Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going with Mindfulness in Schools?

Abstract

This is a commentary on a paper by Roeser et al. entitled “Beyond all splits: Envisioning the next generation of science on mindfulness and compassion in schools for students”. The commentary endorses the main thrust of paper, the need to re-envisage mindfulness and move from the dominant model, a clinically based “mindfulness in education” approach, in which mindfulness is seen as a discrete “intervention”, an approach which has been criticised as mechanistic, atomistic, and restrictive and encourages a view of mindfulness as helping people to cope with a stressful status quo. The commentary further endorses the view that we need to create and research models of “mindfulness as education”, as a transformative “process” models which focus on the relational and developmental aspects of education, within a whole-school, ecological approach, encouraging schools to become more compassionate places, which cultivate a positive sense of agency in learners to empower them to change the social context. As well as endorsing the main thrust of the paper, this commentary includes the following further comments. Research and practice on teacher development needs to be at the heart of this process. Getting the balance right between rigour and innovation in research will be an ongoing process. It would be helpful to look outside Anglo-centric box for examples of this relational shift. We should wait to see how the somewhat unexpected results of the MYRIAD project feed into longer term reviews before changing advice around universal approaches and who should teach mindfulness in schools.