How Students Perceive Gratitude (And What They Stand to Gain From This Understanding)
Gratitude can be a psychological asset for students. However, it is only when they personify their understanding of gratitude that they can really benefit from it.
Following the government's lifting of restrictions caused by the global pandemic, I’ve been able to return to school campuses to deliver the Visible Wellbeing (VWB) training in person. And I’ve been so thankful for this.
On one campus I was struck by a beautiful wall display that the students had created – they called it a gratitude garden.
The garden was made up of a colourful bed of paper flowers. Each student created a paper flower and had written the things they felt grateful for inside it. Then, they placed these flowers on the wall creating a paper garden. It was an admirable sight to behold.
So, why do I tell you the story?
It’s because research has shown that gratitude can be a psychological asset that holds many benefits for students.
In fact, a 2020 Gallup research study found that gratitude was one of the strengths that went up all around the world during the first year of the Global Pandemic. It was a tool that helped many people bolster their wellbeing during that time of uncertainty.
So, as teachers, it may be wise for us to promote gratitude and an understanding of gratitude amongst our students.
But it’s worth mentioning one thing first:
Research has shown that students need to see and experience gratitude in their own way before they can process it and turn it into a psychological asset and enjoy its benefits.
How Do Students See Gratitude?
To know how young people really understand gratitude, my colleagues from the University of Birmingham and I carried out a prototype analysis of gratitude with Australian and English school students who completed a series of online surveys.
In the surveys, the students were asked to list the features and characteristics that they believe typify the concept of gratitude. After this, we asked them to rate the value of these features on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means very negative/of no value and 5 means very positive/of high value.
The most commonly named feature by the respondents was “appreciation”. It was mentioned by 49% of the students and it had a very positive value rating of 4.76. This was followed by “thankful” with a positive value rating of 4.68. Then came “expressing thanks”, “positive” and “happy”.
While the study showed that most students observe gratitude on a positive note, it also unveiled a darker side of this concept.
Participants of the survey named three negative features of gratitude. For 6.5% of students, gratitude was related to “indebtedness/obligation”. “Guilt” and “vulnerable” were also mentioned in relation to gratitude. This means that gratitude can co-occur with indebtedness and guilt in young people.
Additionally, it can bring about a feeling of vulnerability in them. That’s why it’s best that educational initiatives aiming to promote gratitude in students pay attention to its darker aspects.
Apart from this, our research suggests that some young people might see hidden non-benevolent intentions in acts of gratitude. Meaning that some people might show kindness with the expectation of gaining something in return, making the gratitude inauthentic and transactional.
Ultimately, it is pertinent for us teachers that we first uncover how our students understand and experience gratitude.
How Do Your Students Understand Gratitude?
The majority of the students who participated in our study saw gratitude positively. That is, they associated it with appreciation, being thankful, and promoting happiness.
However, their understanding of what gratitude is differed greatly. In total, the students identified 837 different aspects of gratitude (an average of 7 aspects of gratitude were mentioned by each participant).
What this means is that it’s best for us teachers to let students define gratitude by themselves so that they can get a better understanding of the concept.
One easy and effective way to do that is to discuss their different understandings of gratitude and how to express them in the classroom. In doing so, it can help students understand the concept better, personalise it, and have a subjective definition and understanding of it.
When students have this understanding of gratitude, they may be able to express it in their own words. That’s when they can see it as a psychological asset and start to enjoy its benefits.
Two Ways That Understanding Gratitude Benefits Students
Way #1 - Satisfaction
Research shows that there’s a positive relationship between students’ level of gratitude and how satisfied they are at school. In essence, students tend to be more satisfied with school when they feel high levels of gratitude.
As teachers, it’s in our interest to foster thankful thinking.
Way #2 - Relational Learning
Gratitude is also a psychological asset for students in the classroom because it supports relational learning.
By this, I mean that when students feel gratitude, they are more likely to feel connected to others. And this helps them learn more effectively from their teachers and their peers.
Ultimately, these positive emotions can promote a better learning experience overall for students at school.
Help Make Gratitude a Psychological Asset For Your Students
Gratitude is mainly a positive, prosocial emotion that can be a psychological asset for students.
But before students can enjoy these benefits, they first need to have a personal definition of gratitude and we need to recognise that gratitude can have some shadows (indebtedness, inauthenticity, transactional - saying ‘thank you’ to get something out of the other person).
If you want to learn more about how you can help improve the mental wellbeing of students…
Join teachers from across the globe who have enrolled in the Teacher Certificate in Visible Wellbeing course. It’s an on-demand course available here.