Abstract:

Over the last few decades, many studies have been developed in the fields of Psychology and Neuroscience. Some of those studies have evidenced some aspects that influence our learning processes, thus offering new perspectives on how to design and generate learning situations. The latest trends in these disciplines seem to indicate that the impact of positive psychology is very relevant when it comes to cognitive processes and, thus, in Education.

Our current educational systems are still trying to apply these new findings to the teaching and learning processes, focusing on how to train teachers to implement innovative practices in their classes, in order to be more inclusive and efficient, among other issues. For this reason, Education has started to take into account research from other fields where this positive psychology is being applied, such as Management and Business, where Positive Leadership (PL), together with mindfulness and other techniques, are taking the lead. Professor Kim Cameron, one of the main researchers in this field, established, on the basis of the observation and analysis of several success cases, four elements for the implementation of PL, as well as its positive impact in performance, motivation and satisfaction.

The four key elements in PL, as stated by Cameron, would be positive climate, positive relationships, positive communications and positive meaning. All of them, when studied in depth, seem to be strongly interrelated and the consecution of one leads inevitably to the others, so most of the actions leaders take can be construed as belonging to more that one of the four pillars. Given the fact that PL has proven to be successful and efficient in different organizations, and given the fact that teachers are leaders in their own classes, where they need to organize and manage situations that could be assimilated to those present in companies, it seemed reasonable to try to apply those principles to class management, in order to improve the teaching and learning process and, if literature was right, to improve motivation, academic performance and satisfaction.

With all of these in mind, the present pilot study was carried out. Faculty members of several universities around the world worked together to transfer PL principles to their classes, to achieve objectives such as increasing students and teachers’ engagement, making classes more efficient in terms of academic results and performance and increasing, thus, the levels of students and teachers’ satisfaction. In order to put these theories into practice, faculty members were trained in PL and, after some meetings to discuss about the ways in which it could be implemented in the classroom, they designed a series of actions and activities to be carried out in undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

After the application of the PL principles in the classroom, students took a survey and participated in focus groups to express their perceptions on motivation, engagement and academic performance. Results were analyzed and compared to the marks obtained and the official satisfaction surveys, as well as with the observation notes taken by teachers. Findings resulted in three workshops and a handbook for university teachers. In this communication, we will briefly present the quantitative and qualitative results obtained, focusing on the reflections, good practices and lines for future research suggested by participants in the workshops.

Keywords:

Positive Education, motivation, engagement, academic performance