Positive Psychology in Higher Education

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Positive Psychology in Higher Education

Positive psychology – the scientifi c study of happiness – is a rapidly burgeoning fi eld, and in no area more so than educa-tion. More departments than ever are offering courses in positive psychology, and demand for these courses is consistently high. Graduate programs offering concentrations in positive psychology have appeared at both masters and doctoral level. Educational institutions have expressed interest in using principles of positive psychology to inform institutional structure, faculty development and pedagogy.

Positive psychology has been taught and applied in higher education for almost as long as it has existed as a fi eld, but there is little in the way of published literature that brings all of these developments together. The chapters in this volume represent the use of positive psychology at all levels of higher education – from institutional practices and curricular devel-opment to pedagogy and the teaching of positive psychology content itself. This book provides an in-depth look at this exciting area of applied positive psychology which will be relevant to educators and administrators alike.

This book is based on a special issue of The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Acacia C. Parks is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Hiram College, USA. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, where she began her research program on positive psychological interven-tions. She is an Associate Editor of The Journal of Positive Psychology, and regularly teaches courses on positive, abnormal and health psychology.

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P ositive Psychology in Higher Education

Edited by

Acacia C. Parks

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK

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First published 2013 by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This book is a reproduction of articles fi rst published in The Journal of Positive

Psychology, volume 6, issue 6 and volume 6, issue 4. The Publisher requests to

those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN13: 978-0-415-63129-7

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Publisher’s Note

The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book may be referred to as articles as they are identical to the articles published in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.

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Citation Information

The following chapters were originally published in The Journal of Positive Psychology. When citing this material, please use the original issue information and page numbering for each article, as follows:

Chapter 2

Towards a positive university

Lindsay G. Oades, Paula Robinson, Suzy Green and Gordon B. Spence

The Journal of Positive Psychology, volume 6, issue 6 (November 2011) pp. 432–439

Chapter 3

Classroom assessment techniques for promoting more positive experiences in teaching and learning

Charles J. Walker

Chapter 4

Virtues and character strengths for sustainable faculty development

Thomas V. McGovern

Chapter 5

Incorporating positive psychology content and applications into various psychology courses

Jeana L. Magyar-Moe

Chapter 6

Integrating research training and the teaching of positive psychology

Chu Kim-Prieto and Carianne D’Oriano

Chapter 7

Adolescent popularity: A positive psychology course with a developmental foundation

Peter E.L. Marks

The Journal of Positive Psychology, volume 6, issue 4 (July 2011) pp. 314–319

Chapter 8

Happiness and self-knowledge: A positive psychology and judgement and decision-making hybrid course

Jaime L. Kurtz

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viii Chapter 9

‘Learning from success’: A close look at a popular positive psychology course

Pninit Russo-Netzer and Tal Ben-Shahar

Chapter 10

An experiential approach to teaching positive psychology to undergraduates

Robert Biswas-Diener and Lindsey Patterson

Chapter 11

Illustrating positive psychology concepts through service learning: Penn teaches resilience

Amy Kranzler, Acacia C. Parks and Jane Gillham

Chapter 12

Teaching positive psychology using team-based learning

Marie D. Thomas and Barbara J. McPherson

Chapter 13

Teaching tools for positive psychology: A comparison of available textbooks

Grant J. Rich

Chapter 14

Insight or data: Using non-scientifi c sources to teach positive psychology

Eranda Jayawickreme and Marie J.C. Forgeard

Chapter 15

Broadening perspectives: Strategies to infuse multiculturalism into a positive psychology course

Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti

Chapter 17

The moral of the story: The importance of applying an ethics lens to the teaching of positive psychology

Dianne A. Vella-Brodrick

The Journal of Positive Psychology, volume 6, issue 4 (July 2011) pp. 320–325

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ix

Preface

Two years ago, when I issued the call for proposals for the Journal of Positive Psychology’s special issue on “Positive Psychology in Higher Education,” my goal was to provide an up-to-date picture of the advancements positive psychology has made in higher education. As a graduate student at the Positive Psychology Center (PPC), I witnessed fi rsthand the birth and development of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program. I often heard by word-of-mouth about projects like the Geelong Grammar School and the Penn Resilience Project (both originating from the PPC), in which researchers have put positive psychology into practice in schools across the globe. I even received a few inquiries from programs hoping to use a positive psychology approach to foster personal development among students. My own experi-ence of teaching positive psychology in various forms for 9 years cultivated a curiosity as to how others were approaching the teaching of positive psychology. The existence of six positive psychology textbooks – a staggering number given how new positive psychology is as a subarea – suggested that other teachers of positive psychology were out there, and numer-ous; however, I could count on one hand the number of conversations I had ever had with colleagues about teaching positive psychology. It seemed unfortunate that although positive psychology has clearly established itself in higher education, there was no forum in which to discuss what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how it well it is working.

As I began to put the special issue together a secondary goal surfaced. After the call for proposals went out, I received numerous emails, not only from potential contributors but from people looking forward to the special issue. It became clear to me that there is a thirst for information on best practices for teaching positive psychology. Anecdotal evidence from the FRIENDS-OF-PP and PSYTEACH listservs supports this impression; each time that I have offered my syllabus to one of these lists, I have received dozens and dozens of requests and questions from eager positive psychology instructors and instructors-to-be. For every instructor out there teaching positive psychology, there appear to be three more who would like to teach positive psychology, but do not know where to start.

I selected articles for the special issue, then, with two audiences in mind: current teachers and practitioners of positive psychology, and potential teachers and practitioners of positive psychology. My goal was to open up a discussion among those who are currently teaching and otherwise applying positive psychology in higher education and, in the process, to provide a resource for people who want to learn more about how positive psychology is taught, and how positive psychology might fi t into their academic departments and institutions. I could not have been more satisfi ed with the results; the 15 arti-cles contained in the original special issue represent the use of positive psychology in many higher education contexts – from the teaching of positive psychology content itself to institutional practices and curricular development to pedagogy.

Shortly after the special issue went into production, I was approached by Taylor & Francis to turn the special issue into this edited volume. This book is an effort on my part, and on the part of my publisher, to further disseminate the results of the special issue, and to spend additional time on a handful of topics that were not originally represented. One major omis-sion, remedied by a new chapter, is an explicit discussion of college freshmen, and the potential role of positive psychology in facilitating the transition from high school to college. Furthermore, an introductory chapter synthesizes the contributions in this volume to create a picture of existing best practices in both teaching positive psychology and applying positive psy-chology in higher education settings. The work, I think, is improved by these additions.

Books are never created in a vacuum, and I am fi rst and foremost thankful to Taylor & Francis for bringing me this opportunity, and specifi cally, to Emily Ross for her editorial work on the publisher side. I am grateful, too, to the contribu-tors from the original special issue, as well as the co-authors who worked to bring together the new chapters. I want to extend special thanks to Renee Gutiérrez, Dawn Sonntag, Merose Hwang, Virginia Arreola, Cindy Pury, and Stephen Schueller for their comments, to Tom Ball for his assistance with proofreading and editing, and to my department colleagues at Hiram for their support. Lastly, I am thankful for my support system in times of frenetic writing: Amanda and Audrey, for brightening my mood via webcam; Callie, who gets stuck with my chores; and CS, who has to live with me (poor fool!).

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Towards the establishment of best practices for applying positive

psychology in higher education

Acacia C. Parks Hiram College

Since its inception just over ten years ago, positive psy-chology (PP) has tasked itself with the scientifi c study of well-being – the traits and circumstances that lead to it, its benefi ts, and the behaviors that can be practiced in order to promote it. In that time, we have seen signifi cant theoreti-cal advancements, have developed myriad techniques for increasing happiness, and have made major strides in the dissemination of both research and practice to the general public. Entire volumes have been dedicated to the use of PP in coaching (e.g. Biswas-Diener, 2010) and in therapy (e. g. Magyar-Moe, 2009; O’Hanlon & Bertolini, 2012). In January 2011, American Psychologist dedicated a special issue to the application of positive psychology to promot-ing resilience in the U.S. Army (Casey, 2011). Gilman, Hubener and Furlong (2009)’s edited volume, the

Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools, is currently

undergoing revision for a second edition, suggesting that work applying PP in K-12 is not only abundant, but ongoing.

Positive psychology has long fl ourished in higher edu-cation as well. Indeed, positive psychology has been taught and applied in higher education for almost as long as it has existed as a fi eld, and yet, with few exceptions, there is little in the way of published literature that brings all of these developments together. There is, however, much to report. More departments than ever are offering courses in PP, and demand for these courses is consistently high (see Russo-Netzer & Ben-Shahar, in this volume). Graduate programs offering concentrations in positive psychology have appeared both at the masters and doctoral level. Educational institutions have expressed interest in using principles of PP to inform institutional structure, faculty development, and pedagogy. It was this observation that fi rst motivated the special issue of the Journal of Positive

Psychology on Positive Psychology in Higher Education,

upon which this volume is based. The special issue was a fi rst attempt to summarize the state of positive psychology in higher education. Below, you will fi nd an overview of those articles, as well as the additional two pieces that are new to this volume. These contributions are divided into

four sections: 1) institutional practices, 2) designing a pos-itive psychology course, 3) integrating pospos-itive psychol-ogy into different courses, and 4) the ethics of teaching positive psychology.

Institutional practices

The fi rst section of the book presents potential ways in which positive psychology can be implemented at the level of the institution – in its policies and procedures, and in the institutional culture of the faculty. In the opening piece, Lindsay G. Oades, Paula Robinson, Suzy Green, and Gordon B. Spence provide a rationale for implementing PP principles at different levels of higher education: in the classroom, in the social milieu on-campus, in the sur-rounding community, among the faculty and administra-tion, and in student residential environments. Citing evidence that positive states lead to better academic out-comes, they provide specifi c examples of how these can be fostered through institution-level practices.

The next two chapters make suggestions for ways that faculty can integrate positive psychology into their own development and self-assessment. Charles J. Walker describes a set of techniques for assessing students’ real-time experiences of two positive states – positive emotion and engagement – in the classroom. Faculty can use these types of assessments to identify in-class activities and ped-agogical practices that promote and inhibit students’ expe-riences of positive states, and in doing so may improve learning outcomes. Thomas V. McGovern provides a framework for strengths-based faculty development in which faculty can develop key strengths that are particu-larly useful for teaching and mentorship. Drawing from his own refashioned version of Peterson and Seligman’s tax-onomy of strengths and virtues, he proposes a four-module program that helps faculty explore the potential uses of each strength for the academic, intellectual, and/or social aspects of teaching. By gaining an understanding of how each of the 24 strengths can contribute to teaching and

Positive Psychology in Higher Education

Positive Psychology in Higher Education

P ositive Psychology in Higher Education

Edited by

Acacia C. Parks

Routledge

Table of Contents

Citation Information

Preface

Towards the establishment of best practices for applying positive

psychology in higher education