Margaret L Kern

University of Melbourne | MSD · Melbourne Graduate School for Education

The dynamics of flow occurrence – an experience of absorbed attention and joyful engagement in ongoing activity - over time needs further exploration, especially in educational settings. To this purpose, data were collected across three years among school staff (baseline N= 327) in New South Wales, Australia, with the aim to test perceived strength...

Past research has relied on employees to self-report their levels of well-being and performance in the workplace. Systems-informed positive psychology has been proposed to understand the dynamic interrelationships of the employee in their social and environmental context. PERMA + 4 is a comprehensive framework designed to measure the building block...

Trust is predictive of civic cooperation and economic growth. Recently, the U.S. public has demonstrated increased partisan division and a surveyed decline in trust in institutions. There is a need to quantify individual and community levels of trust unobtrusively and at scale. Using observations of language across more than 16,000 Facebook users,...

This chapter on school belonging provides a comprehensive examination of the theoretical underpinnings and practical perspectives surrounding this multifaceted construct. It introduces the various theories that have informed school belonging research, emphasizing the predominant influence of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model. Through the lens of...

The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) technologies, such as ChatGPT-4 and Bard, has the potential to significantly change wellbeing education. This Chapter explores the applications of generative AI technologies in wellbeing education, with a focus on how chatbots and similar can be used to...

Peer support groups can offer parents of children with disability, positive well‐being outcomes. Peer support groups not only provide opportunities for connections with others with similar experiences but also provide resources and information, emotional support, a sense of belonging and may help reduce stress and isolation. Peer support groups are...

Mathematical wellbeing (MWB) is the experience of positive feelings and functioning linked to the fulfillment of seven ultimate values (accomplishment, cognitions, engagement, meaning, perseverance, positive emotions, and relationships) in the mathematics classroom. The study in this chapter psychometrically tests and then measures Australian Year...

Startup companies solve many of today’s most challenging problems, such as the decarbonisation of the economy or the development of novel life-saving vaccines. Startups are a vital source of innovation, yet the most innovative are also the least likely to survive. The probability of success of startups has been shown to relate to several firm-level...

QAnon has emerged as the defining conspiracy group of our times, and its far-right conspiracies are extraordinary for their breadth and extremity. Bringing together scholars from psychology, sociology, communications, and political science, this cutting-edge volume uses social science theory to investigate aspects of QAnon. Following an introductio...

Abstract: Flow refers to the daily experience of absorbed attention and the optimal application of socio- ecological information that together contribute to the life well-lived. The flow concept has international appeal across a variety of settings and yet challenges remain in effectively translating the concept into the everyday lives of working a...

A substantial body of empirical research has used the positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment (PERMA) framework to measure building blocks of well-being across diverse samples and cultures, with most studies using the 23-item PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) or a workplace variant. Donaldson and Donaldson (2021a) a...

Startup companies solve many of today’s most complex and challenging scientific, technical and social problems, such as the decarbonisation of the economy, air pollution, and the development of novel life-saving vaccines. Startups are a vital source of social, scientific and economic innovation, yet the most innovative are also the least likely to...

Startup companies solve many of today's most complex and challenging scientific, technical and social problems, such as the decarbonisation of the economy, air pollution, and the development of novel life-saving vaccines. Startups are a vital source of social, scientific and economic innovation, yet the most innovative are also the least likely to...

Yoga is an embodied practice underpinned by philosophical elements, seeking to evolve different dimensions of human existence for optimal functioning in relation to oneself, others and beyond. This mixed-methods research focused on 137 regular Ashtanga Yoga practitioners (AYPs) by investigating their conceptualizations of five dimensions of wellbei...

Purpose Drawing upon a contractarian lens of corporate social responsibility (CSR), this study aims to explore community construals of happiness and evaluates conceptual boundaries of CSR for happiness. Design/methodology/approach Using a mixed-methods design, natural language processing and thematic analysis techniques were used to analyse large...

Background: For children with disability or chronic illness, parents/carers are critical in enabling or limiting their child's development. The parent's/carer's ability to provide the necessary responsive and structured care is impacted by several factors, including their own personality, skills, resources, and well-being. Peer support programs of...

Whilst there is evidence of subjective wellbeing being related to academic success, good performance within and beyond university, degree attainment, and positive subsequent physical, mental, economic, and social outcomes in the university student population, less is known on how different student populations perceive, experience, and cultivate wel...

Wellbeing can mean different things to different people, even in the same culture with the same language. People living at the intersection of two languages and cultures, such as Chinese students studying in an English-speaking nation, not only speak a different language than their host country, but also may have different conceptualizations of wel...

Globally, many students experience low mathematical wellbeing, defined here as the fulfilment of one’s core values, accompanied by positive feelings and functioning in the mathematics classroom. To increase positive feelings about and engagement in mathematics, there is a need to better understand students’ values and align practices to supporting...

Flow-enjoyed and fully absorbed engagement in meaningful and contextually bounded activities-is widely underutilised in psychotherapy and mental health settings. Two gold standard therapies, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), while powerful and effective in many ways, would benefit from systematic model...

Vital engagement has been described as a focused, meaningful, and active relationship with work across one’s lifetime (Nakamura, 2001, 2014). Theoretically, vital engagement goes beyond short-term interest and engagement in one’s work, representing instead an ongoing, homeostatic sense of engagement that sustainably occurs across years and decades....

This paper describes the development of the Flourishing Classroom System Observation Framework and Rubric, which provides a framework and practical approach to defining and describing multiple interconnected observable characteristics of a classroom system that individually and together can be targeted to cultivate collective flourishing within sch...

As the understanding of subjective wellbeing within different populations continues to evolve, it is necessary to ensure the perspectives of people with diverse worldviews are included. This mixed methods study focuses specifically on 166 regular Ashtanga Yoga practitioners (AYPs), exploring participants’ perceptions of subjective wellbeing. Defini...

Globally, more than a billion people experience disability. Disability affects not only the individual, but also their families. Parents and carers of a child with a disability have increased risk of economic and health burdens and tend to encounter systems focussed on the child's deficits. As parents of children with a disability and professionals...

Despite the emergence of socio-ecological, strength-based, and capacity-building approaches, care for children with disability remains primarily grounded in a deficit-based perspective. Diagnoses and interventions primarily focus on what children and families cannot do, rather than what might be possible, often undermining the competence, mental he...

Objective We explore the personality of counties as assessed through linguistic patterns on social media. Such studies were previously limited by the cost and feasibility of large-scale surveys; however, language-based computational models applied to large social media datasets now allow for large-scale personality assessment. Method We applied a...

Technology now makes it possible to understand efficiently and at large scale how people use language to reveal their everyday thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Written text has been analyzed through both theory-based, closed-vocabulary methods from the social sciences as well as data-driven, open-vocabulary methods from computer science, but thes...

Positive psychology approaches have been shown to play a vital role in protecting mental health in times of challenge and are, therefore, important to include when studying the psychological outcomes of COVID-19. While existing research has focused on individual psychological health, this paper focuses on collective wellbeing and collective posttra...

Over the past decade, the positive education movement has grown, with the rapid increase of research, curricula, programs, and approaches to supporting wellbeing within educational communities. We introduce positive education, unpacking the positive perspective, considering how positive education emerged from this perspective, and discussing the im...

The chapters in this Handbook provide evidence of the plurality of theories, models, methods, and perspectives relevant to positive education. Chapters highlight the diverse ways in which positive education is conceptualized and implemented, complexities inherent to school environments, and the need to rigorously study the impact of activities. Cha...

Positive psychology as a discipline has focused primarily on understanding and building individual wellbeing. But the application of positive psychology within schools brings a number of challenges that transcend simplistic approaches. Schools are dynamic in nature and subject to numerous pressures and competing priorities. Positive psychology inte...

This chapter summarizes the essentials of assessment, principles of good assessment, and wellbeing assessment in the context of school communities. Drawing from positive education initiatives, what wellbeing assessments in schools look like, and why they are important is outlined and discussed. Examples of good assessment tools and their use in pra...

Religion and spirituality are multidimensional constructs including practices, rituals, and experiences, though they are often treated solely in terms of belief. In this study (N = 2,389), we investigate dimensions examined in previous linguistic analysis studies—religious affiliation and experiences of unity—and new dimensions: religious services,...

Flow at work is thought to be a dynamic and contextually bounded experience. Its relevance to optimal human functioning is well documented. Although flow theory suggests a mutually reinforcing association between flow and strengths use, with support by cross-sectional and short-term studies, the inter-relationship of flow at work and strengths use...

Objective: A sense of belonging-the subjective feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences-is a fundamental human need that predicts numerous mental, physical, social, economic, and behavioural outcomes. However, varying perspectives on how belonging should be conceptualised, assessed,...

There is a need to better understand idiographic understandings of and approaches to wellbeing. Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis process, this study examined wellbeing for people high on the personality trait of sensory processing sensitivity. Findings provide rich descriptions of unique ways in which people navigate their personal...

“The approaches outlined in this volume will help expand the narrow focus on academic success to include psychological well-being for students and educators alike. It is a must-read for anyone interested in how positive outcomes such as life satisfaction, positive emotion, and meaning and purpose can be optimized in the educational settings.” — Jud...

Technology now makes it possible to understand efficiently and at large scale how people use language to reveal their everyday thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Written text has been analyzed through both theory-based, closed-vocabulary methods from the social sciences as well as data-driven, open-vocabulary methods from computer science, but thes...

Thriving refers to subjective and objective success—feeling and functioning well—across multiple domains of life (e.g., physical, mental, cognitive, social, functional, economic). It goes beyond success at a single point in time, as well‐being is dynamic in nature, and is affected by numerous factors, including one's personality, habitual behaviors...

Conscientiousness represents a person's propensity toward being self‐controlled, persistent, industrious, and orderly. Higher levels correlate with numerous positive, socially valued outcomes, including longer marriages, job success, good physical and mental health, and longer life. Multiple pathways connect conscientiousness to these outcomes, inc...

Conscientiousness represents a person's propensity toward being self‐controlled, persistent, industrious, and orderly. Higher levels correlate with numerous positive, socially valued outcomes, including longer marriages, job success, good physical and mental health, and longer life. Multiple pathways connect conscientiousness to these outcomes, inc...

Background Much of the population fails to meet recommended physical activity (PA) levels, but there remains considerable individual variation. By understanding drivers of different trajectories, interventions can be better targeted and more effective. One such driver may be a person’s physical activity identity (PAI)—the extent to which a person p...

The use of psychometric tools to investigate the impact of school-based wellbeing programs raises a number of ethical issues around students’ rights, confidentiality and protection. Researchers have explicit ethical obligations to protect participants from potential psychological harms, but guidance is needed for effectively navigating disclosure o...

The development of academic fields is often described through the metaphor of ‘waves.’ Following the instantiation of positive psychology (the first wave), scholarship emerged looking critically at the notions of positive and negative, becoming known as its second wave. More recently, we discern an equally significant shift, namely scholarship that...

Students at the tertiary education level in Australia are at increased risk of experiencing high levels of psychological distress, with international students at particularly high risk for poor adjustment. As mental health and wellbeing strongly correlate with students’ academic performance and general overseas experience, a growing number of studi...

Purpose The high incidence of mathematics anxiety and disengagement in mathematics points to poor student well-being in many mathematics classrooms. Poor well-being may arise in part from poor alignment between student values and classroom experiences. Yet, what student well-being is and how to support it within specific subjects is poorly understo...

While the past decade has brought growing interest in and focus on the subjective wellbeing of society, there have been few empirical studies that have explored the social responsibilities, roles, and contributions of business, despite the pervasiveness of businesses as one of the core social institutions of modern societies. Through a survey of 13...

Although positive education has made significant progress towards fostering student wellbeing at the individual level through the application of positive psychology interventions, adopting a systems-informed perspective will support the field to also approach wellbeing at the classroom and collective levels. Arguably, this approach will promote a m...

Cultures explicitly and implicitly create and reinforce social norms and expectations, which impact upon how individuals make sense of and experience their place within that culture. Numerous studies find substantial differences across a range of behavioral and cognitive indices between what have been called “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich...

Introduction The first years of school are critical in establishing a foundation for positive long-term academic, social and well-being outcomes. Mindfulness-based interventions may help students transition well into school, but few robust studies have been conducted in this age group. We aim to determine whether compared with controls, children wh...

Researchers and policy makers worldwide are interested in measuring the subjective well-being of populations. When users post on social media, they leave behind digital traces that reflect their thoughts and feelings. Aggregation of such digital traces may make it possible to monitor well-being at large scale. However, social media-based methods ne...

Cultures explicitly and implicitly create and reinforce social norms and expectations, which impact upon how individuals make sense of and experience their place within that culture. Substantial differences in research findings across a range of behavioral and cognitive indices can be seen between what have been called ‘Western, Educated, Industria...

Over the past decade, societal happiness has increasingly been considered important to public policy initiatives globally, supported by interdisciplinary scholarly efforts spanning the social sciences, economics, and public health. Curiously, despite for‐profit corporations being core social institutions of modern societies, scant attention has bee...

Work is thought to be more enjoyable and beneficial to individuals and society when there is congruence between one’s personality and one’s occupation. We provide large-scale evidence that occupations have distinctive psychological profiles, which can successfully be predicted from linguistic information unobtrusively collected through social media...

Poster presented at ISSID (International Society for the Study of Individual Differences) 2019 Conference

Despite the rapid growth and uptake of the positive psychological perspective by researchers and general audiences, hype regarding the field’s potential can lead to exaggerated claims, over-inflated expectations, disillusionment, dismissal, and unintentional harms. To help mature the field, we propose Systems Informed Positive Psychology (SIPP), wh...

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Given the enormous population of Chinese-speaking people worldwide, it is important to establish measures of adolescent wellbeing with adequate evidence for reliability and validity. The EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Wellbeing assesses five positive psychological characteristics (engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness). An i...

This study considers wellbeing from a nuanced, individual difference perspective – focusing on the personality trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). Through an online, self-report survey with 445 participants, we provide initial groundwork in identifying the unique characteristics of SPS wellbeing. Our findings contribute to applied perspe...

The words that people use have been found to reflect stable psychological traits, but less is known about the extent to which everyday fluctuations in spoken language reflect transient psychological states. We explored within-person associations between spoken words and self-reported state emotion among 185 participants who wore the Electronically...

Evaluation studies often use stand-alone and summative assessment strategies to examine the impacts of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Gender-based Violence (GBV) prevention education programs. However, implementation research is yet to offer an integrative framework that can be used to investigate the implementation drivers that lead to th...

Positive education is characterized by applying positive psychology interventions (PPIs) within educational settings. Increasing evidence suggests that PPIs can help increase well-being and reduce depressive symptoms in general and clinical populations. However, there is less evidence that PPIs are similarly effective within complex school environm...

The words that people use have been found to reflect stable psychological traits, but less isknown about the extent to which everyday fluctuations in spoken language reflect transient psychological states. We explored within-person associations between spoken words and self- reported state emotion among 185 participants who wore the Electronically...

Studies find that physical activity links with mental health, females engage in less physical activity than males, and females have worse mental health than males. Less attention has been paid to the intersection of physical activity, mental health, and gender. Might physical activity explain links between gender and mental health in adolescence? O...

Mindfulness, meditation, and other practices that form contemplative interventions are increasingly offered in workplaces to support employee mental health. Studies have reported benefits across various populations, yet researchers have expressed concerns that adoption of such interventions has outpaced scientific evidence. We reappraise the extant...

The past decade has brought growing interest in supporting positive psychological functioning in young people. To support intervention efforts, adequate measures are needed. The EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Wellbeing assesses five positive psychological characteristics (engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness), with studies...

Over the past century, personality theory and research has successfully identified core sets of characteristics that consistently describe and explain fundamental differences in the way people think, feel and behave. Such characteristics were derived through theory, dictionary analyses, and survey research using explicit self-reports. The availabil...

Predictive performance on questionnaire based tasks for factors without residualization of age and gender for 10 and 30 factors. For comparison, with the questionnaire items, we calculate the 10 aspect scores and 30 facet based scores, using the relevant IPIP items. Demog indicates that age and gender were also added as co-variates to learn predict...

Predictive performance as a function of vocabulary size. We show mean Pearson’s R over 10 random train-test splits for FriendSize, and IQ while for Likes we show the mean area under the curve (AUC) over all 20 categories. In particular, we learn factors by restricting the vocabulary size to the top K words and evaluate these learned factors on thei...

Predictive performance on social media based tasks for factors with residualization of age and gender. We show mean Pearson’s R over 10 random train-test splits for FriendSize, Income and IQ while for Likes we show the mean area under the curve (AUC) over all 20 categories. Language based factors (FA) perform competitively and even outperform quest...

Predictive performance on social media tasks for factors with residualization of age and gender for 10 and 30 factors. Demog indicates that age and gender were also added as co-variates to learn predictive models. We show mean Pearson’s R over 10 random train-test splits for FriendSize, Income and IQ while for Likes we show the mean area under the...

Predictive performance on questionnaire based tasks for factors with residualization of age and gender for 10 and 30 factors. Demog indicates that age and gender were also added as co-variates to learn predictive models. We show mean Pearsons R over 10 random train-test splits. Language based factors (FA) perform do not outperform questionnaire bas...

Predictive performance on social media tasks for factors without residualization of age and gender for 10 and 30 factors. For comparison, with the questionnaire items, we calculate the 10 aspect scores and 30 facet based scores, using the relevant IPIP items. Demog indicates that age and gender were also added as co-variates to learn predictive mod...