The purpose of this research is to develop gratitude education program to improve the happiness and decrease depressive disposition of senior elementary school students and to investigate the program effectiveness.
To achieve this purpose gratitud...
The purpose of this research is to develop gratitude education program to improve the happiness and decrease depressive disposition of senior elementary school students and to investigate the program effectiveness.
To achieve this purpose gratitude education program was developed according to the systematic counseling program developing model. At first, target population was selected the upper graders of elementary school that they could express their own opinion and communicate with others.
And after target population analysis, need analysis was conducted at 56 sixth graders in the K elementary school. In addition, as a result of task analysis through pre-existing gratitude studies, program's character, domain, goal were set. The program developed in this research has preventive character, is to improve children's happiness and is to decrese children's depressive disposition by improving grateful disposition, having a positive self-image, improving relationships ability, enlarging internal control through changing of positive thinking, restructuring of experiment, reducing of negative affect, rising of positive affect
At the step of program plan, program design criteria was set and selected an appraisal question and assessment tool for investigating effects of the program. The assessment tool were Gratitude Questionnaire-6(McCullough, Emmons & Tsang, 2002), measurement of children's sence of happiness(Young Ha Kang, 2008), Children's Depression Inventory(Kovacs, 1990). Also, motivation strategies of gratitude models, fables, experiences, videos using, and program schedule were planned.
At the step of program development, program contents and guides were set and producted 6 program factors - 1) self-consciousness of gratitude 2) awareness of gratitude 3) expressions of gratitude 4) strategy of gratitude 5) promise of gratitude 6) gratitude life - based on the result of previous analysis step and pre-existing gratitude studies. And then to fit program factors gratitude education technique was abstracted and 10 sessions of gratitude education program was developed. Then, all sessions were pre-implemented for program formative evaluation and fixed the content and managing ways based on observation of the prep-sessions.
At the step of implementation, sixth grade students in S elementary school were measured on pre-testes. 2 classes from the sixth grade 9 classes of S elementary school in seoul were selected as subjects. Then, three pre- testes were given to subjects. 26 children of teacher's class were placed in experimental group, while another 26 children who had same qualities as the experimental group were placed in a control group.
The experimental group participated in 10 terms of the gratitude education program for 5 weeks while the control group didn't After the experiment, a post-test was given th verify the effects of the program.
In verifying the effects of the program, I-STATistics for quantitative analysis and opinion documents for each term, opinion documents of children after the program, and counselor's observation were used. Since control group's quality were same to the experimental group as the result of independent t-test, independent t-test were used for quantitative analysis of post-inspection, too.
The results of quantitative analysis verifying the effects of the program were as follow;
The First, compared to the control group, the experimental group that participated in the gratitude education program showed significant improvement in grateful disposition.
The second, compared to the control group, the experimental group that participated in the gratitude education program showed significant improvement in happiness and its sud-factors(self-esteem, optimism, relationship with friends, family environment).
The third, compared to the control group, the experimental group that participated in the gratitude education program showed significant decrese in depressive disposition and its sub-factors(negative self-conception/inefficiency, problems of personal relations, negative mood/physical symptoms).
To supplement the results of quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis was executed, and the result showed that children were more able to positive think positively, and had better relationships with their friends and family. Also it showed that they were better equipped to deal with negative mind by counting my blessing and appreciating.
As these results, it's proved that the gratitude education program has positive effects on children's happiness and depressive disposition by increasing grateful disposition and happines, positive affect and by decreasing depressive disposition.
Also this research was important that its target was the upper grader of elementary school known to go into decreasing their happiness and improving depressive disposition, and provided one model with systematizing practical gratitude education program.
Then this research suggests that another gratitude education program be developed depending on various counselling domains and ages, and be modified this program for another gratitude education program domains and another target population.