Positive Education: an Inspiration for Improving the Quality of Education

Abstract

Positive Psychology represents a relatively new trend in contemporary psychology, which brings interesting ideas and useful inspiration into the field of education and school practice. Evidence exists that higher levels of subjective well-being, optimism and positive emotions are closely related to academic success. A positive education movement builds on these findings and aims to practically apply the scientific knowledge of Positive Psychology into the educational process. The objective of this research study is to introduce the theoretical background and arguments for the establishment and development of positive education in the world and the Czech Republic. We present an overview of main positive education programs which focus on development of psychological resilience and character strengths and on increasing subjective well-being and life satisfaction among the individuals at all the levels of the educational process. We focus mainly on the description of those positive education programs, for which the effectiveness has been empirically verified. Finally, we briefly describe the situation in the Czech Republic, which opens a large space for the development and implementation of Positive Psychology methods to improve the quality of education.