Positive psychology: The use of the Framework of Achievement Bests to facilitate personal flourishing

Abstract

The 'Framework of Achievement Bests', which was recently published in 'Educational Psychology Review', makes a theoretical contribution to the study of positive psychology. The Framework of Achievement Bests provides an explanatory account of a person's optimal best practice from his/her actual best. Another aspect emphasizes on the saliency of the psychological process of 'optimization', which is central to our understanding of person's optimal functioning in a subject matter. Achieving an exceptional level of best practice (e.g. achieving excellent grades in mathematics) does not exist in isolation, but rather depends on the potent impact of optimization. This chapter, theoretical in nature, focuses on an in‐depth examination of the expansion of the Framework of Achievement Bests. Our discussion of the Framework of Achievement Bests, reflecting a methodical conceptualization, is benchmarked against another notable theory for understanding, namely: Martin Seligman's PERMA theory. For example, for consideration, one aspect that we examine entails the extent to which the Framework of Achievement Bests could explain the optimization of each of the five components of PERMA (e.g. how does the Framework of Achievement Bests explain the optimization of engagement?).