CAN you really teach character at school?

Positive education is a model of education built around the concepts that underpin Positive Psychology — the Science of Wellbeing.

One of the core concepts of positive psychology is understanding and using character strengths.

Leading researchers in the field, Martin Seligman and the late Chris Peterson established 24 character strengths that they say are valued regardless of culture, ethnicity or religion.

They argue that each strength is present in our character to a more or lesser degree. The strengths that are the most prominent are called our signature strengths. Furthermore they suggest that if we engage our signature strengths on a regular basis in the service of something greater than ourselves, that is the key to living a meaningful life and having a greater sense of wellbeing.

Many schools are now looking into how they can embed the teaching of these character strengths into their schools.

The research suggests that amongst other things, intellectual and temperance strengths predicted school performance and achievement, interpersonal strengths related to school social functioning, and temperance and transcendence strengths predicted wellbeing (Shoshani Slone, 2012).

Whilst in a study of adolescents’ character strengths and career/vocational interests, intellectual strengths were related to investigative and artistic career interests, transcendence and other-oriented strengths were related to social career interests, and leadership strengths were associated with enterprising career interests (Proyer, Sidler, Weber, Ruch, 2012).

Such findings raise questions about whether we should value character strengths as much as academic strengths, and if so, then how do we teach them?

Some schools teach positive education and character strengths explicitly, in specific classes with their own curriculum and space on the timetable.

Other schools introduce it by embedding the concepts into the existing curriculum, for example examining the character strengths of a book’s main protagonist.

Others combine the two approaches.

One thing’s for sure, wellbeing is no longer the sole domain of the pastoral staff and the counsellor, and the most innovative schools are not only looking at how to embed ICT into their teaching, but also how to ensure students are engaging their signature strengths on a regular basis to achieve educational and personal wellbeing outcomes.

You can see an overview of the research surrounding character strengths here: haz.la/1fDUAz9

Dan Haesler is a consultant, writer and international keynote speaker. Read his blog at danhaesler.com or follow him on Twitter at @danhaesler