Character Strengths Are Related to Students’ Achievement, Flow Experiences, and Enjoyment in Teacher-Centered Learning, Individual, and Group Work Beyond Cognitive Ability

Abstract

While character strengths have been found to predict educational outcomes beyond broad personality traits and cognitive ability, little is known about their differential contribution to success and positive learning experiences in different school settings. In this study, we use trait activation theory to investigate the relationships of students’ character strengths with achievement, flow experiences, and enjoyment in different learning situations (i.e., teacher-centered learning, individual tasks, and group work). In studying these relationships, we controlled for psychometric intelligence. Secondary school students ( N = 255; 46.3% male; mean age = 14.5 years) completed a self-report measure of character strengths, the VIA-Youth ( Park and Peterson, 2006b ). Cognitive ability was assessed using a standardized intelligence test (PSB-R; Horn et al., 2003 ) at baseline. Three months later, students completed the Flow Short Scale ( Rheinberg et al., 2003 ) adapted to the three learning situations and indicated their typical enjoyment of these situations. Both the students and their teachers ( N = 18; 50% male; mean age = 44.8 years) provided ratings on school achievement in each of the three learning situations. Results indicate that, as expected, (a) certain character strengths (love of learning and perseverance) show consistent relationships with achievement and positive learning experiences (flow and enjoyment) above and beyond cognitive ability across all learning situations, whereas (b) other character strengths show differential trait-outcome relationships (e.g., the character strength of teamwork was predictive of achievement and positive learning experiences in group work). Taken together, these results suggest that different character strengths play a role in different school situations and that their contribution to explaining variance in educational outcomes is incremental to the contribution of cognitive ability.

The Relationships of Team Role- and Character Strengths-Balance With Individual and Team-Level Satisfaction and Performance

“…However, the strengths of teamwork and fairness also contributed to both variables, and were the only two strengths that yielded significant effects on teamwork quality on the team level. Both strengths also yielded the highest numerical relationships to selfrated team performance, which is in line with findings on the relationships of character strengths with students' performance in group work (Wagner et al, 2020b). For individual performance, perseverance was found to be most important and related to both self-and supervisor-rated performance, in line with earlier findings.…”

Promoting Sustainable Wellbeing: Integrating Positive Psychology and Environmental Sustainability in Education

“…Identify and Use Strengths–coincides with extensive research supporting the connection between using one’s character strengths and various aspects of wellbeing [ 48 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 ], especially within the school setting [ 48 , 107 , 108 , 109 ]. In the early 2000s, Peterson, Seligman, and colleagues identified 24 human character strengths that constitute the best of humans’ personalities [ 110 ].…”

“…In the positive education context, empirical evidence shows that character strengths can be enhanced through explicit teaching [ 48 ]. Teaching to identify and use character strengths in schools promotes students’ personal wellbeing [ 48 , 106 , 107 , 108 ] and, to some extent, their academic achievements [ 48 , 107 , 109 ]. It is also possible to develop specific character strengths such as curiosity, creativity, love of learning, and hope [ 48 ] and self-control skills [ 100 , 114 , 115 ].…”

Character Strengths and Fluid Intelligence

“…Furthermore, the most commonly used operationalization of intelligence was applied, namely, figural fluid reasoning, as in Raven's Matrices Test (Horn, 2009). The second study (data from Wagner et al, 2020) is characterized by a construct representative operationalization of general intelligence (Jensen & Wang, 1994) and self-reported character strengths of adolescents. The third study (data from the Zurich Strengths Program, a large research project described for example in Proyer et al, 2013;Buschor et al, 2013) is characterized by a very broad operationalization of fluid intelligence as well as self-and informant-reports of character strengths of adults (two separate samples).…”

“…In the original study (Wagner et al, 2020), 301 students from Swiss secondary schools participated. For the present research question, 15 participants were excluded because they had too little experience with the German language, did not provide their age, or had missing data on all tasks of the intelligence test resulting in a sample size of N = 286.…”