What is Positive Education?

In many schools, staff and students are disengaged and morale is low, yet school management do not know the full extent of this because it's not regularly or thoroughly assessed. Many schools and wider school communities are now looking to ascertain, measure, improve, the wellbeing of their staff and students through Positive Education. Positive Education the implementation of positive psychology teachings in school communities to help improve wellbeing. Positive Psychology is the study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals, communities and organisations to thrive (Gable & Haidt, 2005, Sheldon & King, 2001).

There is no set curriculum for Positive Education and schools currently implement it according to their circumstances, however there are a range of evidence based frameworks and models available. Best practice is for a school to implement a program that includes all staff and students so that teachings can be used practically in everyday classes and school life.

Positive Education topics include:

• Wellbeing
• Character Strengths
• Relationships
• Mindsets
• Flow
• Hope
• Grit
• Gratitude
• Self-Determination Theory
• Positive Health
• Social Intelligence
• Emotional Intelligence
• Character Strengths
• Meaning and Purpose
• Resilience
• Mindfulness

Together when studied, identified, and practiced, these teachings and skills aim to create an environment where staff and students are flourishing - which is the ultimate goal of positive education.

Flourishing is defined as feeling good and doing good. Feeling good represents the value of a life high on positive emotions and engaging experiences whereas doing good represents functioning effectively, being connected, overcoming challenges, and contribute meaningfully to others (Keyes & Annas, 2009).

Why measure school wellbeing?

Empirical research confirms a strong correlation between high flourishing and high levels of work and academic engagement, and then productivity, and then to subsequent better outcomes and success. Just like you track overall academic performance at school, it’s important to also track overall wellbeing and the aspects that build and enable wellbeing, so that you can see the strong and weak areas across different groups within the school and determine how effective any wellbeing initiatives have been. Even if your school doesn’t have a Positive Education or other wellbeing initiative, it is very helpful to get baseline data to help guide you in the future.

Wellbeing Engagement Productivity Success

What does AWE offer?

AWE has produced an online assessment that assesses adult and student wellbeing scientifically, quickly, practically and affordably – we help enable and facilitate the work of those who work to improve others wellbeing in their school. The first step is to obtain more accurate, reliable and relevant data - an AWE assessment.

AWE provides your school with group level aggregate reports and data of how your school is currently positioned, how it is faring over time, and how effective its' wellbeing programmes and initiatives are. Your staff, parents and senior students are also provided with immediate reports that enable them to better understand how they are doing and what they can proactively do to improve their psychological wellbeing. We also provide different reporting options, custom questions, feedback, and instant alerts to notify you of students that need support.

But we already do a staff engagement survey?

Many schools assess the levels of engagement of their staff. These assessments usually focus on answering the question "who's engaged in our workforce?", and "at what level?", and depending on the particular assessment, provide limited information as to the root causes or drivers of engagement (the 'how' and 'why'). These assessments usually ask more practical and process orientated management questions, for example around workload and resources (particularly barriers to engagement). Measuring levels of engagement is distinctly different to wellbeing, and provides different information to pull different organisational levers. However, schools can also add their own engagement questions to the AWE assessment for staff.