Margaret L Kern

University of Melbourne | MSD · Melbourne Graduate School for Education

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Predictive performance on questionnaire based tasks for factors with residualization of age and gender. 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) do not outperform questionnaire based factors. (JPG)

Word clouds showing the most/least correlated words for each FA factor as obtained using differential language analysis with age and gender residualized. Residualizing out demographics like age and gender appears to reveal other dimensions of variance like (geography, ethnicity) as illustrated by F5 that reveals a factor highlighting language use o...

Online, social media communication is often ambiguous, and it can encourage speed and inattentiveness. We investigated whether Actively Open Minded Thinking (AOT), a dispositional willingness to seek out new or potentially threatening information, may help users avoid these pitfalls. In Study 1, we determined that correctly assessing social media a...

Leader autonomy support (LAS) refers to a cluster of supervisory behaviors that are theorized to facilitate self-determined motivation in employees, potentially enabling well-being and performance. We report the results of a meta-analysis of perceived LAS in work settings, drawing from a database of 754 correlations across 72 studies (83 unique sam...

Objectives. Although well-being at work is important for occupational health, multi-dimensional workplace well-being measures do not exist for Japanese workers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of the Japanese version of the Workplace PERMA-Profiler. Methods. Japanese workers completed online surveys at baseline (N = 310) a...

Recent decades have brought growing interest in understanding and measuring psychological well-being. Although multiple measures of well-being exist, most were developed with Western populations. The current study tested the factor structure of a Chinese translation of the engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness and happiness (EPOCH) Meas...

Background: Frequent expression of negative emotion words on social media has been linked to depression. However, metrics have relied on average values, not dynamic measures of emotional volatility. Objective: The aim of this study was to report on the associations between depression severity and the variability (time-unstructured) and instabili...

A recent preprint by Brown and Coyne titled, "No Evidence That Twitter Language Reliably Predicts Heart Disease: A Reanalysis of Eichstaedt et al." asserts to re-analyze our 2015 article published in Psychological Science, “Twitter Language Predicts Heart Disease Mortality”, disputing its primary findings. While we welcome scrutiny of the study, Br...

Belonging is an essential aspect of psychological functioning. Schools offer unique opportunities to improve belonging for school-aged children. Research on school belonging, however, has been fragmented and diluted by inconsistency in the use of terminology. To resolve some of these inconsistencies, the current study uses meta-analysis of individu...

Purpose: The vision or mission statement of a school outlines the school’s purpose and defines the context, goals, and aspirations that govern the institution. Using vision and mission statements, the present descriptive research study investigated trends in Australian secondary schools’ priorities. Research Methods: A stratified sample of secondar...

AbstractPositive education blends academic learning and student well-being. Although research and application in positive education is growing, most has involved psychologists and educators applying strategies in schools, with little research that involves student voices in the development and implementation of a school?s positive education strateg...

Religious affiliation is an important identifying characteristic for many individuals and relates to numerous life outcomes including health, well-being, policy positions, and cognitive style. Using methods from computational linguistics, we examined language from 12,815 Facebook users in the United States and United Kingdom who indicated their rel...

Suggests practical strategies and interventions for fostering school belonging ▶ Provides a model of school belonging underpinned by empirical research ▶ Presents the latest research in the field of school belonging distilled using findings derived from meta-analysis This book explores the concept of school belonging in adolescents from a socio-eco...

The literature clearly indicates that having a sense of belonging is good for people. The most compelling of this research demonstrates marked benefits both during school years and throughout life. Belonging has been related to higher levels of well-being and life satisfaction and less distress and mental illness; healthier behaviours, and better p...

Chapter 6 presented the BPSEM as an organising framework for fostering school belonging. What does this look like in practice? In this chapter, we begin to unpack what this looks like, building from our deep investigation into the research literature and moving toward practical strategies for application. The relationship between academic motivatio...