Evaluating positive education in a secondary school

Abstract

Educators today stress that young people need to ‘develop character’ in order to succeed in school and in life, yet there is a shortage of scientifically based knowledge about how adolescents develop these character strengths that contribute to success. One approach that has the potential to add to our knowledge in this area is positive education. The concept of positive education brings together principles of ‘positive psychology’ and good teaching practices. Positive education involves implementing approaches that focus on optimizing students’ specific skills that can help strengthen their character and resilience, improve their relationships, create positive emotions and wellbeing, and enhance personal motivation. Much of the focus in Positive Education is on the taxonomy of character strengths known as “Values in Action” (VIA). Currently in Hong Kong, positive education is an approach being implemented in some but not all secondary schools, but to date there has been few studies of its effectiveness. The study proposed here seeks to address this gap by evaluating a school-based positive education curriculum, using a two-wave longitudinal project. The objectives of the study are (i) To study students’ learning experiences and gains from participating in an online service-learning program as a part of the positive education curriculum of the case school; (ii) to examine the impact of positive education curriculum on the development of five key adolescent character strengths (namely: spirituality, gratitude, perseverance, kindness, and self-regulation). If the study shows significant benefits from positive education, this may encourage other secondary schools in Hong Kong to increase their focus on the approach to help all students live resilient and purposeful lives. The research involved three studies. Study One was the process of validating the Chinese language instruments to be used in Study Two. The first study, involving 237 Secondary One male students, showed that all instruments yielded good to excellent reliability (internal consistency). Study Two employed a two-wave longitudinal online VIA-Y-96 survey, PANAS and SWLS to investigate the impact of the positive education curriculum. The result revealed that kindness was statistically correlated between positive education and character strength development. The result also showed character strengths playing a role in reducing negative affect even when the involved students were under tremendous stress from the COVID – 19 Pandemic during the intervention period. Study Three adopted a qualitative approach to data collection using focus group meetings with 20 Secondary Two students. The qualitative data from the focus group interviews offered preliminary evidence to supplement our understanding of how online service learning could help to promote students’ character strengths of gratitude, kindness, perseverance, and self-regulation. Strength in spirituality was not identified in the analysis; it is possible that this attribute has not yet emerged in junior form students. The data also found the enhancement of love, teamwork and social intelligence, three character strengths not mentioned in the preliminary classroom training. It is believed that development of these three strengths may have come naturally from the cooperation between classmates during the program.