Gratitude: does it have a place within media-practice education?

ABSTRACT

Gratitude may be an important yet largely untapped aspect of media-practice education. This research uses an exploratory approach with media-practice academics and students in order to examine the evidence and nature of gratitude within media-practice education. Given the exploratory nature of the study, interim findings are reported. The research finds media-practice students to be open to gratitude having a place within their educational experiences; indeed, students exclusively speak about situations in which they feel grateful, as positive aspects of their student experience. However, academics see gratitude in a more varied way. For some, gratitude and its cyclical nature resonate; for others, gratitude is inappropriate and loaded with notions of power. These different perspectives may be partially explained by the different ways in which students and academics perceive gratitude. Whereas initial student voices suggest that gratitude is a positive emotion associated with a desire to reciprocate, academics’ interpretation seems to emphasise obligation. This mismatch may inhibit the current impact of gratitude within the media-practice learning context. The research suggests that gratitude may be a defining aspect of a functional, productive student experience which those working within media-practice education might usefully aim to generate.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• media-practice
• student-experience
• higher education
• relationship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Dr Fiona Cownie led on the student experience within the Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University for four years. Her research and teaching interests lie within the areas of relationship marketing and word-of-mouth communication.

ORCID

Fiona Cownie http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1321-2646