OPTIMIZING HIGHER EDUCATION MANAGEMENT: INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH ON STUDENTS’ FLOURISHING AND COGNITION

Abstract

In recent years, many governments around the world have placed a stronger emphasis on people’s wellbeing with the aim of making societies more inclusive and cohesive. As part of this approach, the public sector has introduced a number of initiatives to measure and support students’ psychological flourishing. Previous research reported that students’ flourishing could be linked to certain positive/negative cognitions, but the specifics of these links were under-researched. This study aimed to reveal links between students’ automatic thoughts and flourishing in a sample of public sector university students (n = 226), where 75.7% of participants (n = 171) were 18 to 24 years old and 24.3% (n = 55) were aged 25+. The participants represented four fields of study: Life Sciences (n = 35), Humanities (n = 71), Social Sciences (n = 85), and Technology Sciences (n = 31). The Flourishing Scale (FS) was used to assess students’ flourishing, and the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-Revised (ATQ-R) was applied to measure participants’ positive and negative automatic thoughts. The findings revealed that students’ negative self-concepts and negative expectations negatively predicted flourishing, while positive automatic thoughts and positive self-statements positively predicted flourishing. The findings also revealed that positive automatic thoughts and self-statements mediate the link between negative self-concept, negative expectations, and flourishing. Moreover, the results show that strengthening students’ positive cognitions can contribute to students’ increased flourishing, despite coexisting negative cognitions. Based on these findings, fostering a positive and supportive educational environment that promotes mental wellbeing is recommended. This can be achieved by implementing policies prioritizing students’ mental health and providing resources such as counseling services and support systems. Creating an environment where students feel valued, supported, and encouraged can help counteract their negative cognitions, leading to improved flourishing.