Toward a Model of Human Flourishing

This thesis introduces a theoretical framework for positive education. The framework, titled the Circular Flow Model of Flourishing (CFMF), is implemented as a test case within an international secondary school environment. Explored, using a mixed methods approach, the study captures quantitative data using the Circular Flow Model of Flourishing Survey (developed within this body of work) and qualitative data collected from interviews, notes and reflective statements throughout a longitudinal coaching intervention. The thesis addresses the question of whether a programme of coaching focussed on the introduction of a theoretical framework for human flourishing can increase young people’s self-reports of flourishing, and, in which ways students interact with and make sense of such a framework to bring about change. The findings are supportive of the use of the CFMF as a framework for promoting student flourishing and positive education. Taking a phenomenological perspective of the student’s experiences of the intervention, a general essential structure emerges in which the model is highly relatable and gives rise to the possibility of experimentation with chosen positive psychology interventions (PPIs). Following on, this experimentation and subsequent reflection deepens awareness and knowledge of results (flourishing) and of performance (behaviour). This is set within a period of identity development and struggle against the demands of formal schooling; through which, students within the intervention show significantly better development of their flourishing. These affirmative findings and descriptions offer much too current professional agendas as well as to future research agendas. Adding to the research on longitudinal studies in positive education and emphasising the multidimensional and phenomenological, we hope for the replication of studies using the CFMF, as well as continuation of micro-level research on PPIs. Finally, this study goes some way toward bridging the gaps between positive psychology, humanistic psychology, coaching psychology and identity theory, for a better education