Positive Psychology

Learning outcomes will highly increase if barriers are identified and removed appropriately. Since demotivating factors can affect the learning process negatively, regaining the lost interest of learners leads to higher levels of academic achievement. Demotivation has been referred to as low motivation instead of being an independent concept on its own on the one hand, and the demotivating factors related to PhD exam candidates have not been taken into consideration so far on the other hand. As a result, this research attempted to examine both the demotivating and remotivating factors in the Iranian milieu, for which 100 MA and 78 PhD exam candidates from various universities took part in our study. The participants filled out a validated demotivating questionnaire for data collection, and 15 MA and 20 PhD participants participated in a semi-structured interview, encompassing five open-ended questions. The multivariate analysis of ANOVA depicted a significant difference between the most demotivating factor (economic problems) and the least demotivating one (curriculum decisions). Moreover, the data provided by the participants were analyzed to reduce the effect of these factors. Identifying the demotivating factors and trying to neutralize their negative effects by considering the remotivating options enables the policymakers to help the students move towards academic satisfaction which in the long run leads to their psychological well-being.

The purpose of this study was the effect of positive psychology and the being of human from the perspective of Martin Seligman. The research method is archive-based research. The sample of that include all of the human. The findings show that،Psychological phenomena such as happiness, optimism, hope, creativity and self-esteem are the result of positive experiences of the mind. Happiness and inner satisfaction are not the mainstream of psychology in the positive sense. All the clinical efforts of positive psychology focus on increasing psychological well-being and happiness. The result states: People, families, and communities need happy people to flourish.sustainable satisfaction of humans, that is, happiness, good mental state, positive emotions and a series of emotions (especially positive emotions), attitudes (life satisfaction), beliefs (such as the belief that everything is going well) and other mental states. In fact, positive psychology is a scientific study of positive emotions, positive personality traits, and the structures that make this growth. Positive approach claims the positive emotions, abilities and meaning in life.

Background: Gratitude is a general state of thankfulness and appreciation. The majority of empirical studies indicate that there is an association between gratitude and a sense of overall well being..Currently, mental health is especially important in some occupations with harsh work conditions which require strong personal and mental capacities. Psychological well-being and happiness is especially important in personnel working in the healthcare sector. This study aimed to assess whether gratitude training affects psychological well-being and happiness in hospital personnel. Method: In this semi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test, 72 personnel working in 5 hospitals affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran, participated. The participants were randomly divided into intervention and control groups using block randomization. Then, the participants in the intervention group were given 10 group sessions of 90 minutes gratitude training. Ryff’s Scale of Psychological Well Being, Subjective Happiness Scale, Gratitude Questionnaire-6, and a Gratitude training package were used for data collection. Results: The results show that there is no significant difference in the mean scores of psychological well-being, domains of psychological well-being, and happiness between the two groups at baseline, and gratitude training significantly affected all domains of psychological well-being (except for autonomy) and happiness. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that Gratitude training is effective in enhancing psychological well-being and Happiness.

Purpose: Considering rich theoretical underpinnings of positive psychology (PP), the current study aimed to investigate the effects of an extra educational curriculum on the basis of PP on distress and attainment of Iranian high school students who are living in dormitories in boarding schools. Methodology: This is an empirical study with a post-test only control group design in which a sample of 346 male students were selected through convenience sampling from two boarding schools in Qom city during 2018-2019. A translated and validated version of K10 distress questionnaire (Kessler et al, 2010) was administered to them and 67 students with high distress symptoms were identified and randomly allocated to a control group (N=23), experimental group one (N= 22) and experimental group two (N=22). First, the experimental group underwent 16 sessions (twice a week for 90 minutes) of PP curriculum integrated with religious counseling. Employing a post-test only control-group design, the group’s performance on a distress scale (Goldberg, 1981) and their mean scores were compared after the intervention. Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA tests were used to compare differences between the groups. Findings: Findings revealed that positive curriculum alleviated distress symptoms of the experimental groups vis-à-vis the control (χ2 (2) = 52.851, p ≤ 0.001). Also, to investigate the effect of the intervention on educational attainment, their semester mean scores were analyzed through ANOVA (F = 8.244(2, 66), p≤0.001) where promising results were obtained. Conclusion: It was concluded that both interventions exerted meaningful effects on the attainment and distress of dorm-living students. Also, follow-up studies added proof on the permanence of the effects.

Positive emotions are regarded as vital constructs in L2 learning. With the advent of positive psychology in SLA, the link between L2 grit and Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE), as an achievement emotion, has drawn the attention of numerous scholars. However, despite these investigations, what remains is to see to what extent this link can be accounted for by the control and value appraisals of classroom activities and tasks. In other words, what is the matter of debate is how L2 learners’ perseverance and consistency of interest during the performance of language tasks and activities can predict their enjoyment when they are in control of, or out of control of these activities and tasks. Given this gap, this conceptual study attempts to argue the need for the investigation of L2 grit and FLE in light of control-value theory (CVT) and its methodological orientation. These arguments can pave the way for future research on this link via the CVT framework and provide pedagogical and methodological implications for investigators, learners, teachers, teacher educators, educational policy-makers, and advisors to raise their awareness of how the proximal determinants of enjoyment in learning a foreign language can be realized in terms of their perseverance of effort and consistency of interest in achievement activities.

Objective:  The goal of this study was to find out, through qualitative research, how high school parents see the pros and cons of online education during the COVID-19 epidemic. Methods: The sample for the present study included several of mothers of male and female Tehran high school students. For data analysis, Braun and Clarke's (2021a) thematic analysis model-based methodology was utilized. Results: The data revealed a comprehensive theme composed of two major themes, one with six sub-themes and the other with two sub-themes: 1) psychological capital with self-others care, self-efficacy beliefs, psychological resilience, hope, coping measures, and self-loving causal attributions sub-themes; and 2) technological capital with technology ethics and cultural literacy of technology sub-themes. Conclusion:  In addition, both practical and theoretical implications for the parental character strengths model were examined.

The current research aims to investigate the effect of teacher support (TS) on EFL learners' academic achievement, self-esteem, resilience, and academic enjoyment (AE). Eighty-four EFL students from a Turkish context participated in the study and were randomly divided into a control (N=48) and an experimental group (N=46). The standardized instruments, including the academic achievement test, Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, Davidson's Academic Enjoyment Scale, and Cassidy's Academic Resilience Scale, were utilized to collect data. The impact was measured by administering pretests and posttests and employing a quantitative research methodology with a pretest/posttest design for the research. The results demonstrated significant effects of TS on all variables in question. The experimental group (EG) demonstrated significant improvements in self-esteem, resilience, and AE, with effect sizes ranging from medium to large. Additionally, the experimental group (EG) significantly outperformed the control group (CG) in academic achievement. These findings emphasize the importance of TS in improving EFL learners' academic and psychological qualifications and underpin a dire necessity of cultivating supportive and stimulating learning environments that prioritize autonomy, structure, and engagement. Implementing effective instructional practices may improve students' academic achievement and emotional welfare. The study's implications provide an understanding of integrating positive teacher-student interaction and support for positive psychology in the foreign language curriculum design and materials development.

Dominating people’s lives, Social Media (SM) has gained a special place in every individual’s life in terms of becoming a tool to communicate with peers, families, and friends. Providing innovative functionalities, like forming groups, liking, reacting, and motivating, to modernize digital schooling, has made SM pervasive among students and teachers. The present paper tries to conceptually review and discuss the applicability of positive psychology in EFL education along with social-media-based language learning. Recently, in favor of distance learning, the world has witnessed a dramatic change in education, particularly in L2 learning, happening through social media (SM). However, there is a lack of a systematic study on the application of positive psychology in social media-based language learning, Therefore, it can be helpful to consider the effects of social media on L2 learning from a positive psychology perspective. As a first step in the field, the study aims to clarify how learners’ positiveness can bring about success and flourishment in social media-based L2 learning. Afterward, potential pedagogical implications and limitations are explained. With the hope of expanding the literature on PP in social-media-based Language learning, suggestions for future studies are proposed.  

The integration of technologies and social media into second/foreign language education has recently gained momentum in different contexts. Given their nature, social media have been empirically identified to improve different aspects of L2 teaching and learning. However, their facilitative role in enhancing EFL/ESL students’ language skills and academic engagement has been limitedly explored. To fill this lacuna, the present study intended to provide a theoretical analysis on the utility and power of injecting technologies and social media into L2 classes and improve students’ language skills and academic engagement. In so doing, the conceptualizations, definitions, dimensions, and empirical studies that provide evidence for the interplay of these constructs are presented. Moreover, a variety of implications are enumerated for EFL/ESL teachers, learners, teacher trainers, language policy-makers, curriculum designers, and scholars in L2 education, who can recognize the facilitative role of social media in English language teaching learning.  

The success of language teachers and learners is definitively pertinent to the emotions they experience in academic environments. Accordingly, the factors impacting language teachers’ and learners’ emotions must be recognized. Many scholars have scrutinized emotional variables in response to this necessity through various methodological approaches. The present study aims to evaluate some of the innovative approaches to assessing emotional factors to see how innovative they are and review their positive points and shortcomings. To do so, Q Methodology (Q), idiodynamic method, Latent Growth Curve Modeling (LGCM), Process Tracing Approach (PTA), Social Network Analysis (SNA), Nested Ecosystem Model (Ecological approach), and Retrodictive Qualitative Modeling (RQM) methods have been selected to be reviewed in this research. The findings highlight several strengths and weaknesses of each of the methodological approaches. It has also been reported that these approaches need to be context-specific and person-sensitive to generate more accurate data. Among the approaches, PTA and SNA have received scant attention in the investigation of emotional factors since the data in these two approaches cannot be reported precisely in narrative form. Our study would be conducive for all researchers, notably those working in the field of language teachers’ and learners’ psychology.