Browsing by Subject "character strengths education"

Positive pedagogy relies on seeing the good in people and focusing on strengths. In addition to learning, the pedagogical trend aims to increase well-being and happiness. Character strength education, which is closely attached to positive pedagogy, supports everyone to grow into an incomparable person with their own unique set of character strengths. Previous research has shown that character strength education is widely associated with success in life in many different areas. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of character strength intervention based on See the good! -pedagogy developed by Finnish researchers Lotta Uusitalo and Kaisa Vuorinen. The study focused in particular on six character strengths, which were perseverance, self-regulation, perspective-taking ability, creativity, social intelligence, and teamwork skills. The study observed the possible change in students' understanding and development of the strengths during intervention. In addition, the study examined the importance of sex in possible changes produced by the character strength education. This longitudinal research was part of a larger project in Finland called #uuttakoulua. The research data was collected from students in basic education (n = 240) in two different parts with an electronic questionnaire. The study included both test group that received character strength education (n = 184) and a control group that participated in traditional education (n = 56). IBM SPSS Statistics 24 was used for data analyzes. The analysis methods were the analysis of variance of repeated measurements and the t-test of repeated measurements. The analyzes revealed that both the understanding of social intelligence and perseverance in the test group increased statistically significantly compared to the control group. There was no statistical significance in the development of strengths between the test and control groups. Despite this, self-regulation, perspective-taking ability and social intelligence improved regularly with the participants in test group. According to the analyzes, gender was not a determining factor in the study. The results suggest that the program has the potential to increase students' understanding of character strengths and develop related skills regardless of gender.