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5

Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

3 
(2023) 

1-2

The Gift

Edited by Francesco Fistetti

Francesco Fistetti
Editorial – What Is the Gift Paradigm? A Reading Guide 7

First Section

Alain Caillé
Recent Extensions of the Gift 15

Jacques T. Godbout
The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ Essai sur le don 43

Francesco Fistetti
The Gift Paradigm: Towards a Science of “total social facts” 59

Annalisa Caputo
Ricœur, Gift and Poetics 81

Second Section

Andreana Lavanga - Francesco Sulla
Praise as a Gift in the Relationship between Teachers 93 
and Their Students

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Anna Daniela Savino
The Gift of Desire: The “inner voice” between Neuroscience 105 
and Theory of Attachment

Various

Roberta Baldini - Maria Grazia Mada Logrieco
The Gifted Student: Gifts and Talents Development 125

Alessandro De Santis - Stefania Fantinelli
Digital Well-Being as a New Kind of Adaptation 135 
to the New Millennium Needs: A State-of-the-Art Analysis

Salvatore Iuso - Pia Marinaro
Education and Culture: Pluralism in the Age of Globalization 153

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93

Praise as a Gift in the Relationship 
between Teachers and Their Students
Andreana Lavanga - Francesco Sulla
Università degli Studi di Foggia (Italy)

doi: https://doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2023-0102-lasu
 andreana.lavanga@unifg.it
 francesco.sulla@unifg.it

Abstract 

The term “giving” refers to the altruistic act of offering something to another person for 
free without expecting anything in return. While prosocial behavior can also be found 
in very young children, altruistic behavior emerges later, with the moral and cognitive 
development, also supported by adult praise, that children may receive within the educa-
tional relationship. Education, in fact, has the noble purpose of guiding people to a better 
condition than they are now, through relationships. The aim of this paper is to review 
the works that have analyzed the effects of praise in the relationship between teacher and 
student. Experimental studies over the last 50 years have shown that praise is a low-cost 
strategy that teachers can use to increase adaptive behavior in the classroom and decrease 
problem behavior. Furthermore, the use of praise improves the classroom climate, as it is 
a vehicle for positive emotions. Modern neuroscience has now shown how emotions play 
an important role in learning, including school learning. Therefore, we could consider 
praise as one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give to their students.

Keywords: educational relationship; gift; learning; positive emotions; praise.

1. The gift

According to the vocabulary of the Italian language Treccani (2022), the 
term donare (“to give”) indicates the action of giving to others freely and 
with disinterest. 

The concept of gift is of great importance in social sciences, particu-
larly in cultural anthropology. In Essai sur le don (1923-24), Marcel Mauss 

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observes that in many societies exchange may also take a very different 
form from the utilitarian logic of market exchange and economic trans-
actions based on a logic of “give, receive, respond”. Unlike this market 
logic, the gift can be seen as a form of exchange without pre-established 
equivalence: it is also a time-delayed exchange. In the societies studied 
by Mauss, exchange had not only an economic significance but also a 
social, political and religious one: it was a “total social fact”. Developed 
in studies of societies of traditional ethnographic interest, the concept of 
gift has proved to be an important analytical tool for modern societies. 
The transactions that take place in families, in parent-child relationship, 
and in the world of volunteering are mostly based on the logic of giving 
(Mauss, 1950). 

From a developmental perspective, the logic of giving might sprout 
in humans together with moral standards and prosocial behaviors. In line 
with Piaget’s framework, some researchers argue that these developments 
are due to a cognitive shift away from an egocentric orientation and that 
this leads also to improved communication skills (Eisenberg, Fabes, & 
Spinrad, 2006). Prosocial behavior is behavior that is intended to benefit 
another people. It may be motivated by self-interest, practical, moral or 
other concerns and is grounded in moral emotions including guilt and 
empathy. Altruistic behavior is also behavior that is designed to help 
someone else, but altruism is generally considered not to be motivated by 
self-interest. In common use, what distinguishes altruistic behavior from 
prosocial behavior is the willingness to help another without any thought 
of compensation. Altruistic acts are therefore motivated by internalized 
values, goals and self-rewards rather than by the expectation of concrete 
or social rewards. Research has demonstrated that we see the beginnings 
of prosocial behavior in quite young children, whereas truly altruistic 
behavior occurs only later on (Eisenberg et al., 2006). From an educational 
perspective, this means that, as young children, we need social reward, also 
in the form of praise and approval, as one of the way we have to develop 
the intrinsic motivation that may leads to altruistic behavior (Henderlong 
& Lepper, 2002).

2. The educational relationship as a gift

The educational purpose can be described as the noble goal of guiding a 
person towards a better condition than the one in which they find them-
selves. It is important to clarify the human quality of the educational act. It 
is only by proceeding from such a clarification, in fact, that the criteria for 

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answering the question of the relationship between pedagogy and anthro-
pology can be illustrated, and thus a rethinking of education as a gift and 
care of human beings.

Humans are intrinsically communicative and, therefore able to imple-
ment authentic educational communication that favors the growth of 
young people and the community in which they live. This human capacity 
could be a concrete response to the educational needs of the new genera-
tions. Educational relationships take place in a dialogical and intersubjective 
space, allowing interaction between two subjects, the educator and the stu-
dent, developing the scope of interpersonal relationships. In this exchange, 
authentic dialogue involves the ethical desire to encourage sharing in the 
situation of the other without exploitation or instrumentalization. In 
authentic communication, the ego must put aside egocentric temptations 
to develop an attitude of understanding of the other, thus fully recogniz-
ing the other and their convictions. The aspect of reciprocity reveals that 
humans develop in the harmony of giving and receiving. Once there is an 
encounter, existence eventually becomes complete. Educators are called to 
help others and themselves to grow, to pursue the best of themselves, and 
to discover new possibilities of action and life. All this reinforces the idea 
that education is an activity of free donation to others so that we not only 
recognize them but also recognize ourselves (Indellicato, 2018).

3. Emotions and learning

The cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning are inter-
connected and influence each other. For instance, emotions (affective 
domain) play an important role in the quality of humans’ executive func-
tions (Geake, 2016). Executive function is an umbrella term that includes 
high-order cognitive abilities such as working memory, inhibitory control, 
cognitive flexibility, planning, reasoning, and problem solving.

The neural networks responsible for learning can be classified into 
recognition, strategic, and affective. The recognition network receives, 
identifies, and categorizes sensory information perceived by students; the 
strategic network plans and regulates actions guided and oriented toward 
specific objectives; the affective network takes part in the emotional aspect 
of learning by regulating interest, motivation, and stress (Rose & Strang-
man, 2007). 

According to the hypothesis of the somatic marker of Damasio 
(1995) the emotional component contributes to decision-making, selec-
tion, and orientation processes based on the information obtained from 

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the environment throughout life. The somatic marker, therefore, goes to 
mark a certain experience by creating an association between emotions 
and cognitive processes that become interconnected and regulate decision-
making processes.

Hence, emotions influence and are influenced by cognitive process-
ing. Each emotion has a different value and influence. Positive emotions 
(joy, happiness, etc.) have specific consequences on learning that differ from 
the effects of what is sometimes classified as negative emotions (sadness, 
anxiety, etc.). The deepest and oldest areas (for example the amygdala) of 
our brain are responsible for emotions. The hippocampus, responsible for 
long-term memories, is closely connected to the amygdala. These neural 
connections explain, at an anatomical level, the phenomenon for which 
the most remembered information is related to intense emotions. Nega-
tive emotions (fear, anxiety, frustration, boredom, etc.) negatively affect 
learning, while positive emotions (discovery, curiosity, surprise, satisfac-
tion, etc.) positively influence learning by supporting it. Some negative 
emotions, however, if interpreted correctly, can also represent a positive 
stimulus for the development of cognitive skills (Meccariello & Mentasti, 
2023).

Bower (1981) through the theory of affectivity network illustrated 
the process of emotional elaboration by stating that mood congruence 
facilitates the cognitive process. Mood congruence means that positive 
information is more easily associated with positive emotions, while nega-
tive information is more easily associated with negative emotions. Also in 
this case the brain architecture explains this congruence because it is organ-
ized by associations and semantic similarity. Two close pieces of informa-
tion are more likely to be activated and this closeness is usually given by the 
similarity and association between the two (Sulla, 2022).

4. Emotional education

During their school life, it is likely that a student may associates infor-
mation or an event originally of a neutral nature to an experience full of 
negative emotions. As a consequence, this association make the neutral 
information negative itself. Seeing the premised presented in the preceding 
paragraph, we now know that sometime, for some students, learning can 
become difficult, and school a place to escape from. A possible solution 
to this type of association is an approach based on emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can be defined in different ways, but it was 
Salovey and Mayer (1990) that coined this term for the first time, defining 

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it as “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor 
one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them 
and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (p. 189). 
Emotional intelligence, therefore, allows one to optimally organize rela-
tionships with the surrounding environment and promote psychological 
well-being and consequent academic success (Lucangeli, Bonichini, & De 
Gennaro, 2019). Daniel Goleman (1996) suggests that with the develop-
ment of emotional intelligence comes the balance necessary for the emo-
tional dimension to appropriately influence all other dimensions of life.

Given that emotions play a primary role in the lives of all individu-
als, and students make no exception, an emotional education achievable 
through “emotional literacy” programs is essential. Desirable programs 
start from the first degrees of education with the aim of promoting self-
awareness and the development of emotional and social skills. Students 
and teachers take part in the educational relationship not only on a cogni-
tive level but also on a behavioral and emotional level. 

The success of the learning process is therefore influenced by the emo-
tional impressions and the consequent cognitive evaluations implemented 
by the learner. The emotional perception of the pupil in relation to the 
teacher’s teaching proposal must be taken into account. The educational 
relationship, however, is characterized by the student, whose emotions are 
important for the success of his or her learning, but also by the teacher, 
who also has an emotional dimension relevant to the success of the learn-
ing process (Meccariello & Mentasti, 2023).

5. Praise as a vehicle of positive emotions

The literature shows that the teacher’s behavior may have a strong influ-
ence on students’ social and academic behaviors. This literature also shows 
that, behaviors such as praise may be seen as one of the most powerful tool 
in teachers’ hands, as it was demonstrated in experimental studies that it 
may increase students’ adaptive behavior and decrease the disruptive ones 
(Swinson & Harrop, 2005; Sulla, Perini, & Rollo, 2013; Apter, Sulla, & 
Swinson, 2020; Sulla & Rollo, 2023). 

Although there is no universal definition for praise, despite some dif-
ferences, common roots of praise found in seminal works (Brophy, 1981) 
have influenced many current definitions and appear to yield positive out-
comes (e.g., Sulla & Rollo, 2023). In most recent studies (e.g., Caldarella 
et al., 2020; 2023), praise is defined as a verbal indication of approval fol-
lowing student behavior more than acknowledging a correct response.

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Praise can be divided into person-praise (the praise towards the 
person) and process-praise (the praise toward the person’s performance). 
Kamins and Dweck (1999) hypothesized that person-praise, because it 
involves a global assessment based on a specific behavior or performance, 
would teach students to measure themselves by their performance and 
would thus foster more helpless reactions to setbacks. Such feedback 
includes praise (or criticism) that comments on students’ abilities, good-
ness, or worthiness after their performance of a task or that expresses the 
adult’s global evaluation of the student on the basis of their performance 
(e.g., disappointment or pride in the student as a whole). In contrast, 
they hypothesized that feedback that focused students on examining their 
strategies or effort (process-feedback) would foster more mastery-oriented 
responses to setbacks. Although the positive effects of praise in school is 
well-established in the literature, we know that most teachers struggle to 
use it as an educational instrument. 

From a study on the natural rates of approval and disapproval in Ital-
ian classrooms by Sulla and colleagues (2019) it is clear that in the Italian 
context, students receive, at all school levels (from primary to secondary), 
a greater number of negative feedback and disapproval than positive feed-
back. In particular, the majority of teachers’ feedback is of a negative nature 
and directed in response to students’ social behavior. In Italian primary 
schools it was found a rate of 0.8 disapproval per minute (meaning, almost 
once a minute a child or class is told off by their teachers). Positive feed-
back was mainly directed toward students’ academic behavior, while feed-
back directed towards their social behavior was very seldom observed. The 
cause was found assessing teachers’ feedback behavior through functional 
analysis. Most of the time, praise do not have an immediate consequence 
(there is no contingent reinforce) for teachers: the students keep behaving 
in a good manner. On the other hand, teachers’ reprimand has an immedi-
ate effect, in the sense that it makes disruptive behaviors to stop, in that 
precise moment, after teacher’s reprimand. This contingent consequence 
effectively reinforces teachers’ disapproving behavior. On a different level, 
the cause of such behaviors may also lie in cultural heritage, where the 
punitive mindset is widespread and accepted (Sulla, Armenia, & Rollo, 
2019).

The problem is, that, while teachers think that continuing disap-
proval will stop misbehaving in class, this may actually lead to worst class-
room climate. Indeed, especially pupils that are considered to be the most 
problematic, may find teacher disapproval reinforcing. Pupils that exhibit 
the greater number of problem behaviors, in fact, are usually “seen” by their 
teachers only when they misbehave. On the other hand, they are usually 

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ignored. This may make them starving for teachers’ attention. This is the 
point when even negative attention, in the form of disapproval, become 
reinforcing: seeing that I receive attention only when I misbehave, I will 
keep misbehaving. This entangle teachers and pupils into a vicious circle 
characterized by negative emotions, that, as we previously said, may hinder 
pupils’ learning. 

Praise, on the other hand, as hard as it is to be used as an educational 
instrument, is the best gift we can give to our students. Indeed, praise, is 
a vehicle of positive emotions. As we have seen in preceding paragraphs, 
cognition is helped by positive emotions. Indeed, intelligence works best 
when the student is happy. A teacher does not necessary have to make their 
students laugh, but can be a mediator of well-being in learning complex 
things. When a student learns, in fact, alongside memorizing, for example, 
the procedure for calculating a multiplication, he or she experiences emo-
tions: fear, anxiety, pleasure, interest, curiosity, boredom. What are the 
worst emotions for learning? On a cognitive level, boredom; on an emo-
tional level, guilt and fear. I feel fear when my brain perceives a risk. I feel 
guilt when I perceive that I have made a mistake. The guilt mechanism 
arises because the one being judged attributes the sole responsibility for 
the error to themselves. Removing guilt from the mind is one of the most 
difficult processes from an educational point of view. Educating through 
the emotion of guilt is very risky, because it short-circuits our brain. The 
student who has learned by experiencing a negative emotion, in an attempt 
to retrieve from their memory, the information he/she has studied, will also 
reactivate the negative emotion connected to it. This is the short-circuit we 
are talking about: students’ brain has to process two sharply contrasting 
pieces of information – I want to hold on to that information because I 
need it to succeed in math class, but, in the meantime, I feel like I need to 
run away, because it hurts (as a consequence of the fear and guilt they are 
experiencing while learning through disapproval)! 

Fortunately, there are solutions. Malka Magalit (2003; 2012) from 
the Academy of Sciences has found antagonistic emotions: boredom can 
be contrasted through joy and happiness. Fear can be prevented by encour-
agement. That is, an attitude that recognizes the error, but proposes a way 
out and encourages students to come out of the error. The antagonistic 
emotion of guilt, on the other hand, is cognitive and emotional discern-
ment. Hence, blame must be replaced by the principle of giving the due 
weight to what initiated the improper behavior.

This is why we should consider praise as a gift within the educational 
relationship. Praise can be the vehicle of encouragement, joy, and happi-
ness: the emotions that foster pupils’ learning.

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6. Conclusions

Quintilian, in ancient Rome, had already emphasized how important is 
in the educational relationship the process of esteem and affection that is 
established between learner and teacher, to promote the understanding of 
the disciple and adapt the educational work to their personality and their 
particular psychological moment, all the more so in today’s Society, which 
is characterized by uncertainty and fragility. This principle must be the 
basis of every educational process. 

Every day our classrooms are dotted with faces, often fragile stories, 
lives that are like fragile vessels to be handled with care. 

It is useless to take an authoritarian position that aims to transmit 
content in an intimidating form, prohibitions, and forms of obligation 
that lead to carrying out a task only out of fear are worthless. On the con-
trary, productive and motivating is to accompany the student along the 
learning process, encouraging them with praise and approval, which makes 
the individual feel part of the context and active protagonist of their educa-
tion. 

Such an attitude, made up of gestures and words that translate into 
gifts for those who receive them, improves mood, empathy, and human 
relationships, and gives concrete form to the often cited meaningful learn-
ing: learning capable of resisting time and developing those life skills and 
soft skills important in every context of life. Such an attitude will have 
repercussions on Society as a whole, elevating it and raising a generation 
ready to make a difference now and in the future, as it will circulate grati-
tude, that ability to look at life with greater confidence and in a positive 
way, without being able to specify whether the serenity felt was the conse-
quence of this new state of mind or the latter the cause of serenity (Sulla et 
al., 2020; Fantinelli et al., 2023). 

This confirms that the deepest and most lasting happiness is to be 
sought outside the material and can be more easily achieved on an immate-
rial basis because our thoughts stripped of material evidence leave the spir-
itual factors of being free. Attributing infinite intelligence to limited matter 
is a mistake that does not advance mankind, which, on the contrary, could 
develop greater intellect, a more balanced mind, and a healthier constitu-
tion by relying on spirituality.

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Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 3 (2023) 1-2 
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https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5826.00062
 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-006-0062-8
 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-006-0062-8
https://doi.org/10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG
https://doi.org/10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG
https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010078
https://doi.org/10.1080/03055690500095316
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Praise as a Gift in the Relationship between Teachers and Their Students

103

Riassunto

Con il termine “donare” si fa riferimento all’atto altruistico di offrire qualcosa a un’altra 
persona gratuitamente senza aspettarsi nulla in cambio. Mentre comportamenti pro-
sociali si possono trovare anche in bambini e bambine molto piccoli, i comportamenti 
altruistici emergono più tardi, con lo sviluppo morale e cognitivo, anche supportato dalla 
lode degli adulti, che i bambini possono ricevere entro la relazione educativa. L’edu-
cazione, infatti, ha il nobile scopo di guidare le persone verso una condizione migliore 
rispetto a quella attuale, attraverso l’incontro. Il presente lavoro ha lo scopo di passare 
in rassegna i lavori che abbiano analizzato gli effetti della lode nella relazione tra in-
segnante e allievo. Studi sperimentali negli ultimi 50 anni hanno dimostrato come la 
lode sia una strategia a basso costo che gli insegnanti possono utilizzare per incrementare 
i comportamenti adattivi in classe e diminuire i comportamenti problema. Inoltre, l’uso 
della lode migliora il clima di classe, in quanto è veicolo di emozioni positive. Le mo-
derne neuroscienze hanno ormai dimostrato come le emozioni rivestano un importante 
ruolo nell’apprendimento, anche quello scolastico. Pertanto, potremmo ritenere la lode 
come uno dei doni più grandi che l’insegnante possa fare ai propri studenti e alle proprie 
studentesse.

Copyright (©) 2023 Andreana Lavanga, Francesco Sulla 
Editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie

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How to cite this paper:
Lavanga, A., & Sulla, F. (2023). Praise as a gift in the relationship between teachers and their 
students. Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 
3(1-2), 93-103. doi: https://doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2023-0102-lasu

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 3 (2023) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

https://doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2023-0102-lasu
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 

	Elementa_3-2023-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf
	Editorial
	What Is the Gift Paradigm?
A Reading Guide

	First Section
	Recent Extensions of the Gift
	The Enduring Relevance
of Mauss’ Essai sur le don
	The Gift Paradigm: Towards a Science of “total social facts”
	Ricœur, Gift and Poetics

	Second Section
	Praise as a Gift in the Relationship between Teachers and Their Students
	The Gift of Desire: The “inner voice” between Neuroscience and Theory
of Attachment

	Various
	The Gifted Student: Gifts and Talents Development
	Digital Well-Being as a New Kind
of Adaptation to the New Millennium Needs: A State-of-the-Art Analysis
	Education and Culture: Pluralism
in the Age of Globalization





