About Positive Education

Positive Education at Geelong Grammar School employs implicit and explicit teaching of Positive Psychology skills and principles. Implicit teaching occurs at each year level, at every campus and across all aspects of School life: academic subjects, pastoral life and the co-curriculum programme. Explicit teaching is delivered in Year 7 and Year 10 through specific Positive Psychology programmes written by the world’s leading research psychologists and developed in collaboration with experienced classroom teachers.

Positive Education Programme

The aims of Positive Education are:

  • To increase the experience of positive emotions in our students;
  • To encourage students to engage their signature strengths for personal and community goals;
  • To engage students to live meaningful lives to find purpose and make a difference to our communities at large.

The implicit programme comprises seven over-arching topics that are explored from ELC to Year 12:

  • emotion
  • gratitude
  • strengths
  • creativity
  • self-efficacy
  • resilience
  • mindfulness

The explicit Positive Psychology Programmes taught in Year 7 and Year 10, teach students the following skills - which have been developed through scientific study - to help them to tackle life’s challenges:

  • Thinking and Explanatory Styles
  • Thinking Traps
  • Detecting Icebergs (Underlying and Surface Beliefs)
  • Challenging Beliefs
  • Putting It Into Perspective
  • Real-time Resilience

The explicit programmes are taught by the Positive Education Department at Corio Campus of Geelong Grammar School, comprising 12 teachers drawn from over from six departments, including the Director of Learning; Director of Student Welfare; Senior Chaplain; International Baccalaureate and VCE Coordinators.

Positive Education Department

Studies over the past 20 years suggest that these explicit Positive Psychology programmes to have the following impact on students:

  • increased levels of creativity
  • better critical thinking skills
  • increased levels of positive emotion.
  • positive effects on depressive symptoms
  • improved explanatory style for negative events
  • significant impacts on depression, anxiety, and adjustment disorders

More than 160 Geelong Grammar staff have taken part in intensive residential training courses with Professor Martin Seligman and his team of experts through which they learned and practiced Positive Psychology principles and skills. Each of these teachers is able to use this learning in their classes and activities and it is in this way that Positive Education influences every student - in the classroom, on the sports field and in their House - at each of our campuses, every day.

By 2011 over 900 students will have been taught the skills of resilience through the explicit Positive Psychology Programmes at Geelong Grammar School.

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