Session Information
31 SES 14 B, How Do Learners Experience and Negotiate the Language Classroom Environment
Paper Session
Contribution
It has been undeniable that positive psychology have contributed to (i) encourage an awareness of the importance of the well-being of students and teachers to make learning more effective (Kao & Oxford, 2014), (ii) to increase learning and teaching potential by challenging the traditional roles of guided instruction by switching the focus of learning to one of personal fulfilment and enjoyment (Dörnyei, 2009), and (iii) to transform learning experiences aiming at empowering teachers and students to develop an understanding of their own feelings with a capacity for self-regulation thus developing positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (Seligman, 2011).
Positive psychology, the term, was first used in 1954 by Abraham Maslow in a book chapter where he noted that the
“science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illness, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height. It is as if psychology has voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, the darker, meaner half “(Maslow, 1954, p.354).
More than 40 years later, Martin Seligman reintroduced the term and proclaimed that psychology was “half-baked” (Seligman & Csikzentmihalyi, 2000), and more attention needed to be paid to the good in people and in the world. The promise of this new brand of positive psychology was clear: by using the same techniques and tools that help us explain weaknesses and prevent or treat illness, we could enhance our understanding of strengths and promote well-being (ibid.).
Applied positive psychology is concerned with facilitating good lives, enabling people to be at their best and, as such, it is as much an approach as a domain of inquiry. In clinical psychology, counselling and psychotherapy, applied positive psychology builds on the traditions of humanistic psychology and Carl Rogers' client-centred therapy (Robins, 2008). One of the underlying questions behind a portion of positive psychology research is whether it is possible to improve levels of well-being. This issue has significant relevance for individuals, public policy, health-care system and education (ibid.). Given the weighty implications of this field, we need to consider the amount of available research to account for the dynamic change processes within individuals in schools. This, therefore, is the main purpose of this paper: to review the current literature in relation to the uses of positive psychology in the field of education with a focus on the teaching and learning of modern languages.
There is much agreement that positive youth development takes place in families, peer groups, and out-home contexts, such as schools (Gilman, Huebner, & Buckman, 2008). Nevertheless, investigations of factors that contribute to optimal school experiences in youth have traditionally lagged behind scholarship examining the other two contexts. Research has shown that from the earliest ages, the quality of school experiences plays a contributory role in key developmental and learning milestones such as motivation (van Grinsven & Tillema, 2006), identity development (e.g., Gonzalez, 2009), health outcomes (Forrest, Bevans, Riley, Crespo, & Louis, 2013), and overall academic success (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral 2009). Further, the quality of experiences during the formative school years dictates, in part, the choices students make as adults. For example, longitudinal studies find that students who report more positive school experiences also report higher levels of mental and physical health as young adults (Reynolds & Ou, 2010; Wickrama & Vazsonyi, 2011), are less likely to engage in risk behaviours such as alcohol use (Locke & Newcomb, 2004), and report that they were better prepared for their future (Lapan, Gysbers, & Sun, 1997).
Method
The purpose of this presentation is to provide an updated account of the research published in Europe by undertaking a systematic literature review in relation to the three themes presented earlier, namely: (i) awareness of the importance of the well-being of students and teachers to make learning more effective (ii) challenge the traditional roles of guided instruction by switching the focus of learning to one of personal fulfilment and enjoyment, and (iii) the transformation of learning experiences aiming to teachers and students to develop an understanding of their own feelings with a capacity to develop positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. A systematic literature review employs carefully defined protocols to determine which studies are to be included, as well as their contributions in an unbiased manner (Boland, Cherry & Dickson, 2017). The current review followed a protocol indicated by the three purposes identified above as they provided the scope of the search whilst also establishing its boundaries. Additionally, a decision was made to focus on studies published in Europe between 2012 and 2017 as per the increase of the popularity of positive psychology in education. In fact, this constituted the main topic for the search. As part of the screening stage, different databases were used mainly EBSCO, Web of Knowledge, Cambridge Journals Online, Highware and Jastor, amongst others. The eligibility criterion was given by the identification of key words such as positive, psychology, learning, flow, well-being, anxiety, gratitude, compassion, self-esteem, hope and elevation. In order to avoid truncated searches, Boolean operators (OR, AND, NOT) were used. The review followed a qualitative stance which was centred on the contributions of positive psychology to classroom practices within instructed language classrooms. Whilst this was a well-defined topic, it was inevitable not to look into the wider relationships between studies in different areas of positive psychology and wider aspects of ‘education’ with the aim to compare and contrast findings from, for example, different subject areas and the teaching and learning of modern languages. The information from key texts (called ‘guidance’) was initially tallied following a simple tabular structure made up of four entries: (a) guidance document, (b) Year and place of publication, (c) Core focus and (d) reference -i.e. where the guidance was reported. The next stage in the analysis involved a thematic analysis following the three purposes of this project which, given the amount of information collected, was interpreted by means of a qualitative analysis software (NVivo).
Expected Outcomes
Most of the studies in positive psychology have been largely based on adult or gerontological samples. However, efforts have been made over the past 20 years to examine the good life in children for at least two reasons. Firstly, similar to what has been reported in adults, “mental illness” and “mental health” are distinct (although not orthogonal) constructs in youth. For example, among a sample of middle school students, Keyes (2016) reported that a significant number of youths showed low levels of psychological distress but also low psychological well-being. Nonetheless, based on most standardized self-report measures used in schools, which often focus on assessing psychological distress, these students would appear psychologically “healthy” even though their well-being reports would indicate otherwise (Suldo & Shaffer, 2017). A considerable number of findings in relation to well-being in the classroom are based on the theory of positive emotions which provides insight into how positive experiences not only broaden the way the language learner student experiences the world, but also supports well-being by building resources for the future (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012). Additionally, these studies appear to reveal that resilient language learners develop the condition of ‘hardiness’ and findings demonstrate that the cognitive, emotional and behavioural qualities of such a condition can help teachers unravel why certain individuals are less likely to quit when they encounter setbacks (Maddi, 2013). Finally, fulfilment and thriving involve more than just the absence of negative affectivity; thus, the significance of hope can transform the lives teachers and learners (Bullough & Hall-Kenyon, 2012). The data that emergence from the studies are being analysed using an iterative approach (Tracey, 2013) that entails moving back and forth from emergent themes in the data to existing theories and models in the literature in order to connect and progressively refine these topics.
References
Boland, A., Cherry, M.G. & Dickson, R. (2017) Doing a Systematic Review. A Student’s Guide. 2nd Ed. London: Sage. Bullough, R.V. & Hall-Kenyon, K. (2012) The call to teach and teacher hopefulness. Teacher Development, 15 (2) 127 – 140. Cohen, J., McCabe, E. M., Michelli, N. M., & Pickeral, T. (2009). School climate: Research, policy, practice, and teacher education. Teacher’s College Record, 111, 180–213. Dörnyei, Z. (2009) Individual differences: Interplay of learner characteristics and learning environment. Language Learning, 59 (1) 230 – 248. Gilligan, T. D., & Huebner, E. S. (2007). Initial development and validation of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale—Adolescent version. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2, 1–16. Kao, T-A & Oxford, R.L. (2014) Learning language through music: A strategy for building inspiration and motivation. In Oxford, R.L and Griffiths, C. (Eds.) Language Learning Strategy Research in the Twenty-First Century (special issue, System: International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, 43), 114 – 120. Keyes (2016) Toward a science of mental health. In López, S.J. & Snyder, C.R. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 89 – 95. Lapan, R. T., Gysbers, N. C., & Sun, Y. (1997). The impact of more fully implemented guidance programs on the school experiences of high school students: A statewide evaluation study. Journal of Counseling & Development, 75, 292–302. MacIntyre, P. & Gregersen, T. (2012) Emotions that facilitate language learning: The positive broadeninig of the imagination. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2, 193 – 213. Maddi, S.R. (2013) Hardiness: The courage to grow from stresses. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1 (3) 279 – 298. Maslow, A. (1954) Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper. Robbins, B.D. (2008) What is the Good Life? Positive Psychology and the Renaissance of Humanistic Psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 36 (2) 96-112. Seligman, M.E.P (2011) Flourish: A Visionary Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. New York: Free Press. Seligman, M.E.P. & Csikzentmihalyi, M. (2000) Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55 (1) 5 -14. Suldo, S. M., Shaffer, E. J., & Riley, K. N. (2017). A social-cognitive-behavioral model of academic predictors of adolescents' life satisfaction. School Psychology Quarterly, 23 (1), 56-69. Tracey, S. (2013) Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. As per word limit, there are more references to be added to the list.
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