Do character strengths help students do well at school?
Students who described themselves as more persevering, prudent and hopeful behaved better in class according to teachers, and that better classroom behaviour partly accounted for their higher achievement.
Source
Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Two cross-sectional studies: self-reported character strengths correlated with teacher-rated positive classroom behaviour and achievement, with bootstrapped mediation tests
- N
- Two separate samples: Study 1, 179 primary-school students; Study 2, 199 secondary-school students. The supplied text omits Study 1's Methods section, so Study 1 procedures are known only from the abstract and later summaries
- Population
- Swiss German-speaking schoolchildren: primary students (mean age about 11.6) and secondary students in grades 7-9 (mean age about 14.4)
- Outcome
- Teacher-rated positive classroom behaviour; school achievement (teacher-rated overall achievement in Study 1; school-reported grades in academic, maths/German and non-academic subjects in Study 2)
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What they did
In two samples of Swiss students - 179 in primary school and 199 in secondary school - students completed the VIA-Youth questionnaire measuring 24 character strengths such as perseverance, hope, gratitude and humour. Teachers rated each student's positive classroom behaviour (diligence, reliability, consideration for others). Achievement was a teacher rating in the primary sample and actual school grades, split into academic and non-academic subjects, in the secondary sample. Mediation analyses tested whether strengths related to achievement through classroom behaviour.
What they found
In primary school, 15 of 24 strengths correlated with positive classroom behaviour and 14 with achievement, and the strengths together explained about a fifth of the variance in each; for most strengths the link to achievement ran through classroom behaviour. In secondary school the pattern was weaker but similar: perseverance, prudence, self-regulation, social intelligence and hope related to classroom behaviour, eight strengths related to academic GPA, and the strengths explained 14.8% extra variance in GPA. No strength correlated with grades in art, music or PE. Across both samples perseverance, prudence and hope were tied to both behaviour and achievement, with perseverance and prudence fully mediated by classroom behaviour.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Both studies are cross-sectional, so mediation here is statistical, not causal; achievement could shape strengths (the authors mention gratitude) rather than the reverse. In Study 1 one teacher rated both behaviour and achievement at the same time, which may inflate their overlap, and intelligence was not measured in either study. The two studies used different behaviour and achievement measures, making differences between age groups hard to interpret, and the supplied paper text is missing the introduction and Study 1 method section.
Key terms
- Character strengths (VIA classification)
- 24 positively valued traits, such as perseverance, hope, kindness and humour, grouped under six broad virtues and measured by self-report.
- Mediation
- A statistical model testing whether the link between a predictor and an outcome runs through an intermediate variable, here classroom behaviour.
- Indirect vs direct effect
- The indirect effect is the part of a predictor's link to the outcome carried by the mediator; the direct effect is what remains once the mediator is accounted for.
- Full vs partial mediation
- Full mediation means only an indirect effect is found; partial mediation means both indirect and direct effects are present.
- Prudence
- The strength of being careful about choices, not taking undue risks and not saying or doing things one might later regret.
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Quiz yourself
Who rated students' positive classroom behaviour?
Common questions
Does this show that teaching perseverance would raise grades?
No. The data are cross-sectional correlations; they are consistent with that idea but cannot rule out reverse causation or third variables such as intelligence.
Why did no strength predict art, music or PE grades?
The authors suggest specific talents such as musicality or sportiness matter more there, and note this argues against strengths simply making students 'the nice student' who gets good grades everywhere.
Why were effects weaker in secondary school?
The authors expected personality to predict achievement less at secondary level, but the two studies also used different measures, so the difference cannot be attributed to age alone.
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