Looking back to look forward: Reviewing your school’s positive education journey

Since 2009, Knox Grammar School has been on a journey to promote the wellbeing of each student and staff member through their Positive Education initiatives. PESA recommends that established Positive Education schools undergo “regular re-evaluation of their wellbeing strategy to ensure maximum efficacy”.

The Knox Positive Psychology Team is creating a framework for Positive Education-based schools to conduct their own review, with the intent of understanding progress, celebrating success and planning for the future. The aim of this ‘Spark’ session is to briefly outline this framework and present preliminary findings from a strength-based perspective exploring staff perceptions of Positive Education at Knox.

Dassos, L-K., Glassie, S. (2022). Looking back to look forward: Reviewing your school’s positive education journey. Invited workshop presentation at the 2022 Australasian Wellbeing in Education Conference, 6-8 Oct, Sydney Australia.

A model for holistic wellbeing in education

Positive Education combines the science of positive psychology with best practice teaching to promote flourishing and thriving within school communities. This poster presentation details an evidence-based Positive Education model to promote holistic academic, social and emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing of each individual within a school community.

This model was developed via a two-stage process. The first stage involved a broad-scale review of the child and adolescent wellbeing literature, and related school-based wellbeing programs. The second stage entailed a systematic review of domain-specific interventions within the school context, to evaluate whether particular psychological abilities and traits can be taught effectively and whether these have meaningful effects on overall wellbeing.

This model offers invaluable clear, practical, effective and evidence-based intervention strategies to support holistic wellbeing across students, staff and the whole of school community.

Glassie, S., Dassos, L-K., Lazarus, O’Regan, P. (2023). A model for holistic wellbeing in education. Accepted for presentation at the APS College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists, Feb 17-18, Melbourne Australia.