the benefit of others without expecting any compensation.

This smattering of examples illustrates how Positive Education, whether teachingit, embedding it or living it, is making a difference in the lives of students and teachersat Geelong Grammar School.Why Positive Education now?

When nations are at war, poor, in famine or in civil turmoil, it is natural that theirinstitutions should be about defence and damage, about minimising the disablingconditions of life. When nations are wealthy, at peace and in relative harmony,however, they, like Florence of the 15th century, turn to what makes life worth living,not just to curtailing the disabling conditions of life, but to building the enablingconditions of life.

What is all our wealth for, anyway? Surely not just to produce more wealth. Grossdomestic product (GDP) was, during the Industrial Revolution, a decent firstapproximation to how well a nation was doing. Now, however, every time we build aprison, every time there is a divorce or a suicide, the GDP goes up. The aim of wealthshould not be to blindly produce more wealth, but to produce more well-being.

308M. E. P. Seligman et al.

General well-being—how much positive emotion, how much engagement at work,how much meaning in life our citizens have—is now quantifiable and it complements,and makes sense of, GDP. Public policy can be aimed at increasing general well-beingand the successes or failures of policy can be measured quantitatively against thisstandard.

Prosperity-as-usual has been equated with wealth. The time has come for a newprosperity, a prosperity that combines well-being with wealth. Learning to value andto attain this new prosperity must start early—in the formative years of schooling—and it is this new prosperity, kindled by Positive Education, that the world can nowchoose.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost we thank the faculty, students and staff of Geelong GrammarSchool, led by Stephen Meek, Charlie Scudamore, Debbie Clingeleffer-Woodford,John Hendry, Tony Inskter, Maria Hamilton and Hugh Kempster. Second, we wouldlike to thank our families who continue to support our efforts to develop PositiveEducation concepts and curriculum.

Executive secretary, Elaine Pearson, took care of all the paperwork that kept theproject on track. We would also like to thank the principals from each campus foraccess to their faculty and students. Several teachers of the stand-alone courses wereparticularly instrumental to the success of the curriculum at the Corio and Timbertopcampuses. These exemplary educators include Steve Andrew, Justin Robinson,Hartley Mitchell, Margaret Bennetts, Scott Stevens, Andrew Monk, Mathew White,Prudence Southern, Emily Murcott, Tony Strazzera, Rob French and DeanDell’Oro. The innovators who infused Positive Education into their classroomsnumber in the dozens, but special appreciation is extended to Fiona Zinn, PamelaBarton, Jenny Cooper and Heather Thompson. Sherri Ernst hosted the visitingfaculty with aplomb. Finally, our deepest thanks go to Peter Schulman and RachelAbenavoli for the use of their amazing organisational skills.

We are grateful to the National Institute of Health (MH52270) for fundingresearch on the Penn Resiliency Program and the Department of Education for fund-ing research on the Positive Psychology Program (R215S020045).

The Penn Resiliency Program for Children and Adolescents is owned by theUniversity of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania has licensed thisprogramme to Adaptiv Learning Systems (King of Prussia, Pennsylvania). Karen J.Reivich and Martin E. P. Seligman own stock in Adaptiv Learning Systems andcould profit from the sale of this program. The other authors do not have financialrelationships with Adaptiv Learning Systems.Notes on contributors

Martin Seligman is Fox Professor of Psychology and Director of the Positive

Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Positive education309

Randal Ernst is the social science curriculum specialist for the Lincoln Public Schools

(Nebraska).

Jane Gillham is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College and Co-Director of the Penn Resiliency Program at the Positive Psychology Center,University of Pennsylvania.

Karen Reivich is a Research Associate and Co-Director of the Penn Resiliency

Program at the Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania.

Mark Linkins is the Director of Secondary Curriculum in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District (in Wallingford, Pennsylvania).References

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