Fostering Well-being through Positive Education: A Socio-Emotional Learning Intervention in Indian Students

Atulya Mohan
Montfort College, Bangalore, India

Pages:60-68

Childhood and adolescence are pivotal for acquiring skills that foster mental health,
aiding emotional development into adulthood. Schools offer a crucial environment for
the implementation of interventions that aims at fostering student’s wellbeing and
socioemotional skills. Positive education aims to improve academic performance, wellbeing, and character strengths, fostering positive mental health. By imparting wellbeing skills, it reduces the likelihood of future mental health concerns, enabling students,
teachers, and the wider school community to flourish. The current study reports the
outcomes of a Positive Education Intervention implemented in five Indian secondary
schools aimed at enhancing socio-emotional well-being in students. The 13-session
curriculum focused on concepts like Growth Mindset, Goal Setting, Resilience,
Mindfulness, Self-acceptance, Optimism, Time Management, Habits and habitual
thinking, Coping with stress, Fear and insecurity, Character Strengths, Gratitude and
Self-esteem. Data collection utilized standardized tools, including the Brief Resilience
Scale (Smith et al., 2008) and the Survey of Student Social Emotional Skills (You Can
Do It! Education, 2022). The intervention demonstrated statistically significant positive
improvement in academic performance (t (49) = -6.72), resilience (t (49) = -19.8), and
social-emotional skills (t (49) = -19.0). These findings underscore the effectiveness of
Positive Education Interventions in fostering holistic well-being among secondary school
students