Ms Amber Halliday

Ms Amber Halliday
  • Biography/ Background

    My doctoral thesis (supervised by Prof. Deborah Turnbull and Dr Margret Kern) explores the implementation of positive education. Positive education shows great promise in helping young people feel good and function well, but there is no best practice for its implementation in schools.

    The implementation of positive education has often been costly, inexact and lacking in student 'buy-in', so we explored the use of Participatory Action Research in the implementation of positive education at an Australian government school.  The use of Participatory Action Research aimed to address these areas by being an accessible, evidence-based approach which empowers students to research their school and have a say in how positive education gets done.

    Correspondingly, while there is evidence for the efficacy of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in randomized trials, evidence for their effective real world implementation in a positive education strategy is mixed. Real world contexts lack experimental control. We are using implementation science  to explore and explain what makes positive education have an impact in a school setting. Implementation science has great relevance for translating the promise of tested PPIs into helpful outcomes in real-world positive education programs. 

    The findings from these projects may have broad implications in how positive education is implemented in Australian schools.

  • Qualifications

    Bachelor of Social Sciences (Psychology), University of Adelaide

    Bachelor of Media, University of Adelaide

    Graduate Diploma Psychological Sciences, University of Adelaide

    Bachelor of Health Sciences (Hons.), Univeristy of Adelaide

  • Research Interests

    • Prevention
    • Education
    • Adaptive functioning
    • Resilience

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Entry last updated: Thursday, 21 Jan 2016