Fostering the development of character strengths and mindfulness to promote student well-being

Experts in the field of education are increasingly emphasizing the importance of children's well-being. The results of numerous studies show that well-being has a significant impact on students' academic and personal development. Well-being is also one of the fundamental areas of study in positive psychology. Researchers in the field of positive psychology mention, among other things, that the development of, and knowledge about, character strengths and mindfulness are two factors that would greatly contribute to the promotion of well-being. This was also the focus of this master's thesis. We focused mainly on the connection between character strengths and mindfulness, as we reviewed the professional literature and found that this correlation has not yet been sufficiently researched, especially not in the field of education. In the theoretical part of this master's thesis, we first presented positive psychology and related theoretical models of well-being. We presented the concepts of mindfulness and character strength, which were placed in the context of school. We defined positive education, that incorporates knowledge from the field of positive psychology into traditional education. In the empirical part of the thesis, we designed and implemented a program to encourage the development of character strengths and mindfulness in primary school students. Using The Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale and a questionnaire about character strengths (The Character Strengths Inventory for Children), we explored how character strengths and mindfulness are related to the well-being of students in the primary school. We also researched how the activities were experienced, which were designed to promote the development of character strengths and mindfulness, by students and the author of this program. The latter was determined by using ongoing evaluation questionnaires for students and written self-reflections of the author of this program. The research was based on a quasi-experiment with elements of action research. We used a causal-experimental method of pedagogical research with several measurements. Students from fifth grade from two different primary schools in Ljubljana in the 2020/21 school year were included in the research. One school was a private school while the other was a public school. The results showed that before the program, students’ had higher results on character strengths of gratitude, love, curiosity and forgiveness than after the program. After the program, however, students had statistically significantly higher result on the character strength of hope. Students’ well-being was higher after the program. Boys and girls did not significantly differ in recognizing the importance of selected character strengths and in well-being. We found that students attending a public and a private school did not statistically differ character strengths and well-being. Students perceived the workshops as interesting and mostly enjoyable. After every workshop, the students were mostly feeling good. The students reported that the workshops were not demanding. After being asked, if they learned a lot of new things, most of them answered “medium”. In her reflections, the author of the program wrote that she experienced the workshops more positively at the public school than at the private school, as the students at the public school participated more during the workshops and showed more enthusiasm; also, boys had greater difficulty calming down during mindfulness exercises compared to girls. The research was carried out during the COVID-19 epidemic, which caused students face several challenging circumstances: schools were closed for a longer period, lessons took place online, classes were quarantined; all this greatly impacted the results of the research