Browsing by Author "Alin, Mariel"

Objectives. Previous studies have shown that positive psychology interventions have positive outcomes on adults and adolecents well-being. The aim of this study was to investigate what are the effects to children when using positive psychology in comprehensive school. I also wanted to find out how positive psychology can be used in school to support students well-being. Method. The method of this study is a systematic literature review. In this systematic literature review I moved from defining the topic to collect the data and analyzing it. The criteria for the data were conducted to my research questions. My data consists of peer reviewed articles which were available in EBSCOhost-service or free databases from University of Helsinki. Search terms I used were ”positive psychology”, ”intervention” and ”school”. Within my searching criteria I picked six articles published between 2011 and 2013. Every article dealt with positive psychology as a part of teaching in comprehensive school level. Results and conclusions. The results of my research shows that with positive psychology it was possible to get positive effects to childrens well-being at comprehensive school. Childrens satisfaction towards life increased, self-esteem rised and symptoms of stress and depression decreased. The above-mentioned effects were achieved by positive psychology exercises where used methods were drawing, writing, observing and discussion just to name a few. In Finland the study of positive psychology and its possibilities are still rare. Further study about the subject would be really interesting as well as trying to find out how positive psychology could be used in Finnish school context.