Developing and implementing mindfulness education programs
in Primary school classrooms has the potential to positively influence the
development of children's cognitive, behavioural, and emotional regulatory
abilities. There is a study by Exeter University that is the first to examine
the feasibility and effectiveness of a Mindfulness program; a mindfulness
education program for late Primary school students.
The program includes seven key ingredients: relaxation and
breathing, positive affirmation, remedial stretch, real-world applications, aromatherapy,
yoga and daily practice; all of which worked in partnership to provide students
with unique skills to use in their everyday lives. Of most importance was
examining the potential impact of teaching mindfulness in a classroom on
students' cognitive (e.g., executive functioning), behavioural (e.g.,
aggression), and emotional (e.g., anxiety) regulatory outcomes. As a function
of participating in the program, students in the intervention group had higher
executive functioning skills at post-test as measured by their performance on
an executive functioning task in contrast to students in the control group. In
addition, students in the intervention group received lower ratings of social
problems and aggressive behaviours by their teachers, at post-test than
students in the control group.
Gender also moderated an important outcome: girls in the
intervention group had lower anxiety problems as rated by teachers at post-test
in comparison to girls in the control group. These findings contribute to the
growing support for teaching mindfulness in schools and the positive impact of
mindfulness education on students' cognitive and social–emotional abilities
(e.g., Flook et al., 2010; Mendelson et al., 2010; Schonert-Reichl &
Lawlor, 2010).
The Mindfulness program received positive ratings from
teachers and students with both groups expressing enjoyment and interest in
teaching and learning from the four-week mindfulness program. Based on
observations of teacher implementation of the program, the program was taught
with a high level of fidelity, which provided students with exposure to the
complete curriculum (EYFS) and structured opportunities to practice mindfulness
on a daily basis. The directors of the program suggest that future prevention
programs might consider lesson length (15 minutes), frequency (20 daily
consecutive lessons), and time of day (following a natural transition, i.e.,
start of the school day) as important program features that may contribute to
supporting high levels of fidelity of implementation. Teachers also indicated
that it was easy to prepare for and teach the lessons in their classrooms,
providing further evidence for the feasibility of implementing this program in
Primary school classrooms.
Developing the ability to observe and be aware of one's
thoughts and feelings through mindfulness practice, rather than react
automatically or impulsively, is important for children to learn how to
regulate their emotions and behaviours, both inside and outside of the
classroom. As early as Primary school, children are forming beliefs and
expectations about bad behaviours, many of which are positive (e.g., Andrews et
al., 2003; Miller et al., 1990). In addition, many young people believe that one
way to reduce stressful or negative feelings is by smoking cigarettes (Freeman
et al., 2005).
One way to effectively cope with these types of negative
feelings is by practicing mindfulness, which enhances children's ability to
reflect on and think more flexibly about the emotional experience. These
self-regulatory abilities contribute to preventing young people from turning to
risky health behaviours such as substance use as a coping mechanism.
Furthermore, it is becoming well known that children can benefit
from the development of effective self-regulation. Such benefits include
improved academic learning and performance and social competence, as well as
reduced substance use or criminal activity (Blair & Diamond, 2008; Jacobson
et al., 2011; Olson, Lopez-Duran, Lunkenheimer, Chang, & Sameroff, 2011;
Ramani et al., 2010; Wills et al., 2011). These benefits can be seen across adolescence
and adulthood (e.g., Masten et al., 2005; Moffitt et al., 2011). Thus,
mindfulness education programs have the potential to provide children with
skills and resources to succeed in their everyday lives.
Although it was hypothesized that students would report a
reduction in their intentions to use substances in the future as a function of
participating in the Exeter Mindfulness program, no significant differences
were found between the intervention and control groups on students' intentions
to use alcohol or tobacco. Notably, approximately 90% of the students had very
low or no intentions to use alcohol or tobacco in the future, suggesting a
floor effect. This lack of variability likely contributed to our inability to
detect any change in students' intentions to use as a function of the intervention.
Future research utilising a larger sample and a longer follow-up interval may
result in greater variability in student substance use intentions and greater
potential to see change in substance use outcomes.
Many of the student outcomes, in which there were
significant changes in the intervention group, were based on teacher ratings.
However, it is important to note that teacher ratings were not the only
measures in the current study. Students also completed an objective performance
task of executive functioning in which students in the intervention group
improved significantly in executive functioning compared to students in the
control group. Second, teachers in the intervention group participated in
mindfulness training as part of a one-day teacher training workshop. Recent
studies have shown that teachers who practice mindfulness experience reductions
in psychological symptoms, occupational stress, and burn-out as well as
increases in focused attention, working memory, and self-compassion (Franco,
Mañas, Cangas, Moreno, and Gallego, 2010; Gold et al., 2010, Jennings, Snowberg,
Coccia, & Greenberg, 2011, Roeser, Skinner, Beers, & Jennings, 2012).
In the recent study, although the teacher training workshop
was only one day, it is notable that learning mindfulness influenced teachers' behaviour,
in general. Teachers' behaviour improved
the overall classroom climate, the quality of their interactions with students,
and their ratings of their students' behaviours. Thus, the observed changes in
students' self-regulation may have been a consequence of teacher behaviour
rather than solely due to exposure to the curriculum.
However, the recent study design was not developed to
disentangle these effects from one another. Finally, the recent study explored
the impact of mindfulness education on student outcomes by comparing an
intervention group to a wait-list control group.
Furthermore, increasing the number of participating schools
and the range of communities in which the schools are recruited would not only
enhance the potential to see change in student outcomes but also enhance the generalisability
of the findings. This type of study would also allow for closer examination of
school, teacher, and student variables that might moderate the effectiveness of
the program. Adding more measures from multiple informants (e.g., teacher,
student, parent, and observer) would also strengthen conclusions about the
impact of the intervention on young people’s outcomes.
The program Directors also suggest another important
direction for future research is an examination of potential mediators of mindfulness
training on student outcomes (Greenberg & Harris, 2012). For example,
mindfulness education of an entire classroom or school has the potential to
create supportive relationships between teachers and students and a more
enjoyable, caring learning environment (Jennings et al., 2011; Roeser et al.,
2012), which may, in turn, mediate the impact of the intervention on more
distal behavioural youth outcomes such as substance use.
In conclusion, the recent study supports the potential
effectiveness and feasibility of teaching mindfulness daily to Primary
school-aged children in a classroom setting. The findings from this study add
to the growing research literature, suggesting that school-aged children,
teachers, and school settings benefit from the integration of mindfulness
education programs and brief, daily practices into the regular school day.
By Grant Stanley 2018
www.grantstanley.co.uk
https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/grant-stanley/9b/21a/401www.grantstanley.co.uk
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