Schools as Positive Institutions in the Context of Language Learning: Students’ Perspectives

Abstract

Positive psychology focuses its research on the conditions of people’s well-being and happiness, contrary to mainstream psychological studies on human disorders. The three most important areas to focus on while studying reasons for people’s effective lives are positive emotions, positive features of character and positive institutions. Positive attitudes seem to be especially essential in education, because that is where the features of character are formed. In second language acquisition studies, these three areas appear to be exceptionally important because of the essentially social character of the language learning process. This paper focuses on students’ opinions about the role of school in their language development. These comments were collected in retrospective semi-structured interviews. Students offered both positive and negative opinions on schools and their role in language education. It appears that even though some schools care for students’ well-being, quite a few of them still cannot be considered as positive institutions.