Hi All,
This is some background on Happiness Psychology and the ripple effect with students. It shows the many benefits and potential of implementing it into the class.
It relates to the first posting and explains why I am so passionate about this subject matter.
Happiness
Psychology
Background
·
Use of best practices to motivate and inspire
students
·
People naturally need to create and sustain
meaningful experiences for all students
·
The study of positive emotions, positive
character traits and enabling institutions (Seligman, Steen, Park &
Peterson, 2005, p. 410)
·
Valued experiences, growth, love, education and
play (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)
·
When individuals are aware of, pursue, and blend
engaged life, meaningful life and pleasant life = authentic happiness or a full
life achieved (Murray, 2003, Seligman, 2002, Seligman et al., 2005)
·
It’s about the capacity to love and vocation,
courage, interpersonal skills, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance,
forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent and
wisdom
·
create a system where positive thoughts ,
emotions and actions outweigh negative ones on a daily basis.
·
Concrete gestures (genuine smile)and lived
examples of a pleasant life
·
Immediate , consistent and encouraging
motivational feedback to all students in the class to eliminate the current
situation of boredom, frustration, humiliation, alienation and fear
·
play is determined not by the nature of the
activity but rather by the attitude towards the activity.
·
Without dopamine, human aspirations remain
frozen, as it were, in an endless winter of discontent…only the strongest
emotional messages instigate behavior. When dopamine synapses are active in
abundance, a person feels as if he or she can do anything…I call this emotional
circuitry the “seeking system” of the brain (Panksepp, 1998 pg. 144)
·
happiness is a learnable emotion
·
When we educators fail to appreciate the
importance of students’ emotions, we fail to appreciate a critical force in
students’ learning. Once could argue, in fact, that we fail to appreciate the
very reason that students learn at all, (Immordino-Young and Damasio 2007, pg.
9)
·
Something as simple as whistling a happy tune
really does seem to make a positive difference in out mindset.
·
A study by World Health organization on children
in 35 countries (currie et al, 2005) found that many children reported a rather
low level of satisfaction with school.
·
Most parents want happiness, confidence,
contentment, balance, good stuff, kindness, health and satisfaction for their
children.
·
The prevalence of depression among young people
is shockingly high worldwide. Nearly 20% of youth experience an episode of
clinical depression by the end of high school (Lewinsohn et al. 1993).
·
Depression is about10x more common now than it
was 50 years ago (Wickramaratne et al, 1989)
·
Children and adolescents spend much of their
waking time in school. Most important goal for education is to prepare children
to become responsible citizens (Cohen, 2006)
·
Helps students identify their signature
characters and increase it in day to day life.
http://www.upworthy.com/this-kid-thinks-we-could-save-so-many-lives-if-only-it-was-okay-to-say-4-words?g=2&c=ufb1
PROS
·
reduces and prevents symptoms of depression and
anxiety
·
reduces hopelessness and increases optimism
·
reduces negative emotions and emphasis on
positive qualities.
·
broad social conpetenceand confidence
·
Happy teenagers go on to earn very substantially
more income 15 years later than less happy teenagers, equating for income,
grades and other obvious factors (Diener et al, 2002)
·
People experience more flow at work and home
(Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989)
·
Optimistic people are much less likely to die of
heart attacks than pessimists, controlling for all known physical risk factors
(Giltay et al., 2004)
·
Women who display genuine (Duchenne) smiles to
the photographer at age 18 go on to have fewer divorces and more marital
satisfaction than those who display fake smiles (Keltner et al., 1999)
·
Positive emotion reduces at least some racial
biases. For example, although people generally are better at recognizing faces
in their own race than faces of other races, putting people in a joyful mood
reduces this discrepancy by improving memory for faces of people from other
races (Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005)
·
Economically flourishing corporate teams have a
ratio of at least 2.9:1 of positive statements to negative statements in
business meetings, whereas stagnating teams have a much lower ratio;
flourishing marriages. (Gottman & levenson, 1999; Fredickson & Losada,
2005)
·
Hedonic Benefits (joy, love, contentment &
pleasure) = Pleasant life
·
State of flow = engaged life = loss of
self-conciousness, time stops for youàbeing
one with the music (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
·
Deploy your highest strengths and talents to
meet the challenges that come your way, it Facilitates learning.
·
Leads to a meaningful life as we have better
connections with people and thus transcends the self (Durkheim, 1951/1897;
Erickson 1963)
·
less dependence on drugs to feel better and
healthier.
·
Improve the climate of the school as a whole and
fosters growth
·
foster gratitude
·
Celebrating little victories contributes to the
quality of life of a child as the child feels valued by others, creating a
positive cycle.
·
Start appreciating the little things that make a
difference in life.
·
Inspires creativity, fulfillment and well-being.
FUTURE
·
How people celebrate good events that happen to
their spouse is a better predictor of future love and commitment than how they
respond to bad events (Gabe et al., 2004)
·
Increase students’ ability to handle day-to-day
stressors and problems that are common for most students during adolescence.
·
Teach students to think more realistically and
flexibly about the problems they encounter
·
Teaches assertiveness, creative brainstorming,
decision making, relaxation and several other coping and problem solving skills
·
greeting each student with eye contact and
smile, connecting on a friendly level (butler & Anderson, 2002; Foster
& Lloyd
·
Engage in activities relevant to their current
life circumstances, higher flourishing environment
·
Students interested and enjoying their learning
experience and have a state of arousal or excitement
·
Task skill balance, goal setting and
self-assessment, teacher behavior modeling skills and feedback from peers
·
Fun and rewarding activities in class and
through extracurricular activities.
·
Talking with students, learning about their
likes and dislikes, asking about activities they have not previously
experienced and incorporating this information into daily lessons to enhance
student experience and interest.
·
Identify student passions, be flexible to
explore and to create an exciting, engaging and relevant educational
environment.
·
measure how much positive experience you had
daily, how much actions portray genuine positivity, enthusiasm and interest
towards education
·
More authentic relationships with students
·
More people smiling naturally as they are
genuinely happier.
·
Positive effects on a daily basis.
·
Ability to become absorbed in whatever activity
one is engaged in at the present moment, thus live in the moment and not dwell
so much on the past.
·
The engaged life occurs when students are happy
not because of what they do, but because of how they do it.
·
Promoting engagement based on feelings of
autonomy, personal control, optimal challenge and overall well-being are all
effective ways to enhance the quality of education (Alderman, Beighle &
Pangrazzi, 2006)
·
Focusing on individual strengths and motivating
students toward self-determined behaiour that makes them feel competent, in
control and connected to others is essential to the pursuit of an engaged life
(Kilpatrick, Hebert & Jacobsen, 2002)
·
A greater good for society
·
Increased levels of kindness, humanity, justice,
temperance, love social intelligence, fairness and teamwork.
·
Focusing on and practicing activities that deal
with good and moral qualities such as gratitude can increase happiness
(Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005)
·
achievement of happiness is one of the most
important goal of humankind (Fordyce, 1977)
·
Happy people, hold the belief that life is under
their control, rather than controlled by others or chance and view goals as
achievable.
·
Richer and deeper learning experiences.
·
Higher health as individual can distinguish
cause and effect.
