Children’s and Adolescents’ Conceptions of Happiness at School and Its Relation with Their Own Happiness and Their Academic Performance

López‐Pérez, Belén; Fernández-Castilla, Belén

doi:10.1007/s10902-017-9895-5

Cited by 29 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…Although this difference could be attributed to a children’s positive bias to see their life in an overly positive way (likely due to their cognitive limitations to properly compare between real and ideal situations; Harter, 2012), it may also indirectly reveal information about the drop in psychological wellbeing during the transition from childhood to adolescence. A consistent number of studies, indeed, clearly showed that children tend to experience higher wellbeing than adolescents in both general (Ronen et al, 2016) and domain specific evaluations (e.g., at school; López-Pérez and Fernández-Castilla, 2018). Some authors (e.g., Denscombe, 2000) have explained such differences considering the challenges that adolescents experience, especially in the school context (e.g., higher academic demands), which may threaten their sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, thereby ultimately influencing their POS and wellbeing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Although a few studies considered the effect of POS during early adolescence (e.g., Tian et al, 2018), to the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of research on POS and the measurement properties of the P Scale among children. Since previous research indicated that (a) the onset of mental health issues may occur before adolescence (World Health Organization [WHO], 2013) and (b) children and adolescents tend to differ in their level of psychological wellbeing (i.e., children have higher psychological wellbeing than adolescents; see López-Pérez and Fernández-Castilla, 2018), looking at the role of POS during childhood and early adolescence may help us understand the dispositional bases of early psychological problems as well as may inform the design of intervention programs aimed at promoting mental and behavioral health from a young age (e.g., Social and Emotional Learning Programs; Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning [CASEL], 2013). From a developmental perspective, we focused on late childhood and early adolescence, as during this transitional phase, the self-system at the core of POS becomes more coherent and organized and children’s self-evaluations tend to be more accurate compared to the ones provided by younger children (for a more in depth discussion, see Harter, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Positivity Scale: Concurrent and Factorial Validity Across Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

et al. 2019

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Despite the well-established protective functions of positivity (i.e., a dispositional self-evaluative tendency to view oneself, life, and future under a positive outlook) from middle adolescence to old age, its reliable assessment and contribution to a proper psychological functioning have received little attention during previous developmental phases. In this article, we aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties and construct validity of the eight-item Positivity Scale (P Scale; Caprara et al., 2012 ) during late childhood and early adolescence in a sample of British students ( N = 742; 48% boys) from both primary (M age = 10.75, SD = 0.52) and secondary schools (M age = 13.38 years, SD = 0.94). First, results from confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) attested to the plausibility of the hypothesized 1-factor structure of the P Scale in a revised CFA model including the correlation between the residuals of two items similar in their wording. Next, we found evidence for strong (scalar) measurement invariance of the P Scale across late childhood and early adolescence as well as for its concurrent validity as indicated by expected relations of positivity to indicators of adjustment (i.e., prosocial behavior) and maladjustment (i.e., externalizing and internalizing problems). Overall, these findings support the concurrent and factorial validity of the P Scale as a short self-report instrument to measure children’s tendency to view their experience from a positive stance. We discuss the implications of our results for improving the wording of the items composing P Scale as well as for understanding the dispositional mechanisms conducive to psychological health and wellbeing across late childhood and early adolescence.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Positivity Scale: Concurrent and Factorial Validity Across Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

et al. 2019

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“…Children valued more hedonic conceptualisations of wellbeing at school (positive feelings) whereas adolescents valued more eudaimonic forms (achievement). Interestingly, however, later work conducted by López-Pérez and Fernández-Castilla (2018) discovered that eudaimonic wellbeing played an important role in relation to Primary pupils’ objective achievement; pupils who conceptualised happiness as ‘learning’ had significantly higher achievement, but not happiness. Whereas, Secondary pupils conceptualising happiness as ‘being with friends’, ‘being praised’, ‘helping’ and ‘having no leisure time’ had higher achievement and happiness.…”

Section: Wellbeing and Achievement: Incompatible Or Underexplored?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 8. I note that López-Pérez and Fernández-Castilla (2018) use a single-item measure of pupils’ happiness in school, which somewhat limits findings, but this was not the only measure of wellbeing in their study (pupils’ conceptions of happiness are also used). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s wellbeing and their academic achievement: The dangerous discourse of ‘trade-offs’ in education

Clarke

2020

Theory and Research in Education

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Research conducted in England over the last decade has documented sustained, significant decreases in children’s wellbeing. While recent changes to curriculum policy promoting children’s wellbeing have been introduced, a notable feature of the discourse surrounding the promotion of children’s wellbeing is that wellbeing is regarded as opposed to, or in tension with, children’s academic achievement. Recently, Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren proposed that there is an inevitable ‘trade-off’ between children’s ‘wellbeing’ and their academic achievement. Using PISA 2012 data, Heller-Sahlgren argues that pupil happiness and high achievement do not go hand in hand; implying policymakers have a decision to make about which they uphold as the priority. In this article, I discuss the theoretical assumptions underpinning transnational comparisons of children’s wellbeing and review evidence from psychology and education to ascertain whether a trade-off is empirically supported. I argue that far from being incompatible, children’s wellbeing and achievement are positively associated. However, this relationship is not straightforward and requires careful disentangling of the hedonic and eudaimonic components of wellbeing. I underline four main gaps in current knowledge of the wellbeing-achievement relationship to date: the need for (1) multidimensional conceptualisation and measurement of wellbeing, (2) exploration of mediating mechanisms/constructs explaining the wellbeing-achievement relationship, (3) objective operationalisation of achievement, and (4) investigation of developmental differences. To conclude, I argue that when making policy recommendations researchers should avoid ‘all or nothing’ thinking which lures governments into false dichotomies.

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“…Although the previous studies have advanced our understanding of the possible causes and consequences of happiness, they have investigated the role of happiness strictly relying on quantitative data. However, other research has stressed the importance of studying happiness from a qualitative point of view (e.g., Freire, Zenhas, Tavares, & Iglésias, 2013) to obtain a more in depth understanding of what children and adolescents comprehend what being happy at school is for them (López-Pérez & Fernández-Castilla, 2018). Investigating children's and adolescents' conceptualizations of happiness is important for different reasons.…”

Section: What Do Children and Adolescents Understand By Happiness?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s and Adolescents’ Happiness Conceptualizations at School and their Link with Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

López‐Pérez

Zuffianò

2020

J Happiness Stud

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Previous research on children's and adolescents' happiness either focused on their conceptualisations or the link between self-reported happiness with different outcomes.However, very few studies have connected both approaches to better understand children's and adolescents' happiness. To address this gap, we used a mixed-method approach, to investigate if the conceptualizations of happiness at school of 744 British children and adolescents could signal differences in autonomy, competence, and relatedness. An initial coding of the responses showed thirteen conceptualizations (i.e., positive feelings, harmony/balance, leisure, friends, getting good grades, non-violence, moral actions, purpose, autonomy, competence, teachers, emotional support, and learning). Log-linear models showed that some of the conceptualizations differed across both age groups and gender.Latent class analysis showed that happiness conceptualizations could be classified in five different groups. Interestingly, whereas for children there were no differences; for adolescents, there were differences between classes in their levels of autonomy and relatedness. The implications of these findings for promoting students' well-being at school are discussed.

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Children’s and Adolescents’ Conceptions of Happiness at School and Its Relation with Their Own Happiness and Their Academic Performance

Cited by 29 publications

References 54 publications

The Positivity Scale: Concurrent and Factorial Validity Across Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

The Positivity Scale: Concurrent and Factorial Validity Across Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Children’s wellbeing and their academic achievement: The dangerous discourse of ‘trade-offs’ in education

Children’s and Adolescents’ Happiness Conceptualizations at School and their Link with Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

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