Background, contribution, and aim: To increase the quality of education teachers need to invest in their professional development. In this study, we aim to explore whether a strengths intervention that targets the identification, use, and development of individual strengths in a team context, can stimulate teachers’ professional development initiatives. This extends existing research on the effects of strengths interventions that has hitherto mainly focused on work-related wellbeing and performance as outcomes (Ghielen et al., 2018). Building on the assumption that engaging in strengths activities elicits feelings of self-efficacy and work engagement, which, in turn, contribute to proactive behaviors (Meyers et al., 2015; van Woerkom, et al., 2016), we hypothesize that participating in a strengths intervention leads to increases in teachers’ professional development initiatives, and that work engagement and self-efficacy mediate this effect.
Method: To test these hypotheses, we conducted a field experiment with a sample of N= 264 Dutch Vocational Education teachers who were assigned to either an experimental group (participating in the strengths intervention) or a waitlist control group. All participants were asked to fill in a pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 2 month follow-up questionnaire.
Results: Preliminary results show that participating in the strengths intervention elicits feelings of competence and engagement, which in turn contribute to increases in performance but not to increases in professional development initiatives. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be discussed during the presentation.