Arthurson, Kathy (Flinders University of SA, South Australia)
Being mindful: some key issues in applying mindfulness in primary schools
The study reports on some key issues identified in an independent evaluation of a pilot mindfulness-based teaching programme implemented with a class of 30 year 7 students at a South Australian Primary School. The programme consisted of a 45 minute class per week (over 9 weeks) drawing from the Mind-up curriculum (Daniel Siegal, US) and the Australian based, Smiling Mind Education Programme and Meditation Capsules Mindfulness Programme (Etty-Leal 2010).
Questions arose first about the importance of recognising that there are a variety of pathways into mindfulness. Across students there was a large amount of diversity in the preferred range of techniques. Second, students need to have a choice about whether or not they want to participate in mindfulness based activities, which raised the issue of whether mindfulness should form part of an everyday class or be an additional separate activity. Third, the issue of how long one should practice mindfulness before being qualified to teach children in schools was raised. In the current project the teacher had her own well-established personal mindfulness based practices. This meant she was well versed in its applications and understood how to teach mindfulness because she experienced it regularly. She also had counselling skills and was thus well equipped to deal with distressed children for whom emotions sometimes become overwhelming during mindfulness based practices. Finally, for numerous reasons it was identified that in implementing the programme a general school classroom is not an optimum space for conducting mindfulness based activities.
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Being mindful: some key issues in applying mindfulness in primary schools
The study reports on some key issues identified in an independent evaluation of a pilot mindfulness-based teaching programme implemented with a class of 30 year 7 students at a South Australian Primary School. The programme consisted of a 45 minute class per week (over 9 weeks) drawing from the Mind-up curriculum (Daniel Siegal, US) and the Australian based, Smiling Mind Education Programme and Meditation Capsules Mindfulness Programme (Etty-Leal 2010).
Questions arose first about the importance of recognising that there are a variety of pathways into mindfulness. Across students there was a large amount of diversity in the preferred range of techniques. Second, students need to have a choice about whether or not they want to participate in mindfulness based activities, which raised the issue of whether mindfulness should form part of an everyday class or be an additional separate activity. Third, the issue of how long one should practice mindfulness before being qualified to teach children in schools was raised. In the current project the teacher had her own well-established personal mindfulness based practices. This meant she was well versed in its applications and understood how to teach mindfulness because she experienced it regularly. She also had counselling skills and was thus well equipped to deal with distressed children for whom emotions sometimes become overwhelming during mindfulness based practices. Finally, for numerous reasons it was identified that in implementing the programme a general school classroom is not an optimum space for conducting mindfulness based activities.
Download Presentation