Abstract
Study engagement has been considered a key predictor of school performance among students. Although the potential contribution of positive psychology to education has been recognised, the research findings and implications related to primary school students remain largely unexplored. Given that authentic happiness theory and the broaden-and-build theory have posited the important roles of positive emotions, meaning, engagement and strengths use in education, a more comprehensive study is needed to understand their interactions across time. The current longitudinal study examined the interrelationships between these positive attributes among Chinese students in Hong Kong, China. A total of 786 primary school students from Grades 4 to 6 completed the questionnaire survey at two time points one year apart. An autoregressive cross-lagged panel (ARCL) with structural equation modelling was applied for the data analysis. The results revealed that positive emotions predicted positive meaning, strengths use and study engagement across time. Positive emotions and meaning were reciprocally correlated with each other. Moreover, the use of strengths mediated the association between positive emotions and study engagement. The implications and future directions are also discussed.
Highlights
The increasing interest in engagement reflects a general emerging trend towards positive psychology, which focuses on human strengths and optimal functioning rather than on weaknesses and malfunctioning (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000)
As APASO-II is completed by students once a year and local norms have been developed, we aimed to cross-validate these measures for application in positive education, as it would be valuable if these results could be widely used for the evaluation of positive education programmes in the future
Significant differences were identified between genders at Time 1 for positive emotions (t = -2.63, p < .05), positive meaning (t = -3.24, p < .05) and study engagement (t = -2.85, p < .05)
Summary
The increasing interest in engagement reflects a general emerging trend towards positive psychology, which focuses on human strengths and optimal functioning rather than on weaknesses and malfunctioning (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). In the current study, situated within a positive psychology perspective, we adopted the intrapersonal approach and explored individual factors affecting study engagement based on the authentic happiness framework. Authentic happiness theory, combining the hedonic and eudemonic approaches, posits three pathways to well-being: pleasure, meaning and engagement (Schueller and Seligman 2010; Seligman 2002). It is grounded in three traditional theories: hedonism theory (pleasure), desire theory (engagement) and objective list theory (meaning) (Seligman and Royzman 2003), which are examined in this study via positive emotions, study engagement and positive meaning, respectively. Experiencing positive emotions, obtaining meaning and pursuing engagement are intertwined with one another, and the presence of all three is considered to provide access to ‘the full life’ (Seligman 2002, 2012)
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