An intervention concerning achievement motivation was conducted in six primary and two secondary schools in southwestern Germany (N = 800). The intervention involved 26 hours of training. The training (Brohm, 2012) provided didactical guidance for teachers as well as exercises that were designed to strengthen students particularly with regard to their self-perception, perceived self-efficacy, attributional styles, social relationships and goal attainment. The two underlying hypotheses of the study predicted that: 1) student’s long-term achievement motivation would increase after the intervention and 2) student’s long-term wellbeing (flourishing) would increase as well. Surveys were undertaken at three measurement points (a pretest, a post test, and a follow-up test was conducted six months after the intervention). Both hypotheses could not be verified in the empirical analysis (rm ANOVA).
These findings led us to conduct a subsequent qualitative investigation of written feedback from the participating teachers. This analysis revealed five key success factors (teacher commitment, grade of effort, role of the students, project organization and methods of the intervention) which seem to be crucial for successful positive-psychological interventions in organizations. The presentation concludes with recommendations for an optimized design of positive-psychological interventions in educational organizations.