• Relative to self-discovery activities of Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) lessons, the Gratitude Positive Psychological Intervention (PPI) generated a greater increase in students’ life satisfaction and reduction in self-reported depressive symptoms

• Relative to CCE lessons, the Hope PPI was found to be more effective in preventing the worsening of students’ self-reported depressive symptoms, and increasing the use of deep and elaborative learning strategies

The Gratitude and Hope interventions are premised on Barbara Fredrickson’s (1998, 2001) broaden and build framework.

The theory specifies different functional roles for positive and negative emotions. Negative emotions, such as sadness or anxiety, are thought to narrow an individual’s perception of events, thereby limiting how one thinks and responds to the events.

On the other hand, positive emotions are expected to broaden a person’s mindset towards events, which favours the expansion of how one thinks and behaves in response to the events. The broadened mindset, in turn, enables the building of one’s physical, intellectual, and social resources.

How Did Students Respond?

• After completing the Gratitude PPI, the students wrote comments that affirm the effectiveness of the PPI.
  • I learn to be more thankful and appreciative.
  • I had/need to be thankful and appreciative.
  • I feel so happy.
  • I think all these activities could make us appreciate more of what we had.
  • I am really thankful for the school doing this thank you card and all, I have really never thanked (a person) properly before.
  • The thank you letter was the best part. It really made me think well of my parents. I don’t get to spend much time with them as I’m always in my room and they’re always at work.
  • The group work gave us bonding moments. We worked as a team to present something good.
  • [I]t makes us realize that there is more to life and that we should start to appreciate whatever we have before regretting if we lost them.

• After completing the Hope PPI, the participating students wrote comments that further attest to the benefits of the PPI.
  • All the activities were fun to do and (we were) able to understand hope in ourselves.
  • It is meaningful and also helpful for students.
  • I think doing these activities is really fun, writing about our goals and goals that we have already achieved.
  • From these activities, I have learned a lot and I will work hard to achieve my goal.
  • I’m sure it will help me. It reminds me not to give up my goals.
  • It was fun and relaxing.

The present study is one of the few studies that provide some empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of PPIs among local students and the capability of local teachers to implement PPIs in a classroom setting.

Teachers may adopt the PPIS as stand-alone activities during CCE classes, as was done in this study, or integrate the PPIs into their classroom lessons.

Research Team

To learn more about Nurturing Positivity, please contact the Principal Investigator Dr Imelda S Caleon at imelda.caleon@nie.edu.sg

Principal Investigator

• Dr Imelda S CALEON, Office of Education Research (OER), NIE

Co-Principal Investigators

• A/P Gregory Arief D LIEM, Psychology and Child & Human Development (PCHD), NIE
• Dr Jennifer TAN Pei-ling (formerly of NIE)

Collaborators

• Dr TAN Chee Soon, PCHD, NIE
• Dr Rachel Jane LAM (formerly of NIE)
• Ast/P Ronnel B. KING, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
• Mr TAN Wei Xiong, MOE

Research Assistant:

• Ms Nur Qamarina Binte Ilham, NIE