Browsing by Author "Tarkamo, Iida"

Goals. Positive education aims to increase students’ well-being and overall happiness. It is also used in order to find out their individual strengths. These character strengths can then be used for the benefit of themselves and other students. Positive education seeks to help students flourish in all of their doing. The purpose of my study was to do an overview of positive education. My research task was to bring an understanding about the concept of positive education and to showcase arguments that support the use of positive education. I examined the methods of positive education that are being used or have been used in elementary schools and the results of these methods. In the study I highlighted what positive education actually means in practical work and what kind of results you are able to obtain using different methods. I displayed methods that are based on the PERMA model and introduced strength-based teaching. I also introduced a smaller set of other methods and an overview of teaching of well-being in elementary schools in order to explain more extensively the research field of positive education in elementary schools. Methods. I used a descriptive literature review research method in my study in which I aimed to introduce the subject as comprehensively as possible with the research material I used. I also sought out to analyze and amplify the concept of positive education with the research material. I collected the research data implicitly. The research material consists of seven sources, six of which are previous studies and one is a literary work. In the analysis I examine the methods of positive education that have been used previously and the results of using these methods. Results and conclusions. Based on the research material there are grounds for using positive education. The research shows that it has an influence on students’ well-being. Positive education increased students’ enthusiasm and positivity towards education. It also reduced symptoms of depression and stress as well as improved the relationships between the students. Positive education could be applied in many ways such as separate lectures or using different methods as part of the teaching. It could also be used as the sole basis of schools’ principles and culture. However, implementation of positive education faced challenges, one of which was that the students and teachers had negative attitudes towards the method. The subject has not been studied sufficiently at this point so further research would need to be carried out.