EN
What has been presented in the article are the results of some theoretical and empirical analyses of the notion of hope. Due attention is drawn to the difficulties associated with defining and the empirical research into hope. To a large extent, these difficulties result from the interdisciplinary location of the research object. In educational (pedagogical) analyses, hope is interrelated with acting. In the presentation of the results, the following questions have been answered: What is the level of hope of pedagogy students? What are the age-related determinants of the level of students’ hope? What is the significance of hope in human life according to students with a high and low level of hope? The studies were conducted in March 2015 among 248 pedagogy students of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology of the University of Silesia in Katowice. The research was done with the application of the method of scaling (Snyder’s Hope Scale) and of the document analysis – of intentionally created documents, students’ responses on the topic The significance of hope in human life.