Happiness as Correlate of Positive Education among Teachers and Students

Happiness is a mixture of pride, satisfaction, sense of effectiveness and value that arises when one has stretched self to achieve something one care about. It is a combination of life satisfaction and the balance of the frequency of positive and negative affect. In this regard, positive education program (Seligman et al., 2009) has been discovered which comprises the key elements viz., character strengths and virtues, resilience, happiness, interpersonal relationships for consistent wellbeing and success. Quality in education is generally applied to signify the positive and considerable inputs from teachers and students. In accordance with the concept, the present piece of work aimed at studying subjective and authentic happiness of teachers and students in higher education. The institutional case study approach was undertaken for assessing subjective and authentic happiness of teachers and students. The sample for the present study was taken from Maharishi Arvind College of Engineering and Research Centre, Sirsi Road, Jaipur on the purposive sampling basis. The Subjective Happiness Scale and Authentic Happiness Inventory were administered to the selected sample. The results pointed out that all the respondents of the present study were found quite happy with overall positive mood states as depicted by higher mean scores on both subjective and authentic happiness. The female teachers as well as students were found to be happier in comparison to their male counter parts. The students had higher mean scores for subjective happiness, whereas teachers had higher scores for authentic happiness.