Mapping the educational meaning of gratitude: A philosophical inquiry

In recent decades gratitude has grown into a large, multidisciplinary field of research. Building on claims regarding its moral value and positive psycho-social effects such as, among others, increased well-being, resilience and pro-social behaviour, interventions have been developed to stimulate gratitude in schools. However, what place gratitude deserves in education, and how it should be addressed there, have hardly been given systematic thought; this is the focus of my PhD research.

My poster presentation will outline the main components of my research, which are:
a) A description of prominent conceptual issues and defence of my own conceptual delineation of gratitude, namely gratitude as an appreciative response that construes its object as a gratuitous good and as a (metaphorical) gift; it is characterized by a receptive-appreciative attitude and an awareness that we are in some sense dependent on something other than ourselves.
b) An investigation into the ways in which gratitude experiences might contribute to educational aims, and how the development of (virtuous) dispositional gratitude might itself be thought of as an aim of education.
c) An overview of risks that might accompany gratitude, such as distraction from injustice, and how these might be avoided by developing certain knowledge/skills/attitudes in education.