Mindfulness and contemplative approaches in education
Introduction
The field of mindfulness and contemplative education has experienced an exponential growth in publications, research and programmes in schools and universities. There is now considerable published guidance on the theory and practice, including a recent reader on the whole field [1••], guidance which includes both a quantitative evidence base from scientific research on outcomes, and more practice-based knowledge on implementation, based largely on qualitative data. This paper aims to give a broad overview of the field, drawing particularly on publications in the last two years and putting them in the context of longer-term work.
Section snippets
The quantitative evidence base
The type of work which is generally cited as the ‘evidence base’ focuses largely on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Their circumscribed and well-defined nature lends itself to evaluation using western scientific and experimental methods. The number of studies of MBIs has been growing steadily, and in the last decade a body of around 30 has emerged that regularly reoccur across reviews. In the last three years, the field has developed enough to allow for systematic reviews and
Impacts on psycho-social health and wellbeing
There is total consensus across all the reviews carried out over the last decade, including the most recent ones cited above, is that well conducted MBIs can impact positively on the psychological, mental and social health and well-being of the young, with reliably between a small and medium impact.
Impacts on cognition and learning
There is growing evidence for the ability of mindfulness to impact on aspects of cognition and learning in the young, including in a recent meta-analysis by Klingbeil et al. [3••] which reported impacts on academic achievement, meta-cognition, attention and cognitive flexibility. Mindfulness appears to have the ability to influence self-regulation, noted above, to improve the ability to aim and sustain the attention, and generally to enhance various aspects of executive function, a finding
Impacts on physical health
Compared with work with adults, the impact of MBIs on the physical health and well-being of children and young people is relatively unexplored territory, but there is some promising early evidence. Methodologically work in this area is breaking new ground for mindfulness by moving away from the familiar self-report to explore indicators of physiological signs and symptoms. The papers cited in the recent review by Black [4] included evidence of impacts on systolic and diastolic blood pressure,
Contemplative education
Alongside mindfulness in schools we are seeing a steady growth in literature on contemplative education (CE) [10,27••]. CE is a slightly wider approach than mindfulness and tends to be more integrated into the core business of teaching and learning in classrooms (although MBIs aiming to reduce stress and depression have also taken place in higher education contexts). CE is based in philosophical and educative reflection, theory and practice [28] rather than in the world of therapeutic
Implementation
Now programmes and curricula are becoming established, and the measurable outcomes of mindfulness are becoming clearer, there is growing recognition that variations in impact have as much to do with how a programme is implemented as they do with the programme itself, bringing an increased interest in implementation strategies in schools and universities. This work is in its infancy and several papers and some books published recently have explored a wide and rather scattered range of aspects of
Conclusions and future directions
Mindfulness in education is becoming well established, steadily weathering accusations that it is a ‘fad’ by simply continuing steadily to deliver qualities and attributes in students and staff/faculty that schools and universities need and value. As well as generally adding to the fairly solid evidence base on psycho-social health and wellbeing, the next few years may well see additional investigation into areas where the evidence is less clear, such as impacts on cognition and learning,
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:
• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest
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