Positive Psychology Practitioner Certificate | A Radical Change in our Education System

Our current schooling model is outdated, inefficient, and fundamentally wrong. Positive education is a new term that describes an alternate form of education. It is based on using positive psychology to not only promote a student’s academic success, but the improvement of their character and personal well-being as well.

            Too often school systems are only focused on test scores and graduation rates. The personal growth of each individual student is left by the wayside in favor of shooing them through the grade system. PositivePsychology Training will look to change this completely. It is still in its infant stages as far as practical application goes, but studies point towards this style of education as a possible solution to our lackluster education setup. Read ahead to see how positive education came about, and what its future promises to be.

            History of Positive Education

            While there is no specific study or scientific journal that introduced positive education as a school system reform idea, John Dewey was one of the earliest psychologists to recognize schools as a place where many social ideals are built and promoted a change in the oppressive nature of most public schools.

            Too often, schools teach students to sit down and listen for eight hours a day with very few breaks. This is not how children are built to learn. They need to explore, be creative, run around and pursue their interests. Positive education recognizes that if alternate techniques for teaching are used, children will not only be happier but also learn better.

            Elizabeth Hurlock conducted a study and found that positive reinforcement was more effective at teaching than negative reinforcement such as punishment.

Many more general psychology studies have found that positive reinforcement works in numerous scenarios with children. If this positive reinforcement is implemented in schools, it is reasonable to expect the children to perform well in learning and testing.

 

            Application of Positive Psychology

            People assume that positive education is a way to coddle children. Participation trophies, snowflakes, and impractical are some of the words thrown around to attach a negative connotation to the use of positive psychology.

            School doesn’t need to be harsh to teach children. It doesn’t need to be uniform and not everyone needs to follow the same path. This new form of education calls for more individualized and empowering forms of learning.

            The Geelong Grammar School in Australia is one of the many private schools in the world that has adopted a positive psychology model for their curriculum.

            Their website states: “The key tenets of Positive Psychology centre on increasing human flourishing through cultivating positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and achievement.”

            Engagement, positive relationships and meaning are woefully absent in much of today’s school system. Much of the present-day organization is based on rigid schedules and curriculums. Children have to finish x amount of homework, reach x score on a standardized test and fulfill x amount of hours in a classroom setting. Kids as young as six and seven years old are expected to sit down at a desk and silently listen to their teacher lecture.

            Positive education calls for this format to be torn down and replaced with a more engaging form of education. Teachers will work more closely to ensure students are improving not only intellectually, but emotionally as well. Proponents of this education system want more for the children of the world to be taught how to sit down and be quiet.

            Positive psychology has shown to lead students to grow more independently, learn from their mistakes, build a passion for improving, gain an entrepreneurial spirit, become more empathetic, and even develop more emotional maturity. The effects of catering education to each individual child and focusing on growth instead of test scores has a positive outcome on every aspect of the students’ lives.

 

            The Future of Positive Education

            As is expected when any major change comes to education, there has been pushback to the positive education movement. The No Child Left Behind Act is the last major reform made to the public school system and was implemented back in 2001. The act called for more standardized testing and increased funding for schools that met certain testing metrics.

This has been cited as the main reason for schools focusing on utilitarian education. They want every student to reach the bare minimum for the school to receive funding. There has been pushback to this act by many different teachers’ unions and parent groups to this act, but so far, no alternative has taken a strict hold. That’s where positive education comes into play.

            Positive education is on the rise in many different aspects of education. There are even studies being performed on students in medical school. This study, published in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, even found that “A positive learning environment helps students succeed, affects their moral development, and models a humanistic approach to medicine.”

            Positive Psychology Practitioner highlights not only a shift in teaching philosophy, but the way we understand child rearing as a whole. Our current school system was shaped by the Baby Boomer generation. When schools encountered a huge influx of students they weren’t prepared to deal with, they had to figure out how to successfully educate every student as efficiently and quickly as possible.

            Now, we have the resources and technology to reverse this course of oppressive education. Positive education is one of the many routes being explored by private institutions and childhood psychologists. It isn’t the only approach, not even close, but it is promising after so many positive studies.

            Even if positive education doesn’t work out like many expect it to, the simple fact that we are exploring education alternatives proves that it is time for a transformation. The world is constantly changing and positive education asks that education matches that change.