If positive education is a purposive journey with a chartable destination, research is our GPS. Research data helps us gauge how far we are from the ports of call and inform us whether we are on the desired path. When we have gone astray, research sends us alerts, helps us reconfigure the route and directs us to our destination. Our research GPS is particularly valuable when we boldly go where no one has gone before.

To achieve our research goals, we developed measures of processes and outcomes that are appropriate to the context of assessment. That is, our methods are age-appropriate and user-friendly. The measures target specific outcomes and processes of school-specific positive education programs. We used multiple methods to capture the effects of the programs on the motivation, cognitions, emotions and behaviours of the students, teachers and parents. The research results are diagnostic; they inform us the distance from our destination and the best routes to get there.

What Is It?

A person’s mindset is a belief or set of beliefs that help shape our decisions and our behaviours. Two types of mindset are identified: Growth and fixed. A person with a growth mindset believes that a person’s ability or intelligence can change. They understand that failures are only temporary setbacks that don’t define them and can help them improve. A person with a fixed mindset on the other hand believes the opposite—someone who believes that their ability and their intelligence cannot be changed. Therefore, failures reinforce their belief that they can’t change which, ultimately, limits what they can achieve in life.

Why Is It Important?

A powerful function of a person’s mindset is that it is capable of change. No one is 100% fixed mindset or 100% growth mindset. People will generally gravitate towards one as their “default” mindset, but it can change depending on the situation or the mood the person is in. The impact of a malleable mindset has very important ramifications in life and especially for students. For example, if a student who failed a test has a fixed mindset, they might believe that they are bad at taking tests and will not be able to get a great grade. This could affect the student’s current situation (coping with setbacks) as well as their future learning motivation (might not pay attention in class because they believe that they won’t be able to do well on future tests).

What Is It?

Angela Duckworth, the leading researcher of “grit”, defines grit as “sticking with things over the very long term until you master them.”

She also defines grit as “a combination of persistence and passion.”

For details, see http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/grit/angela-duckworth-grit.html

Importance Of Grit

Grit is important to everyone because it can help people achieve tasks and other ambitions even if they don’t expect to do so. For example, if a person was riding a bike to practice for an upcoming race and they fell off their bike on accident, having grit can help the person continue their practice for the race. In an education setting, grit is extremely important as it allows a person to be able to work through tough times in class on a homework assignment or on a class project. Furthermore, just as with a person’s mindset, the level of grit that a person has can be developed or changed.

How To Develop Grit?

One of the best ways to develop grit is by engaging in “deliberate practice”. Deliberate practice is a method of practice that aims to help people attain a high level of performance in any field. There are three parts to deliberate practice that can help students attain a mastery in whatever they want. 1: Identify a specific sub-skill that incrementally challenges the student. 2: Have the student practice that skill with full effort and concentration (even if it’s just a small section). 3: Have a teacher (or an “expert”) give the student constructive feedback. Please check out the following website for more detail on deliberate practice: https://www.characterlab.org/expert-practice

What Is It?

A character strength can be defined as “a strong attribute or inherent asset that distinguishes an individual”. Psychologists define character strengths as internal qualities or attributes that are universally found in any person regardless of gender, race, religion or ethnicity. Psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson identified six different categories of character strengths in their handbook Character Strengths and Virtues (2004). The six categories are (in no particular order): Wisdom, courage, justice, humanity, temperance and transcendence.

Why Should We Use Character Strengths—Individual

Character strengths used appropriately can benefit a person’s performance level and well-being. In an individual situation, a person can use multiple character strengths to help them at their task. For example, a basketball player practicing their shooting might use the character strength of “perseverance” to help them keep going with their shooting practice even after having missed the basket many times. An aspiring athlete might use the character strength of “creativity” to devise different ways in which they can practice their shooting. By using these character strengths, the effort produced may raise performance and sense of accomplishment/achievement.

Why Should We Use Character Strengths—Groups

Group performance can benefit from using complementary character strengths if the team members. Use a basketball team as an example. One member has “leadership” and another athlete has “humour” as one of their stronger strengths. They can use these complementary strengths to help the team increase its performance level. Using complementary character strengths of team members benefits the team even for teams with declining and weak performing.

Stronger Strengths Build Up Weaker Strengths

A key aspect of character strengths is that people can use their strengths to help them in situations where a character weakness may hinder them. Consider as an example a student who finished an assignment in class before his/her other classmates did. When offered a chance to pick all of the different candies that he/she likes, if this student lacks “self-control”, (s)he may be tempted to pick all of the candies (s)he likes. If this student has the character strength of “fairness”, (s)he may recognize that it is unfair to deprive his/her classmates of the chance to select the candies that (s)he selected. Thus, people are encouraged to find opportunities to develop and apply their strengths to overcome their character weaknesses.

In academic years 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, JC-PEAR project team has conducted longitudinal quantitative studies with parents, teachers, and students of partner schools on an annual basis.

Aims

• To evaluate the effectiveness of mindset intervention.
• To examine the effect of growth mindset on some outcome variables, e.g. academic performance, wellbeing, etc.

Teachers

• Data collection period: Jun – Nov 2018
• Number of schools participated: Primary schools – 3; Secondary schools – 3
• Number of participants: Primary school teachers – 92; Secondary school teachers – 109
• Format: Online

Primary School Students

• Data collection period: Jan – Mar 2018
• Number of primary schools participated: 3
• Number of participants: 562
• Format: Paper

Secondary School Students

• Data collection period: Jan – Mar 2018
• Number of secondary schools participated: 3
• Number of participants: 431
• Format: Online

Parents

• No data collection in this academic year

Teachers

• Data collection period: Jun – Jul 2019
• Number of schools participated: Primary schools – 3; Secondary schools – 3
• Number of participants: Primary school teachers – 151; Secondary school teachers – 138
• Format: Online

Primary School Students

• Data collection period: Jan – Jul 2019
• Number of primary schools participated: 4
• Number of participants: 668
• Format: Paper or online

Secondary School Students

• Data collection period: Dec 2018 – Jan 2019
• Number of secondary schools participated: 3
• Number of participants: 661
• Format: Paper or online

Parents

• Data collection period: Jul – Aug 2019
• Number of schools participated: Primary schools – 3; Secondary schools – 3
• Number of participants: Primary school teachers – 520; Secondary school teachers – 90
• Format: Online

General Findings

• Higher proportion of teachers embraced growth mindset in year 2.
• Greater involvement in positive education is accompanied by stronger teacher endorsement of the growth mindset.
• More experienced teachers are less likely to have fixed mindsets. Having a growth mindset is not related to number of years of teaching experiences.
• Exam pressure and competitiveness tend to increase with grade levels, which may reduce schools’ and teachers’ enthusiasm in positive education and the students’ learning motivation in upper grades (grades 4-6)
• Grit, growth mindset and character strength use are to be used as one “package” in order to maximize its effectiveness.

Teachers’ Mindset

The proportion of teachers who had a growth mindset increased in year 2. At the same time, the proportion of teachers with fixed mindset decreased. The proportion of teachers with growth mindset was less than those with fixed mindset in year 1 while the distribution was inverted in year 2.

Mindset and Teaching Experience

Less experienced teachers were more likely to have a fixed mindset. However, the likelihood of having a growth mindset wasn’t related to the number of years in teaching experiences.

What Does Growth Mindset Predict

Having a growth mindset is associated with favourable perceptions of positive education, school climate and institutional support for positive education as well as better intellectual, eudaimonic and psychological well-being.

Teachers’ Support for Positive Education

Overall, teachers’ support for positive education was stronger if they perceived stronger institutional support for positive education.

Teachers with a growth mindset supported positive education only when they perceived strong support for autonomy.

• Having a growth mindset and higher levels of grit and character strength use predicts better well-being.
• Learning motivation and well-being decrease as grade level increases. Grit is a protective factor against drop in academic performance, well-being and learning motivation in upper grades.
• The beneficial effects of grit were found only among students with a growth mindset.
• The tendency to embrace the growth mindset predicts adoption of learning goals a year later, which was accompanied by higher levels of grit and curiosity.

Society’s Effect on Students

Society plays an evident role in the behaviour of students in primary school. Research shows that compared to Primary 1-3 students, primary 4-6 students had a greater preference for performance goal (study for performance; Figure 1) and a lesser preference for learning goal (study for learning new things; Figure 2), which may reflect the greater emphasis on examinations (particularly examinations for getting into secondary school) in Primary 4-6.

Character Strength Use and Learning Motivation

Although in general learning motivation dropped when the grades increased, students with a growth mindset (Fig. 1) and had high levels of grit (Fig. 2) and character strength use (Fig. 3) did not display the same dramatic decrease in learning motivation, suggesting that the growth mindset, grit and character strength use can reduce the adverse effect of examination pressure on students’ learning motivation.

Character strength use was also accompanied by stronger learning motivation across all grade levels

Contributions of Growth Mindset, Grit and Learning Goal to Academic Performance

Supporting the importance of our conceptual framework in positive education, the research results show that students who had a stronger growth mindset, were grittier and focused more on learning new knowledge had better academic performance.

Yet: High level in growth mindset, grit, and learning goal orientation
Not yet: Low level in growth mindset, grit, and/or learning goal orientation

Prediction of Growth Mindset on Learning Goal, Grit, and Curiosity

Stronger belief in growth mindset in the first academic year predicted higher motivation in pursuing learning goals in the second academic year, which in turn predicted higher levels of grit and curiosity. Thus, mindset in malleability of ability could provide long-term beneficial effect.

• More secondary school students embraced the growth mindset in year 2 than in year 1.
• Having a growth mindset is related to higher level of life satisfaction, meaning in life, curiosity, and creativity.

Change of Mindset

Positive education is effective in changing the mindset of secondary students. More students believed in growth mindset in the second academic year. At the same time, the proportion of students who disagreed that their intelligence was fixed increased substantially.

Relationship between Growth Mindset and Wellbeing

Students with a growth mindset had higher level of wellbeing, including life satisfaction, meaning in life, curiosity, and creativity than their counterparts with a fixed or uncommitted mindset.

Parents positively appraised the effect of positive education in the school’s atmosphere and their children's learning engagement.

School Evaluation

After the implementation of positive education, climate in schools have been improved. More parents felt that the schools had a positive atmosphere and their children enjoyed going to schools currently than they did 2 years ago, when positive education had not been implemented yet. (Fig. 1: Primary students’ parents; Fig. 2: Secondary students’ parents)