Symposium 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Character In The UK Classroom: Examples Of When It Has Worked, When It Hasn't, And Stumbling Blocks To Understanding Character (#242)

Elizabeth Wright 1
  1. Resilience Wellbeing Success, Leeds, WEST YORKSHIRE, United Kingdom

Co-founder of Resilience Wellbeing Success programme will explore how we can bring the research and results of positive education into UK school curriculum and classrooms, but also look at the difficulties that exist and how we overcome these.  

Looking at anecdotal evidence of positive education, with a focus on character strengths, will show there is still a long way to go in the UK in embedding interventions at classroom level.

Research by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues shows that when character is embedded into schools at a curriculum level the impact on pupils behaviour and ability to make right choices increases - so it is crucially important to enable teachers to make character a daily part of the curriculum, in their classrooms.

This presenter will talk about specific examples of where bringing character strengths into the classroom has worked. She will also discuss and share examples of stumbling blocks when engaging with teachers to explore character strengths.

Comparisons will also be made with use of character strengths in the other countries represented on the panel to enable wider discussion with the panel and audience about the potential use and pitfalls of bringing character into curriculum and classroom.