Powerpoint - Kansas Association of School Psychologists
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Transcript Powerpoint - Kansas Association of School Psychologists
Applying Positive Psychology to Education
John C. Wade, Ph.D.
Emporia State University
Kansas Association of School Psychologists
2012 Fall Convention
Overview
Fundamentals of Positive Psychology
Creating Hope
Setting the Stage
Working From Strengths
Addressing Problems and Framing Solutions
Goals
Stimulate thinking
Approach, not just techniques
Foster reflection and intentionality
Interactive/exercises
Very Brief Introduction
to Positive Psychology
“Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what
makes us feel fulfilled.”
- Benjamin Spock
“The most basic assumption that positive
psychology urges is that human
goodness and excellence are as authentic as disease,
disorder and distress.”
- Christopher Peterson
Positive Psychology
Study and science of the factors that lead to
successful, meaningful and happy lives.
People want not only to move from feeling
miserable to feeling OK, but from feeling
OK to feeling good (satisfied, productive,
etc.)
Study of success, achievement, and positive
outcomes
Happiness Is…
According to some ancient Greek traditions, we
can’t answer if we are happy until after we die…
Happiness = set point + life circumstances +
volitional activity (Lyubormirsky, Sheldon, &
Schkade, 2005)
Or layman’s language:
Happiness = Genetics + Circumstances + Actions
Well Being
When have you experienced well-being?
Role of Circumstances
Lottery winner/paraplegics (Seligman, 2002)
Positive and negative implications of adaptation
We are poor predictors (Gilbert, 2006)
Actions are only area we have total control over
(Seligman, 2002)
We don’t habituate to actions like we do our
circumstances (Lyubormirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade,
2005).
Best Route to Happiness:
Intentional Activities
Gratitude – counting our blessings.
Inhibits social comparisons.
Lyubormorski’s (1994) research – gratitude had the
strongest correlation with happiness.
Examples:
Writing down three things each day we are
thankful for.
The Bottom Line
Barbara Frederickson – Positive emotions are not just good
because they feel good. Research indicates that when we
feel positively we are likely to learn more, be more creative,
demonstrate more initiative and be more productive.
Negative emotions tend to be of immediate help in urgent
situations, positive emotions tend to broaden our repertoire
of adaptive behaviors and lead to growth and development
over time.
Broaden and Build studies (e.g., Fredrickson, 2001;
Fredrickson, 2003)…
Candy study (Isen, Rosenzweig, & Young, 1991) …
Facilitating Hope
Hope and Competence
Typically, people have hope who have
successfully met developmental tasks
(Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, (2005).
Lopez et al. (2004) – importance of setting
developmentally appropriate goals
Learning zone, not comfort or panic zone
Bandura – mastery…
Hope and Growth
Hope = Agency + Pathways (Snyder &
Lopez, 2007)
Goals
Goals direct attention and effort toward goal
relevant activities and away from goal
irrelevant activities.
Locke and Bryan (1969) – car driving (goal)
research
Goals
Have energizing function – higher goals
equated with higher effort
Persistence
Arousal, discovery, and/or use of task
relevant knowledge and strategies
For new tasks people engage in deliberate
planning to develop strategies to help attain
goals (Locke & Latham, 2002)
Feedback
Connect to goals
Clear and direct
Losado ratio
Implementation Intentions
Putting goals into practice
Implementation Intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999)
Engaging the Elephant
The elephant and the rider (Haidt, 2006)
Hope - springboard for growth, providing
energy and momentum to power the work
required for change
Engineering for early success
Punch-cards
5 minute room rescue
How to?
Discuss an example of when you have
helped someone become more hopeful.
Discuss an example of when someone else
has helped to make you feel more hopeful.
Setting the Stage
“All systems are perfectly designed to achieve the
results they are currently getting.”
- Marv Weisbord, organizational consultant
“First we shape our structures and then our
structures shape us.”
- Winston Churchill
Enabling Institutions
“Institutional level virtues” – characteristics
of the organization that contribute to the
fulfillment of its members - (Peterson, 2006)
Think of good educational settings you
have been associated with. What factors
made them good?
Four Follower Needs
Hope
Stability
Trust
Compassion
(Lopez, 2011)
Identifying & Working with
Strengths
Strengths Exercise
Share a story that illustrates a strength of
yours.
Partner – reflect back the strength(s) you
heard in the story.
Studying What Is Right
With People
Buckingham and Coffman (1999) –
Don’t focus on the weaknesses, work with the
strengths.
Focusing on strengths helps us deal with deficits.
Clues to Strengths
Flow…
Satisfaction
Desire to learn more
Excellence
Identifying Strengths
Bill…
Questions to ask?
Positive Deviance
Positive deviance (e.g., Spreitzer & Sonensheim,
2003)
Success builds on success.
Positive deviance –examples of success and
building upon these
Success comes from using strengths, not
improving deficits
Milton Erikson case example
Driver’s ed example
Academic Role Models
William James
Role models for students
Think of characteristics you admire of a peer or other
role model you know - be specific
Which of these characteristics do you already
demonstrate?
How can you amplify these even more?
What characteristics would you like to possess more?
What is a realistic step to make progress?
Role Models
Impact of priming
Standardized tests scores
Athletic ability
Celebrity vs. information priming
Scared straight
Reducing teen pregnancy
Pygmalion studies
Fostering a Positive
Pygmalion Effect
Start early
Identifying real strengths
Helpful to be armed with info before meeting student
More specific the better
Engineer early success
Operate in individual student’s “learning zone”
Addressing Weaknesses
Use strengths to address weaknesses
Remember how you have worked with or
overcome problem areas in the past
Strengths based approach – report card…
Addressing Problems and
Framing Solutions
“A problem well-stated is a problem half solved.”
- Charles F. Kettering
“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, but learning to
dance in the rain.”
- Anonymous
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can
be made.”
- Neils Bohr
Exercise
Describe a time when you have had a
problem or struggled with a situation.
If you grew and made positive change, what
enabled you to make progress? (Personal
factors, situational factors…)
If you remained stuck and were unable to
make progress, what factors kept you stuck?
(Personal factors, situational factors…)
Shrink the Problem
Engineer to early success to create hope
Use scaling.
Student reports being at 2 or 3. Supervisor
notes being 20-30% of the way there.
What would it take to get you to a 3 or 4?
“What’s the next action?”
Adapted from Heath & Heath (2010)
Learning Orientation
Positively associated with performance
(Button, Matthieu, & Zajac, 1996; Phillips & Gully, 1997)
Learning viewed as process
Mistakes – opportunities to learn and reevaluate strategies
Mindset Training
Create the expectation of failure along the
way
Carol Dweck (e.g., 2006)
Growth mindset recognizes effort rather than
skill
Junior high students – “brain is like a muscle”
training
“Everything can look like a failure in the
middle.”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Harvard professor
Failure
Convey to students the paradoxically
optimistic message – you will struggle, but
succeed in the end.
NY teacher grades
Patina
Eastern/Narrative Perspectives
Eastern perspective/dialectic
What is being left out?
Narrative Therapy
The person is not the problem, the problem is the
problem
Envision possible different narratives and future
directions
Discussion/Questions
Contact Info
John Wade
[email protected]