Podium Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Positive Education in Practice – harnessing technology to conquer implementation barriers of cost and time. (#187)

Jacqui Francis 1 , Tan-Chyuan Chin 1 , Dianne Vella-Brodrick 1
  1. The University of Melbourne, Carlton North, VIC, Australia

Teachers in Australian Primary Schools are curious about positive psychology within education, with many looking at pathways for change or maintenance of current well-being practices. Theory and research suggests that successful implementation of efficacious positive psychology interventions relies on teacher and school readiness, having accessible resources (affordable and available), the capacity of the delivery agent/teacher (self-efficacy and competency), having cultural fit, as well as structural and process fidelity to the intervention. A bite-size online positive psychology tool may help to address these implementation factors. This study involved six Australian primary schools, 218 students and 20 teachers, trialling a free online website, including regular 10-15 minute bite-size lessons. Mixed method data collection included physiological and survey based quantitative well-being data of students, as well as teacher website implementation data including google analytics of website usage, classroom observations of website usage and teacher opinion surveys. As predicted this bite-size online resource was enthusiastically adopted by teachers, based on website usage data, teacher opinion surveys and researcher classroom observations, thus overcoming barriers of time and cost. A bite-size, online resource has potential to be up-scaled and delivered cost effectively to classroom teachers making positive education more widely accessible to school students.