{"id":5927,"date":"2020-11-24T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=5927"},"modified":"2020-11-23T16:34:08","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T21:34:08","slug":"gratitude-in-school-2020-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/gratitude-in-school-2020-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Gratitude in School, 2020 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a pre-Thanksgiving question: How much good news can you pack into one psychology study?<\/p>\n

Lots of psychology research focuses on human difficulties:<\/p>\n

Why is it hard to learn and develop?<\/p>\n

Why do people struggle to connect?<\/p>\n

What happens when mental health decays?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The field of positive psychology — as the name suggests — turns its focus to the upsides of mental experience: human flourishing, connection, wellness, <\/em>and development<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For instance: how about gratitude<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

What does research tell us about gratitude? After all: we could all use a little positive focus these days…<\/p>\n

Benefits of Connection?<\/h2>\n

A research team in Hong Kong wanted to know<\/a>: how does the feeling of connection with other people<\/em> help us in schools?<\/p>\n

Working with high school students, they measured lots of variables:<\/p>\n

students’ connection with parents, teachers, and peers<\/p>\n

their perceived academic confidence, with things like:<\/p>\n

study skills, time management, & creative thinking<\/p>\n

Because they measured these variables at different times, they could identify\u00a0an interesting causal pattern.<\/p>\n

Students who felt more connected to teachers, parents, and peers (that’s good!) also felt higher levels of gratitude (that’s also good!).<\/p>\n

And: that gratitude boost resulted in higher levels of things like study skills, time management, creative thinking, and investment in learning (those are all good too!).<\/p>\n

This<\/em> good thing (connection) led to\u00a0that<\/em> good thing (gratitude), which increased\u00a0these other good things\u00a0<\/em>(school work habits and values). That’s a whole lotta positive in one psychology study.<\/p>\n

Research Implications<\/h2>\n

Honestly, I don’t know we teachers will do much differently as a result of this study. I suspect we were in favor of connection before we saw this research, and we’re still in favor of connection now.<\/p>\n

We were pro-gratitude; we still are.<\/p>\n

At this time of year — after a 2020 that hasn’t given us much to celebrate — it might lift our spirits to see such results. Many of us got into teaching because, well, we value the connections we have with our students.<\/p>\n

Yes: Shakespeare is great. Yes: an appreciation of Mali ‘s Imperial past inspires awe. Yes: black holes are amazingly cool and fun to study. But it’s the\u00a0people we study with<\/em> that really make the job joyful and worthwhile.<\/p>\n

In other words: schools should devote lots of time to our students’ knowledge.<\/p>\n

And: the time we take to connect with our students helps them master that knowledge.<\/p>\n

In this year that has created so much stress — at a time we remember all that makes us thankful — it\u2019s good to know: gratitude itself is something we can be grateful for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a pre-Thanksgiving question: How much good news can you pack into one psychology study? Lots of psychology research focuses on human difficulties: Why is it hard to learn and develop? Why do people struggle to connect? What happens when mental health decays? The field of positive psychology — as the name suggests — turns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5927"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5932,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5927\/revisions\/5932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}