Workshop 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Integrated Strengths Based Approaches to Early, Junior and Middle Year Schooling (#376)

David Kolpak 1
  1. St Peter's College, St PETERS, SOUTH AUSTRALIA, Australia

"The curriculum is too crowded!” is the usual response when asked to develop cross-curriculum wellbeing initiatives in Schools. How can strengths-based frameworks for the Junior and Middle Years align with the curriculum? How do teachers put policy into practice? Concurrently, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman’s (2004) character strengths and virtues provided educators with a lexicon to create frameworks that introduced strengths-based activities. Some schools developed discrete strengths initiatives based on the language of their work; however, models of whole school approaches aligned with key learning areas and learning outcomes are rare. While individual educators warm to strengths based initiatives collective whole school adoption across policy, practice and procedure can be challenging. This workshop looks at implementation strategies of strengths at St Peter’s College, Adelaide, where strengths were a unifying factor in enabling cultural growth in a Junior School (n = 560). The presentation will: 1) report a knowledge transfer model to incorporate strengths-based science into learning and teaching outcomes 2) identify curriculum planning procedures that unlocked the “positive core” of staff to engage in strengths based initiatives focusing on students’ growth and learning incorporating students strengths and their own 3) report on successful examples of evidence of student learning.

  • Select one of the following conference tracks which best describes your submission area: Positive Education