Positive education: Learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery

Systems informed positive psychology

“…PP studies are also prone to 'cookbookery', in which study designs and analyses are forced into specific techniques that the researcher is familiar with (often a t test or ANOVA), but are misaligned with the purpose and intention of the study, or 'mathematistry', in which elegant statistical solutions are created that have little forbearance on real world processes (often seen in complicated structural equation models tested with cross-sectional data) (Box, 1976). While scholarship within the field has matured over the past decade, such nuances are often not translated into everyday discourse, with activity running ahead of the science, the proliferation of maverick providers with questionable programs, and rhetoric that overclaims what PP can do (White, 2017;White & Kern, 2018). While alternative approaches may not stem such misuses of the science, the unacknowledged assumptions that drive common practices and discourse in the field limit the efficacy and capacity for wellbeing practices to be embedded in real world contexts in a sustainable manner.…”

“…Many interventions that were developed and tested by researchers in laboratories or online with willing participants under controlled conditions look very different to how these interventions are implemented and applied in everyday contexts such as schools and organizations, where the isolation of boundaries to individuals is not practically possible. Modifications of the original intervention might reflect helpful adaptations for local contexts or might be diluting and changing the intervention such that practices are not actually evidence informed (Halliday, Kern, Garrett, & Turnbull, 2019;White & Kern, 2018). Rather than claiming that a study provides evidence that an intervention 'works', rigorous processes are needed that identify the conditions under which interventions are beneficial, how interventions are implemented, and factors that impact the implementation process (e.g., Cahill et al, 2019).…”

SEARCH: A Meta-Framework and Review of the Field of Positive Education

“…Over time, accumulation of these more concrete, lower-order skills builds the higher-order capacity of emotional management, a core aspect of wellbeing. The development of a positive education meta-framework will, therefore, assist scholars and practitioners to bring together the range of different interventions and deliver them in ways that cohesively build the higher order 'pathways' to wellbeing, thus addressing the criticism of Thomas et al (2016) of fragmentation and assuaging the concerns of White and Murray (2015) and White and Kern (2018) of interventions being ineffective or harmful.…”

“…The vastness of the field is confronting for schools who are left not knowing which of the hundreds of different interventions will best apply to their students. White and Colleagues (White and Murray 2015;White 2016;White and Kern 2018) have argue that this can lead to ineffective, or even harmful, outcomes from well-meaning interventions. Thomas et al (2016) ague that despite the increased interest in school wellbeing, the field lacks conceptual clarity and has failed to develop useable policies and frameworks which has led to a "fragmented approach to implementation that is inconsistent with current best-practice knowledge" (p. 507).…”

“…The ability to meaningfully integrate science into comprehensive and testable models of student wellbeing seems the next logical step for evolving the science. Additionally, as White and Kern (2018) argue "alongside empiricism, a clear valuing of the practical application by educators is needed" (p. 2). Borrowing from the call of Thomas et al (2016) we argue the development of a meta-framework can assist both scholars and practitioners to develop effective positive education interventions.…”