Positive Institutions: A Case Study
Positive Institutions: A Case Study

Summary/Abstract: Positive psychology was founded on three main pillars: positive emotions, positive character traits associated with good living and positive institutions that create conditions for students to flourish (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Nevertheless, the research in psychology so far has been concentrating on positive emotions and character strengths. Enabling institutions have been the least well studied of the three pillars. A salient additional perspective, as MacIntyre and Mercer (2014) propound, would be to concentrate on the context in which students can experience enjoyment and flourish in foreign language learning. I try to fill the niche by analyzing a language school in the further education context in Poland which seems to be a positive institution. I base my study around the two criteria: enabling success and promoting positive language learning environments or student wellbeing. The language school is analyzed from three different angles: physical, pedagogical and psychological by means of an ethnographical research method and participant observation. The study is carried out in order to answer the research question: Can the school be labeled as a positive institution? The results demonstrate that the institution enables success as well as provides a positive learning environment and thus could be regarded as positive. The study is hoped to have contributed to positive psychology research by demonstrating what it means to be a positive institution in practice.

• Details
• Contents