Searching for Wellbeing in Schools: A New Framework to Guide the Science of Positive Education

Abstract

Youth mental illness has reached alarming rates globally and, as such, international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization are calling for schools to play an active role in preventing youth distress and promoting youth wellbeing. With this in mind, the field of positive education, now a decade old, has much to offer with its emphasis on bringing the science of positive psychology to schools. However, the rapid growth of positive education has created a potentially fragmented field with a proliferation of concepts and strategies being studied and applied in isolation, with a failure to create the inter-connected, big picture of wellbeing that combines various positive education interventions in ways that synergistically build youth mental health. To address these concerns and provide a way in which to cohesively organise and build the science of positive education, a new data-driven, meta-framework for positive education called the SEARCH framework is illustrated in this paper. A discussion of how SEARCH was developed is presented together with suggestions for how researchers in education and positive psychology can use SEARCH to guide their research programs. It is hoped that the SEARCH meta-framework will steer positive education in a direction that allows for replicability and cohesive growth.