On the Effect of Positive Curriculum on Distress and Attainment of Iranian Dorm-Living Students: Incorporating Religious Counselling

With respect to the rich theoretical underpinnings of positive psychology (PP), the current study aims to investigate the effects of an extra educational curriculum on the basis of PP on distress and attainment of Iranian high school students who are living in dormitories in boarding schools.

To this aim, a sample of 346 male students were selected through convenience sampling. A translated and validated version of K10 distress questionnaire was administered to them and 67 students with high distress symptoms were identified and randomly allocated to a control group (N=23) and two experimental groups (N= 22 for each). First, the experimental group underwent 16 sessions of PP curriculum with the later was treated with PP curriculum integrated with religious counseling. Employing a post-test only control-group design, the group’s performance on a distress Likert scale (GHQ) was compared after the intervention. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the difference between the groups.

Findings revealed that positive curriculum alleviated distress symptoms of the experimental groups vis-à-vis the control (χ2 (2) = 52.851, p = 0.000). Also, to investigate the effect of the intervention on educational attainment, their semester mean scores were analyzed through ANOVA ((F (2, 66) = 8.244, p = 0.00) where promising results were obtained.

Finally, in light of the findings, a number of pedagogical implications are suggested.