Contributors to Student Thriving in an Academic Setting

An interest in positive youth development has been growing over the past couple decades which has evolved into exploring ideas about adolescent thriving. Youth programs, clinicians who specialize in working with children/adolescents and schools alike are beginning to take notice of the research intentionally focused on fostering the overall positive development of young people. Research from Search Institute (Benson & Scales, 2009) has identified 15 indicators of thriving, supported by 40 developmental assets, which are expressed through an adolescent’s spark. This study explores the effectiveness of one school’s efforts at increasing overall levels of students’ thriving through implementation of specific interventions and curriculum changes in their high school curriculum. Using the Developmental Assets Profile (Search Institute, 2004) as a measure of thriving, this study implemented a repeated measures assessment to evaluate significant changes in levels of thriving after students participated in the interventions implemented by the school. Additionally, this study utilizes the framework of transformational leadership to explore the impact and qualitative nature of teacher-student relationships on students’ level of thriving, providing an effective model for interacting with young people in a manner that increases developmental assets and levels of thriving