Abstract
Character strengths improve performance and well-being but are rarely studied among early childhood educators. This qualitative study describes how in-service early childhood educators (n = 17, United States) resolved workplace challenges following a character strength application intervention. During professional development, teachers learned to write action plans to use character strengths (e.g., perseverance, kindness) to address their challenges. Teachers reported a 71% success rate in fully or mostly resolving challenges using this method. Another 22% experienced partial success. This study documents how teachers matched character strengths to personal challenges with children, coworkers and parents. Teachers reported using certain strengths mostly with children (e.g., love, forgiveness), others mostly with adults (e.g., teamwork, bravery), and others universally (e.g., kindness, leadership). Teachers reported modeling or teaching character strengths to children in 31% of cases in which they were seeking to resolve some form of workplace challenge. Teachers perceived that the intervention made it more likely for them to model or teach character strengths to children, particularly kindness, forgiveness, social intelligence and teamwork. Educators and children are likely to benefit from professional development that explores the application of character strengths in the workplace.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The frequencies of character strengths used by educators will be reported elsewhere, due to space limitations in the current paper.
The difficulty level of challenges (high, moderate, low), with examples and frequencies, is also being reported elsewhere due to space limitations.
References
Altheide, D., & Johnson, J. (1994). Criteria for assessing interpretive validity in qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 485–499). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Anderson, C. (2010). Presenting and evaluating qualitative research. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 74(8), 141.
Beaty, J. J. (1999). Prosocial guidance for the preschool child. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Berkowitz, M. W. (2011). What works in values education? International Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 153–158.
Berkowitz, M. W., & Bier, M. C. (2005). What works in character education: A research-driven guide for educators?. Washington, DC: Character Education Partnership.
Berkowitz, M. W., & Bier, M. C. (2007). What works in character education? Journal of Research in Character Education, 5(1), 29–48.
Berry, J. W., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Parrott, L., O’Conner, L. E., & Wade, N. G. (2001). Dispositional forgiveness: Development and construct validity of the Transgression Narrative Test of Forgiveness (TNTF). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1277–1290.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.
Carter, M. A., & Dasson, M. (2017). What school leaders are doing to support a culture of character: An exploratory study with preschools in Singapore. Childhood Education, 93(1), 29–38.
Comer, J. (2003). Transforming the lives of children. In M. J. Elias, H. Arnold, & C. Steiger-Hussey (Eds.), EQ + IQ: Best practices in leadership for caring and successful schools (pp. 11–22). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Dey, I. (1993). Qualitative data analysis. London: Routledge.
Govindji, R., & Linley, P. A. (2007). Strengths use, self-concordance and well-being: Implications for strengths coaching and coaching psychologists. International Coaching Psychology Review, 2(2), 143–153.
Gradišek, P. (2012). Character strengths and life satisfaction of Slovenian in-service and pre-service teachers. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 2(3), 167–180.
Gray, D. (2018). Doing research in the real world (5th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.
Haslip, M. J., Allen-Handy, A., & Donaldson, L. (2018). How urban early childhood educators used positive guidance principles and improved teacher-child relationships: A social-emotional learning intervention study. Early Child Development and Care, 190(7), 971–990. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2018.1507027.
Honig, A. S. (2004). How teachers and caregivers can help young children become more prosocial. In A blueprint for the promotion of prosocial behavior in early childhood (pp. 51–91). New York: Springer.
Hyson, M., & Taylor, J. L. (2011). Caring about caring: What adults can do to promote young children’s prosocial skills. Young Children, 66(4), 74.
Ivtzan, I., Niemiec, R. M., & Briscoe, C. (2016). A study investigating the effects of Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) on wellbeing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i2.557.
Kaplan, B. H. (1992). Social health and the forgiving heart: The type B story. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 15, 3–14.
Knowles, M. S. (1984). Andragogy in action (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kokoszka, C., & Smith, J. (2016). Fostering character education in an urban early childhood setting. Journal of Character Education, 12(1), 69–74.
Lavy, S., & Littman-Ovadia, H. (2016). My better self: Using strengths at work and work productivity, organizational citizenship behavior and satisfaction. Journal of Career Development, 44(2), 1–15.
Linley, P. A., Nielsen, K. M., Gillett, R., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2010). Using signature strengths in pursuit of goals: Effects on goal progress, need satisfaction, and well-being, and implications for coaching psychologists. International Coaching Psychology Review, 5(1), 6–15.
Littman-Ovadia, H., & Steger, M. (2010). Character strengths and well-being among volunteers and employees: Toward an integrative model. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(6), 419–430.
Lottman, T. J., Zawaly, S., & Niemiec, R. (2017). Well-being and well-doing: Bringing mindfulness and character strengths to the early childhood classroom and home. In Positive psychology interventions in practice (pp. 83–105). Cham: Springer.
McCullough, M. E., Bellah, C. G., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Johnson, J. L. (2001). Vengefulness: Relationships with forgiveness, rumination, well-being and Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1141–1164.
McGovern, T. V., & Miller, S. L. (2008). Integrating teacher behaviors with character strengths and virtues for faculty development. Teaching of Psychology, 35(4), 278–285.
McGrath, R. E. (2015). Character strengths in 75 nations: An update. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(1), 41–52.
Mei-Ju, C., Chen-Hsin, Y., & Pin-Chen, H. (2014). The beauty of character education on preschool children’s parent–child relationship. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 143, 527–533.
Niemiec, R. M. (2014). Mindfulness and character strengths: A practical guide to flourishing. Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe.
Norrish, J. M., Williams, P., O’Connor, M., & Robinson, J. (2013). An applied framework for positive education. International Journal of Wellbeing, 3(2), 147–161.
Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (1999). Relation of hope to self-perception. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 88(2), 535–540.
Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2006). Character strengths and happiness among young children: Content analysis of parental descriptions. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7(3), 323–341.
Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2009). Character strengths: Research and practice. Journal of College and Character, 10(4), 1–10.
Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (2006). Character strengths in fifty-four nations and the fifty US states. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(3), 118–129.
Peterson, C., & Park, N. (2006). Character strengths in organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27, 1149–1154.
Peterson, C., & Park, N. (2009). Classifying and measuring strengths of character. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Oxford handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp. 25–33). New York: Oxford University Press.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York: Oxford University Press and Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Pianta, R. C., Burchinal, M., Jamil, F. M., Sabol, T., Grimm, K., Hamre, B. K., et al. (2014). A cross-lag analysis of longitudinal associations between preschool teachers’ instructional support identification skills and observed behavior. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29(2), 144–154.
Priest, C. (2007). Incorporating character education into the early childhood degree program: The need, and one department’s response. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 28(2), 153–161.
Proctor, C., Maltby, J., & Linley, P. A. (2011). Strengths use as a predictor of well-being and health-related quality of life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(1), 153–169.
Proyer, R. T., Gander, F., Wellenzohn, S., & Ruch, W. (2013). What good are character strengths beyond subjective well-being? The contribution of the good character on self-reported health-oriented behavior, physical fitness, and the subjective health status. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(3), 222–232.
Proyer, R. T., Gander, F., Wellenzohn, S., & Ruch, W. (2015). Strengths-based positive psychology interventions: A randomized placebo-controlled online trial on long-term effects for a signature strengths- vs. a lesser strengths-intervention. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 456. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00456.
Ramaswamy, V., & Bergin, C. (2009). Do reinforcement and induction increase prosocial behavior? Results of a teacher-based intervention in preschool. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 23(4), 527–538.
Ruch, W., Gander, F., Platt, T., & Hofmann, J. (2018). Team roles: Their relationships to character strengths and job satisfaction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(2), 190–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1257051.
Schuberth, D. A., Schuberth, D. A., Zheng, Y., Zheng, Y., Pasalich, D. S., Pasalich, D. S., et al. (2019). The role of emotion understanding in the development of aggression and callous-unemotional features across early childhood. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 47(4), 619–631.
Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.
Shoshani, A., & Slone, M. (2017). Positive education for young children: Effects of a positive psychology intervention for preschool children on subjective well being and learning behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1866.
Shubert, J., Wray-Lake, L., Syvertsen, A. K., & Metzger, A. (2019). Examining character structure and function across childhood and adolescence. Child Development, 90(4), e505–e524.
van Woerkom, M., Bakker, A. B., & Nishii, L. H. (2016). Accumulative job demands and support for strength use: Fine-tuning the job demands-resources model using conservation of resources theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(1), 141.
VIA Institute on Character. (2018). What the research says about character strengths. https://www.viacharacter.org/www/Research/Research-Findings.
Weber, M., Wagner, L., & Ruch, W. (2016). Positive feelings at school: On the relationships between students’ character strengths, school-related affect, and school functioning. Journal of Happiness Studies, 17(1), 341–355.
Whitebook, M., McLean, C., Austin, L. J., & Edwards, B. (2018). Early childhood workforce index 2018. Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California at Berkeley. Retrieved from https://cscce.berkeley.edu/early-childhood-workforce-2018-index/.
Wood, A. M., Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Kashdan, T. B., & Hurling, R. (2011). Using personal and psychological strengths leads to increases in well-being over time: A longitudinal study and the development of the strengths use questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(1), 15–19.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr. Ayana Allen-Handy for her helpful suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Haslip, M.J., Donaldson, L. How Early Childhood Educators Resolve Workplace Challenges Using Character Strengths and Model Character for Children in the Process. Early Childhood Educ J 49, 337–348 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-020-01072-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-020-01072-2