This is an essential guide for all school leaders, aspiring school leaders and leadership educators to help them incorporate positive psychology in their practice. It provides teaching professionals with the necessary knowledge to understand the gap that currently exists in educational leadership along with a starting point to address it. Research indicates that less than 10% of texts in educational leadership convey positive aspects of leadership. Therefore, we know more about problems, deviance and disengagement, than how to create a positive climate in schools, and help teachers to thrive and to achieve their optimal human potential.This accessible, evidence-based guide to fostering trust, authenticity, growing leadership wisdom, spotting employees' potential, strength-based leadership, developing team's resilience, psychological capital, job crafting, positive identities and many more, is an invaluable resource and must-read for all teaching professionals.

Most educators will agree that they would love to see each student and staff member in schools flourish. Furthermore, it would be great to see entire communities experience the transformative power of circumstances that feature happy and vibrant learning. However, what does it mean to experience flourishing in schools? What is the role of positive leadership in this process? What can we learn from inquiring into the positive emotional and social aspects of the work of school leaders? Building on our research on flourishing in schools, this book highlights the stories and perspectives of educators and school leaders at all levels of the school system and demonstrate the intricacies of how positive leadership contributes to well-being in schools and encourages flourishing in these schools. This book aligns with a growing shift in psychology and organizational studies to frame research using phenomena and constructs such as resilience, compassion, hope, efficacy, self-determination and meaningfulness at work and in other areas of life. Research findings from the disciplines of both positive psychology and positive organization studies bring these positive research intelligences into the field of education to study what works in school leadership practices, what goes well, what supports growth, and what brings vitality to people in school organizations. Research in positive psychology contends that attending to the strengths, positive outlooks, habits and mental models, as opposed to a deficit-oriented perspective, is beneficial to increasing subjective well-being, by increasing resilience, vitality, and happiness and decreasing stress, anxiety, and depression. How we imagine leading, teaching and learning in schools are implicated in these understandings and help us to contemplate the benefits of focus positive leadership in school organizations. Powerful insights into human inquiry and positive psychology are gained through qualitative study and most of the chapters of this book are grounded in such research. Importantly, chapters in this book provide a varied repertoire of answers to the question that underpins this shift in research toward a positive organizational perspective: How does positive leadership leverage what works well to instill in each community member a sense of their value and capacity to contribute, encourage wellbeing for all and create school contexts of flourishing? This edited collection provides many examples, invitations, and inspiration for readers to notice in their own contexts in ways that encourage them to shift and grow through moving toward appreciative, strengths-based, positive approaches to teaching, learning, and, especially, leading in all school contexts.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Bringing together today’s most prominent positive psychology researchers to discuss current themes and issues in the field Positive psychology is the scientific study of the strengths, rather than the weaknesses, in human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For much of its history, psychology has focused on the negative, completely overlooking the positive attributes that allow individuals and communities to thrive. Positive Psychology is a collection of essays that together constitutes a much-needed theoretical rationale and critical assessment of the field. This book reassesses what we already know and provides directions for the future. Contributors are leading international authors, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Robert Sternberg, Vittorio Caprara, C. Daniel Batson, and Illona Boniwell, among others. These luminaries write in a way that is rigorous enough for academic use but accessible to professionals, policymakers, and lay audiences as well. The content of Positive Psychology include both theoretical applied contributions focusing on a range of areas including altruism, positive creativity, science of well-being, forgiveness, coaching for leadership, cyberpsychology, intelligence, responding to catastrophes like COVID-19, time perspective, physiological and epigenetic, youth civic engagement, ups and downs of love, flow and good life, global perspectives on positive psychology, self and collective efficacy, positive psychology interventions and positive orientation. The book is pitched to senior undergraduates, graduates, academics and researchers and provides insights and perspectives into neglected and unresolved questions. Brings together the latest viewpoints and research findings on positive psychology, from the leading thinkers in the field Offers both theoretical and applied insights, for a well-rounded reference on this new and fast growing field Contains contributions from well known authors like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Robert Sternberg, and Vittorio Caprara Appeals to academic, professional, and lay audiences with an interest in acquiring a profound knowledge of positive psychology No other book currently on the market addresses such a breadth of issues in positive psychology. Positive Psychology represents a significant theoretical boost to this exciting field.

This book aims to help leaders become the best versions of themselves, achieve extraordinary results, and help their team accomplish the same. Packed with research and practical advice from real-life positive leaders, it offers an extensive look into both what high-performance leadership is and how it can be achieved. Positive Leadership in Practice is a resource that all leaders can tap into to be more effective. The book introduces an ALIGHT model that guides leaders through six fundamental resources that can alight their own and their team’s motivation and transform their performance to an extraordinary level. Further breaking down the six resources into 18 core components, the book expands on what constitutes the six resources to make them tangible and accessible. The book also offers leaders the opportunity to self-assess their own levels of resources and levels of positive leadership through a questionnaire, as well as opportunities to reflect on how to further develop these levels of resources and positive leadership. Finally, the book signposts practical strategies to tap into on the back of their reflections to take action to become their best possible positive leader. This book is for existing and aspiring managers, leaders, and those with people-related roles such as in human resources, coaching, leadership development, and organisational consultants, as well as anyone in more informal leadership positions. After all, we are all leaders.

Education Futures for School Leadership is a comprehensive resource to support school leaders as they encounter the growing complexity and uncertainties that characterize life in schools today. Moving beyond conventional change management literature, this book invites current and aspiring school leaders to apply the interdisciplinary tools of futures studies and strategic foresight to their work. Given our shared global challenges, young people deserve schools that are agile, adaptive, and responsive to many possible futures. Driven by the imperatives of equity and inclusion, the authors provide practical, evidence-informed strategies, real-world examples, and use cases of futures thinking applied to school staff development and change strategies. Each chapter engages with key educational realities: differentiating instructional planning and assessment, the impacts of artificial intelligence and other technologies, the growing psycho-social issues young people are facing, and more. Informed by years of international collaboration with forward-thinking school leaders and scholars, this book is both a field guide and a call to action for navigating the influence of the future on our present moment and the challenges and promises shaping school life today.

The Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools offers the most current and comprehensive insights into how positive psychology principles provide a framework for young people to become active agents in their own learning. The third edition of this groundbreaking volume assembles the latest global research identifying fundamental assets—hope, optimism, gratitude, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, among others—that support students’ learning and well-being. Chapters examining social-ecological perspectives on classroom quality and school climate provide best practice guidance on schoolwide policies and practices. These 35 new chapters explore positive psychology’s ongoing influence and advances on prevention, intervention, and assessment practices in schools.

This is a guide to positive climate, positive relationships, positive communication, and positive meaning and how to apply each of them in work.