The Relationship Between Gratitude and Meaning of Life in Honorary Teacher

This study aims to determine the relationship between gratitude and life meaning of honorary teachers. The hypothesis proposed in this study was that there is a correlation between gratitude and their meaning of life. Subjects in this study involved honorary teachers categorized adults at the age of 20-52 years. The measuring tool used to identify the Meaning of Life was Meaning in the Life Questionnaire (MLQ) by Steger et al. (2006) and the scale of gratitude (CG-6) by Emmons, McCullough & Tsang (2002). The results of data were analyzed using Pearson product-moment greeting analysis on SPSS 22 for windows. Based on the results, it showed the relation between the gratitude and the meaning of life on the honorary teacher was r = 0.310 with p = 0.001 (p <0.01) Keyword: gratitude, meaningfulness of life Introduction Indonesian Government Regulation Number 74 of 2008 stated that teachers are professional educators whose job is to educate, teach, direct, train, guide, assess, and gather students in early children's education. Formal education includes primary, secondary, and higher education. This statement supports the development of educators who are in charge of the development of students. However, honorary teachers do not accept an adequate salary for the job. Sunandar (2015) said honorary teachers also get a lower salary than Civil Servant ones. While carrying out their duties, civil servant teachers are paid based on the government standards in which they have to work based on determined times and classes. On the other hand, the honorary teachers are those who work in several public or private schools that do not have the proper standard to follow regarding the working hours and job responsibilities. The current policy of the Ministry of Education and Culture has a considerable influence on the proliferation of honorary teachers. Bukhori (2012) elaborated a life that is expected to get someone who supports him knows what is meant by choices received from the work environment and is not discriminated against by the pressures of the social environment. Meanings in life are those that oppose understanding of their experiences and have definite goals, which have been supported by previous studies (Steger, Hicks, Krueger, & Bouchard, 2007). Honorary teachers who have a meaningful life must have happiness in their lives. However, based on the interview results conducted on September 28, 2018, in City X, subjects said that there was no happiness in the honorary teachers’ life. Many teachers were neglected in the process of conducting research for students' development. For instance, honorary teachers in Bima City often had to deal with the students learning issues by themselves because their parents do not agree with the teachers’ way when teaching. Emmons, McCullough, and Tsang (2002) determined placement in position (affective) and feeling (mood). A form of emotion or feeling which then develops into an attitude, feeling, and eventually will affect the individual (negatively). Support from others is required to build a more positive attitude. The results of the interview with teachers at one of the schools in City X found that to educate students was the reason for teaching. That is a life choice. Determining the choice in life becomes a crucial factor in gaining the freedom to obtain the meaningfulness of life as a teacher. The problem that will be examined by the writer is voluntary teachers who get salary starting from 200,000 IDR up to 1,500,000 IDR per month, depending on the length of work and type of school, autonomous or subsidized type of schools, and workload. Metz' (2015) purposes that are based on purpose and infinite are the two most common examples of Godcentered theories for literature. Naturalists can prove they are arguably the problem with the physical world that is needed to be able to do the work to get closer to the creator. Each view will bring up meaning by linking the relationship with the religious view of God to be a factor of understanding in self to accept the state of self. Gratitude is an inspiration that has inspired the interest of most people because it has been considered as a factor of human interest and social life (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang (2002) named such as intensity, frequency, range or amount of life associated with being grateful, and density or number of grateful individuals. Gratitude can dispute with subjective feelings of miracles and respect for life (Emmons & Shelton, 2002). The problem of deeper Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 395 5th ASEAN Conference on Psychology, Counselling, and Humanities (ACPCH 2019) Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 293 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 395 5th ASEAN Conference on Psychology, Counselling, and Humanities (ACPCH 2019)