Spiritual Expressions' Prediction of Mindfulness: The Case of Prospective Teachers

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine whether prospective teachers' spiritual expressions have predicted their mindfulness. The research was conducted in relational screening model. The study group consisted of 411 students (81.2%) females and 94 (18.6%) males, totally 505 undergraduate students who are studying in the last year and who participated in teaching practice. For data collection procedure, the Mindful Awareness Scale, developed by Brown and Ryan [9] was used. Turkish validity and reliability of the scale was studied by Ozyesil, Arslan, Kesici and Deniz [8] and the Spiritual Expression Scale (SES), developed by Macdonald [26]. This scale was studied in Turkish with Turkish validity and reliability by Sahin and Baloglu [27]. The results indicate that there is a positive meaningful relationship at nominal level between the mindfulness and the spiritual expression orientation with the religiosity sub-dimension and the spiritual cognitive orientation subscale; a negative meaningful relationship at nominal level between experiential phenomenological sub-dimensions; a positive meaningful relationship at moderate level between the existential well-being sub-dimensions. However, there is no meaningful relationship between mindfulness and paranormal beliefs sub-dimensions. As a result, it is seen that existential well-being sub-dimension of spiritual expression inventory predicts mindfulness.