Chapter 10 The Transformative Power of Gratitude in Education
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Abstract
Greater attention to gratitude invites the student to consider not only what they can gain from their education but also what they can give to it, both within the learning context and beyond. Teachers who practise gratitude would be encouraged to focus both on what they give and what they receive, and thus address some of the burnout and stress that many are experiencing around the world. Education can be transformed from being considered a commodity that is paid for – or that one is entitled to receive – to a gift, a privilege that we would be less likely to take for granted. Gratitude – briefly defined here as ‘the action of giving back out of acknowledgment for what we have received’ – has enormous power to enliven our relationships and also revive a dynamic in education by moving us from an exchange paradigm to a gift paradigm. However, in order to harness this potential we need to consider some of the conceptual and practical challenges that may lead to questions of the relevance of gratitude in mainstream curricula and traditional teaching practices. This chapter draws on two decades of research on the role of gratitude in various educational settings to suggest practical ways to address such challenges.