The purposes of this research are to evaluate virtues and strengths included in the new Palestinian textbooks and to assess the acquisitions of these virtues and strengths among the lower elementary students from their teachers' perspectives. The study benefited from the Positive Psychology framework to capture and assess those virtues and strengths either in the new Palestinian textbooks or among the students. To achieve the two previous objectives, two methodologies were utilized, a content analysis and an online survey. In the content analysis method; 82 study textbooks units were selected and analyzed. In the quantitative method, 351 teachers were selected. The results showed that the most frequently mentioned virtues were wisdom and justice, with the least mentioned being temperance and transcendence. The results also revealed that teachers highly assessed the acquisition of virtues and strengths among students. Teachers' demographic factors had impacts on assessing the acquisitions of the virtues and strengths among students. It is concluded that there is a clear imbalance in the distributions of both virtues and strengths. Therefore, the Palestinian school textbooks developers should consider including more of the positive psychology virtues and strengths such as virtues of temperance and transcendence.

KEYWORDS
Virtues, Strengths, Positive Psychology, Palestinian Textbooks

Title

Universal Journal of Educational Research

Publisher

Universal Journal of Educational Research

Publisher Country

United States of America

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

None

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

8

Year

2020

Pages

pp. 8351 - 8361