Ricardo Arguís Rey is a teacher of Special Education, Psychologist and Doctor in Education. He has been working for more than 30 years in the educational field, alternating periods as a classroom teacher with other professional stages as a consultant and teacher trainer. He coordinates the Sati Team, a work group that, since 2009, has been dedicated to the study and promotion of Positive Education for students of preschool, primary and secondary education. In October 2010, this team published the “Happy Classrooms” Programme, the first handbook in Spanish addressing Positive Education with students aged 3 to 18 years, based on the principles of mindfulness and the education of character strengths.

Ricardo combines his current work as a remedial teacher in a state secondary school, with his activity as a lecturer and consultant in the field of Positive Psychology applied to Education, both in Spain and abroad. He is a member of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and the Spanish Society of Positive Psychology. Since January 2015, he is a Global Representative for the International Positive Education Network (IPEN) in Spain. He is a member of the steering committee of IPPA’s Education Division, where he co-leads the Research and Practice Programme. In July 2019, he received the “Positive Educator Impact Award”, given at IPPA’s 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology (Melbourne, Australia), in recognition of the impact of his long-standing work in the dissemination and application of Positive Education internationally.

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>Masterclass: Promoting wellbeing in schools through the Happy Classrooms Programme 

In this Masterclass a general overview of positive education will be presented, highlighting some practical resources related to mindfulness, character education and wellbeing evaluation in schools. These topics will be illustrated with examples extracted from the “Happy Classrooms Programme”. This programme, created in Spain in 2010, is currently available for free in English and Spanish (http://educaposit.blogspot.com). It is addressed to students aged 3 to 18 years, and it has two main axes: mindfulness and the education of character strengths. Over the last years, the Happy Classrooms Programme has achieved widespread and international recognition by the scientific community and education professionals, and has been included as a reference manual in teacher training programs, master’s degrees and doctorates by many universities. In addition, there are currently several ongoing investigations to experimentally validate the effectiveness of this programme, the first one recently published and providing promising results.

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