Is Being “Smart and Well Behaved” a Recipe for Happiness in Western Australian Primary Schools?

Abstract

Little is known about the relationship between students' perceptions of their behaviour and intellectual status within the classroom and their happiness. Educational practitioners consistently confront misbehaviour and academic failure; whether this is an indicator of student happiness is unclear. In this exploratory research two hundred and fifty six students were asked to self-rate their happiness via a faces scale. These students also completed a self-concept scale focussed on behavioural adjustment and intellectual and school status to determine whether these were factors that impacted on their happiness. Additionally, parents and teachers rated the participant's happiness. The findings of this research indicate that the students' perceptions of their behaviour and academic capability accounted for variance in their self-rated happiness. Both sub-scales accounted for more variance in the students' self-reported happiness than the teachers' and parents' ratings. The findings of this research are consistent with the few previous studies that attribute social factors such as belonging to childhood happiness.

They're always there for me! Friendship and meaning in young people's lives?

“…Phase 1. The selected school had invested considerable time and resources into their positive education program: the PERMA model (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments) (Seligman, 2012) and were aware of the research teams previous work in the area of happiness and wellbeing (O'Rourke & Copper, 2010;O'Rourke, Cooper & Gray, 2012). After meeting with the schools Director of Positive Education and the Dean of Year Seven students, it was felt that the 'mind's eye' project developed by Steger et al (2013) would provide a practical, student focused and potentially revealing project about what was important in young people's lives.…”

“…The faces scale was originally used by Withey (1974, 1976) and was seen as a simple but robust scale with a validity coefficient of 0.7-0.82. The scale has been used in previous happiness research (O'Rourke & Copper, 2010;O'Rourke, Cooper & Gray, 2012;Holder & Coleman, 2008) and is ideally suited to working with primary/early secondary students because it does not rely on the reading comprehension of participants. Pleasingly, at least 92% of all student responses in this study were within the three happiest categories (see Table 4).…”

Social coping and self-concept among young gifted students in Ireland and the United States: a cross-cultural study

“…A positive self-concept, particularly in the domain of achievement, is highly correlated with academic success in that domain, whereas self-esteem is unrelated (Marsh, 1990(Marsh, , 1993. Self-concept has been associated with happiness (Holder & Coleman, 2008;O'Rourke, Cooper, & Gray, 2012) and with academic achievement (Marsh, Byrne, & Shavelson, 1988;Marsh & Yeung, 1997a;Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009). Beliefs about one's academic abilities are predictive of academic achievement in those domains (Marsh et al, 2006;Marsh & Yeung, 1997a;Möller, Pohlmann, Koller, & Marsh, 2009;Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009) and there is evidence of a reciprocal effect of self-concept and achievement (Skaalvik & Hagtvet, 1990).…”

Examining the Relationships among Cognitive Ability, Domain-Specific Self-Concept, and Behavioral Self-Esteem of Gifted Children Aged 5–6 Years: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Thus, a positive self-concept experienced by students, particularly in the domain of achievement, has been associated with optimal learning and academic success in school as well as subsequent commitment, motivation, and educational aspirations [38,39]. Additionally, self-concept is positively related to various psychosocial factors, including happiness [40] and greater prosocial behaviors [41]. Furthermore, a strong self-concept is associated with low evaluative anxiety in school, as individuals who feel academically confident are usually successful in test situations, which, in turn, leads to less fear of failure in evaluative situations and therefore greater academic achievement [42].…”