Welcome to Learning Management Science

The  Effectiveness of a school-based mindfulness training in the school curriculum. 

Abstract

Living in the 21st century, the era of the concept of being fast is significantly implemented in our life. Whether it is the fast growth of technology, medicine and psychology, fast food and diet.  These fast developments have had a great impact in our life. However, we forget to slow down and pay attention to  the foundation of life: Well-being. How effectively we take care of our mind will affect our body, health and performance. Many things that happen in our life can disrupt our emotions.  It can lead to strong feelings of sadness, stress, or anxiety. Even good or wanted changes can be as stressful as unwanted changes. Hence, our body responds to the way we think, feel and act. This mind-body connection will affect physical development and academic performance. (Robert, 2022) As the rapid growth of the studies of medicine and psychology, we get to have further knowledge and understanding of the particular behaviors of the children, such as children who have ADHD or  ODD syndrome, autism, and selective mutism. These studies and resources will be a great assistance to education, if we can integrate mindfulness training as a regular school curriculum.  It will be beneficial for the students, the teachers and the parents / family, let alone to our global education and benefits.  

What Is Wellbeing?

Wellbeing is a term that describes how well you feel about yourself and your life in general. Wellbeing is not just a feeling or emotion – nor is it the absence of disease. Instead, it’s the combination of feeling and being physically, mentally and emotionally healthy. Experiencing wellbeing is linked to overall health, happiness and contentment in life.

What Is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

The purpose of mindfulness practice

When we’re mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and awareness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’s well-being. Mindfulness practice gives us a time in our lives when we can suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness - to ourselves and others.  It brings awareness and caring into everything we do - it sparks innovation as we deal with our world’s increasing complexity and uncertainty.  Mindfulness can improve the management of emotions and guide us to be effective, resilient and lead to successful performance. (mindful staff, 2020)

Why do mindfulness practice  bring awareness and conscious experience?

The mind is a world-building organ that pieces together a cosmos from the chaos of data streaming through the senses at breakneck speed. It is an edifice so complex and nuanced that it takes years of careful development and a tremendous amount of energy and attention to keep it in place.

The emergence of conscious experience will be codetermined by the nature of the organ and the object of its awareness, with which it is interdependent. We call it seeing when the eye is used to discern an object, hearing when the ear is involved in noticing a sound, and depending on the other sensory supports, consciousness may manifest as smelling, tasting, touching, or thinking. This last is actually far more diverse than the term thinking usually covers and includes any mental event that is not already included in one of the other five sense modalities. According to Buddhist analysis, everything we are capable of experiencing will arise in one of these six ways, and our entire world of experience is woven from the strands of such simple units of awareness. (Moniz, R., & Slutzky, H. (2015).

Origin of Mindfulness

Mindfulness originated from ancient eastern and Buddhist philosophy and dates back around 2500 years. The concept of mindfulness has been inspired by many, and Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts have been influential in establishing it in the western world.

Conclusion

There are studies on the effects of mindfulness interventions on mental health and behavioral problems in children show promising results, but are primarily conducted with selected samples of children. The few studies investigating school-based interventions used self-selected samples, provided training outside of the classroom, and did not report longer-term effects. The immediate and longer-term effects of a class-based mindfulness intervention for elementary school children were investigated as a primary prevention program (MindfulKids) to reduce stress and stress-related mental health and behavioral problems. Children (8–12 years) from three elementary schools participated. Classes were randomized to an immediate-intervention group (N = 95) or a waitlist-control group (N = 104), which received the intervention after a waitlist period. 

Twelve 30-min sessions were delivered in 6 weeks. At baseline, pretest, posttest, and follow-up, variables indicative of stress and metal well-being were assessed with children, variables indicative of mental health problems were assessed with parents, and teachers reported on class climate. Multilevel analysis revealed that there were no significant changes from baseline to pretest. Some primary prevention effects on stress and well-being were found directly after training and some became more apparent at follow-up. Effects on mental health problems also became apparent at follow-up. MindfulKids seems to have a primary preventive effect on stress, well-being, and behavior in schoolchildren, as reported by children and parents. Exploratory analysis revealed that children who ruminate more are affected differently by the intervention than children who ruminate less. It is concluded that mindfulness training can be incorporated in elementary schools at the class level, letting all children benefit from the intervention.

Mindfulness is a good emotional health practice starts with being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Learning healthy ways to cope with stress and problems is a normal part of life. Feeling good about yourself and having healthy relationships is important.  Most of all, it is sustaintable and benefitial for ourselves and future generations. 

Reference

Website : familydoctor.org editorial staff. 

Website : Mindful.staff 

Moniz, R., & Slutzky, H. (2015). A brief introduction to mindfulness: origins, science, the brain, and practice. The Mindful Librarian: Connecting The Practice of Mindfulness to Librarianship (Eds R Moniz, JE Eshleman, J Henry, H Slutzky, L Moniz), 1-24.

van de Weijer-Bergsma, E., Langenberg, G., Brandsma, R., Oort, F. J., & Bögels, S. M. (2014). The effectiveness of a school-based mindfulness training as a program to prevent stress in elementary school children. Mindfulness, 5, 238-248.