engleski

Benefits of being student: A qualitative study

The potential to flourish as a college student has emerged as a topic after positive psychological perspectives on well-being started to include the models of total wellbeing or global flourishing in addition to prevailing happiness- or life satisfaction- oriented theories.Besides acquiring specific knowledge, there are several other ways in which studying may initiate change in students, and possible consequent flourishing. This study was done in order to research students’ viewpoints about how being a student for 1, 5 year affected them. Since we expected the diversity of student experience and wanted to explore the whole range of experiences and get deeper understanding of the matter, the study used qualitative methodology. The participants were 128 students (95% female), all majoring in primary education in large public university in Zagreb. As part of the regular psychology course, students were asked to write up to one page text as an answer to the question: Did experience of studying changed you and if it did, how? A total of 759 answers were collected, coded and analyzed. Several positive themes emerged during content analysis of written responses: (1) personal development (development of character strengths such as responsibility, independence, self-confidence, optimism, coping with stress) ; (2) acquiring knowledge and skills organization skills, communication and social skills, studying skills, specific knowledge) ; (3) changes in personal view of life (gratitude, new attitudes toward learning and life in general, satisfaction with life and oneself) (4) new experiences (new hobbies, new friends, new physical appearance) ; (5) development of professional identity (intrinsic motivation for study, the role of primary education teacher). Two negative themes emerged: (1) coping with initial stress of students life (i.e., fear of not finding new friends), and (2) academic stress (i.e., no free time). Positive themes were more common, while negative themes were very rare. The results show that students link their experience of studying to different types of changes in themselves, most of them being linked to flourishing. In conclusion, it seems that studying in emerging adults had huge positive impact not only for acquiring knowledge but for personal development as well.

college students, flourishing, personal change, qualitative analysis

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