Browsing by Author "Eerolainen, Eemeli"

Goals. Strength-based mindset can be seen in schools today. This is shown, for instance, in the newest curriculum of comprehensive school (POPS 2014). There is a plenty of positive findings in school context about character strengths, which are an essential part of strength-based mindset. Also, there is a plenty of research about self-efficacy among students. Still, not much research can be found about the relation between character strengths and self-efficacy among students. The aim of this study was to examine, how the identification and using of students’ own character strengths affect their self-efficacy. Another aim was to find, how a single character strength is related to students’ self-efficacy. This study is based on the classification of character strengths by Peterson and Seligman (2004) and the theory of self-efficacy by Bandura (1997). Method. The material of this research consisted of seven international research papers, which studied the relation between the character strengths and self-efficacy among students. The material was acquired from electronic databases. This study is a systematic literature review, which is an efficient method to study a specific topic. Material-based content analysis was used in the analysis of the material. The results and discussion. The results of this study showed that character strengths and self-efficacy are in a positive relation among students. The identification and utilizing of one’s character strengths predicted improved self-efficacy. The strongest predictor of self-efficacy was the character strength of hope and the weakest predictor was the character strength of modesty. These results highlight the importance of strength-based teaching in schools in order to support the development of students’ self-efficacy. Both the identification and utilizing of one’s character strengths and good self-efficacy has been found to improve the well-being and performance of students. Thus it is necessary to find new ways to support the development of these traits in schools.