Abstract:
Students are faced with numerous challenges as they reach the high school level. Among these issues are declining levels of academic efficacy, expectancy, confidence, positive academic behaviors, and motivation. Developing existing strengths or talents may serve as an intervention to reverse these negative trends and equip students with the skills necessary to experience academic success. The power of positive psychology is the foundation for recent studies in strengths development research. The purpose of this research was to measure the effects of a strengths development intervention in education for possible global benefits in academic achievement and self-perceptions of academic ability. Six research questions were addressed in this study: 1. What effect will a strengths development intervention program have upon students' academic expectancy and efficacy levels? 2. What effect will a strengths development intervention program have upon students' positive academic behaviors? 3. What effect will a strengths development intervention program have upon students' academic intrinsic and extrinsic motivation levels? 4. What immediate effect will a strengths development intervention program have upon student outcomes in attendance rate and gradepoint averages in mathematics and English? 5. What effect will a strengths-development intervention have upon teacher observations of positive behaviors? 6. What effect will a strengths development intervention program have upon the academic expectancy, efficacy, motivation levels, and positive academic behaviors of subgroups identified by gender, ethnicity, economic status, and parent education levels? The relatively large sample size (N = 527) was combined with the opportunity to assign students to experimental and control groups. The intervention group utilized the Gallup StrengthsFinder inventory to identify individual strengths. Students identified and developed their strengths through a 6-week intervention course at a suburban high school in southern California. Students were given a posttest to measure self-perceptions of efficacy, expectancy, motivation, and positive academic behaviors. The results demonstrated that the 6-week intervention produced increases in the self-perceptions of the strengths-intervention group. Students experienced statistically significant benefits in the areas of academic efficacy, expectancy, positive academic behaviors, and extrinsic motivation.
