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A growing number of publications have been exploring the possible effects of mindfulness-based interventions on teachers’ well-being and their professional lives. Notwithstanding promising results in this domain, this paper identifies some difficulties involved in introducing teachers to mindfulness and proposes that there may be a need to develop alternative routes by which to expose more teachers to experiences of mindfulness. We report on a mixed method study of a 5-week teacher learning program implemented in an Israeli middle school with 30 teachers, 28 of which were females, with an age range of 29–55. The program was designed to invite teachers into initial experiences with mindfulness without formally engaging in mindfulness practice but rather based on studying education-relevant brain theory through a contemplative pedagogical approach. Outcomes were analyzed quantitatively by comparing collaborative concept maps created by the participants before and after undergoing the program, and qualitatively by analyzing themes extracted from the participants’ discourse. Findings show that the program (a) mobilized teachers from fixed to growth mindsets in regard to their role as educators as reflected in a significant increase in teachers’ beliefs that basic brain abilities are malleable (as extracted from the concept maps, p = 0.004), (b) offered them initial experiences of mindfulness, and (c) possibly opened them to consider more direct approaches to mindfulness practice that are offered in mindfulness-based interventions.
A growing number of publications have been exploring the possible effects of mindfulness-based interventions on teachers’ well-being and their professional lives. Notwithstanding promising results in this domain, this paper identifies some difficulties involved in introducing teachers to mindfulness and proposes that there may be a need to develop alternative routes by which to expose more teachers to experiences of mindfulness. We report on a mixed method study of a 5-week teacher learning program implemented in an Israeli middle school with 30 teachers, 28 of which were females, with an age range of 29–55. The program was designed to invite teachers into initial experiences with mindfulness without formally engaging in mindfulness practice but rather based on studying education-relevant brain theory through a contemplative pedagogical approach. Outcomes were analyzed quantitatively by comparing collaborative concept maps created by the participants before and after undergoing the program, and qualitatively by analyzing themes extracted from the participants’ discourse. Findings show that the program (a) mobilized teachers from fixed to growth mindsets in regard to their role as educators as reflected in a significant increase in teachers’ beliefs that basic brain abilities are malleable (as extracted from the concept maps, p = 0.004), (b) offered them initial experiences of mindfulness, and (c) possibly opened them to consider more direct approaches to mindfulness practice that are offered in mindfulness-based interventions.
While contemplative practices have emerged from wisdom-traditions, the rhetoric surrounding their justification in contemporary public educational settings has been substantially undergirded by the scientific evidence-based approach. This article finds the practice and construct of ‘attention’ to be the bridge between this peculiar encounter of science and wisdom traditions, and a vantage point from which we can re-examine the scope and practice of ‘education’. The article develops an educational typology based on ‘attention’ as a curricular deliberation point. Every pedagogical act rides over a meta-pedagogical injunction of where to attend to find that which society deems worthwhile. The deep curricular teachings thus begin in the question where knowledge of most worth exists (in here or out there) and precede content. It is at this hidden level in which our spatial-temporal disposition towards life-meaning can be shaped. Following this typology, the article will suggest that beyond what may be critiqued as instrumental mindfulness-based curricular ‘interventions’ that cater to an economic educational narrative, lurks the trajectory of a contemplative educational turn that may be outwitting over-instrumentalisation through wisdom-traditions.
This paper investigates mindfulness as a case study of a ‘subjective turn’ in education reflecting a postsecular age. The practice of mindfulness originates in an ancient Buddhist teaching prescribed as part of the path to enlightenment. In spite of its origins, it is becoming widespread within diverse secularly conceived social and educational settings. The paper offers a historical review of this phenomenon and analyzes why and how mindfulness has become the spearhead within a burgeoning ‘contemplative turn’ in education. The thesis suggested is that ‘normal education’ follows ‘normal science’, yet science itself is now being shaken by its own venturing into the ‘dangerous’ waters of the religious experience. The paper reflects critically on the prices and merits of mindfulness in education as a practice shaped by its becoming measurable. It locates these processes as depicting the postsecular age’s blurring of boundaries between religiosity/secularity/education, subject/object, and science/healing/education.