Research Summary: Do mindfulness techniques have a place in school?

Mindfulness techniques and programmes are becoming more and more popular, being used in a wide range of fields including education at all levels. There is growing evidence that they help people to be focused on the present moment, stabilise their emotions and aid general well-being. Yet the mindfulness phenomenon is not without its problems. ‘Mindfulness’ practice tends to operate outside its original context of Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Cruder versions of ‘mindfulness’ that are designed to increase people’s ‘effectiveness’ – popularly known as ‘McMindfulness’ – are contrary to the original spiritual nature of mindfulness practices. For the author, mindfulness needs to be reconnected to its spiritual roots if its benefits are to be fully realised. However, in relation to RE, this could be seen as a problem in itself. What are the purposes of using mindfulness techniques in RE? Pupils cannot be asked to practise Buddhism, except in a Buddhist school. General notions of increasing their attention are not, specifically, in RE’s domain. The discussion should prompt RE teachers to consider their purposes carefully and critically.

Researcher

Terry Hyland

Research Institution

Free University of Ireland, Dublin

What is this about?

• Why are mindfulness techniques becoming more and more popular, in a range of settings (medicine, education, industry, etc.)?
• What are the connections between original Buddhist mindfulness practices and the secular versions of ‘mindfulness’ offered today? What is ‘McMindfulness’?
• How can mindfulness be reconnected to its original spiritual roots, for its benefits – especially in education – to be more fully realised?

What was done?

This is a critical, scholarly essay, reviewing different aspects of the popularity of ‘mindfulness’ in education systems, pointing out problems and setting out conclusions and questions for educational professionals to consider.

Main findings and outputs

• Mindfulness practices – e.g. sitting still, silently concentrating on the inward and outward breaths – are becoming more and more popular in a range of settings (medical, educational, industrial). This is because there is growing evidence that they can decrease stress, improve people’s general sense of well-being, and so on.
• In education, mindfulness practices have been found to improve focus and awareness, increase responsiveness to student needs, enhance classroom climate – and support readiness to learn, strengthen attention and concentration, reduce anxiety and enhance social and emotional learning.
• Modern, secular mindfulness programmes tend to emphasise the experience of being in the present moment. However, in the original context of Buddhist meditation and philosophy, this was linked to emphases on memory and morality that are now overlooked. Taking mindfulness out of its original context has tended to lead to a simplified, partial version of it.
• ‘McMindfulness’ is one consequence of this tendency. In industry, workers’ attention span is improved so as to increase productivity; in the US army, soldiers on ‘mindfulness’-based fitness training programmes learn to become more alert and effective .
• For the author, if mindfulness recovered its original spiritual roots, it would have the potential to do a great deal of genuine good in education. It might help learners to gain a sense of their own minds, a capacity for insight and reflection that could enhance any activity. It could be seen as a dimension of learning.

Relevance to RE

The discussion of ‘mindfulness’ provided in the article is balanced, critical and wide-ranging. It invites RE teachers to be critical about whether or not mindfulness techniques have a place in their lessons. The issue is problematic. Several questions in particular arise:

• In many ways it is hard to separate mindfulness practices from their Buddhist origins. RE teachers need to be very clear about what their purposes are if using mindfulness techniques. The possibilities for misunderstanding are strong; charges of indoctrination might follow.
• Educationally speaking, teachers need to be very clear about their purposes are. Some teachers champion mindfulness techniques as aiding pupil concentration, lowering stress, leading to better educational outcomes, etc. It needs to be borne in mind that these were not the original purposes of Buddhist mindfulness techniques and are also not exclusively matters for RE. Thus, RE teachers need to exercise care, so as not to misrepresent Buddhism to children, or to accept responsibility for a ‘mindfulness agenda’ in school on the vague grounds that it has religious or spiritual associations.
• At worst, ‘McMindfulness’ in school – attempting to alter pupils’ psychological states in order to boost the school’s ‘results’ – needs to be resisted as unethical.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The research offers a balanced, considered view of the ‘mindfulness’ phenomenon. The points presented are worthy of careful consideration by all teachers, because they represent – and prompt – critical professional reflection over whether or not mindfulness techniques should form part of pedagogy or general educational provision.

Find out more

The Limits of Mindfulness: Emerging Issues for Education, British Journal of Educational Studies 64.1 pages 97-117 (published online 22 June 2015), 10.1080/00071005.2015.1051946

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071005.2015.1051946?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=rbje20

Research Summary: Dialogic Skills in RE

Sixty-five secondary school students are encouraged to develop the dialogic skills of consensus building through cumulative talk and constructive criticism through exploratory talk. With a stimulus of two texts – one based on science and the supernatural and the other on New Testament scholarship – the students from ten UK secondary schools engage with paired conversations. Their conversations are recorded and transcribed and subsequently analysed for quality.

Researchers

Dr Antony Luby

Research Institution

University of Glasgow

What is this about?

Research Question 1
To what extent do the students remain on task when their conversations take place out with the visible control of the teacher?

Research Question 2
To what extent does this intervention promote participation in cumulative talk and exploratory talk by the students?

Research Question 3
To what extent does dialogic RE promote a deep approach to students’ learning?

Research Question 4
How might the development of dialogic skills become a regular feature within classroom life?

What was done?

10 secondary schools selected by opportunity sampling – 9 in England (East Midlands & South Yorkshire) and 1 in Scotland.

4 are faith schools (2 Anglican; 2 Catholic); 5 are academies and 1 is a comprehensive school.

Overall then, taking together the four criteria of type, location, affluence of catchment areas and performance levels, the opportunity sample can be criticised on three grounds:

1. There is an over-representation of faith schools and academies;
2. The school locations are biased towards cities and towns; and
3. It skews towards schools performing at the lower end of the Ofsted spectrum.

Nonetheless, there is still a broad representation of schools given that:
a) The three most common types of schools are well represented;
b) All four kinds of location (city, town, semi-rural and rural) are represented;
c) There is a broad diversity of catchment areas spread throughout the deciles spanning from ‘most deprived’ to ‘least deprived’; and
d) All four categories of Ofsted performance levels are covered within the sample.

65 students were selected by the heads of department for paired conversations. 61 students participated from Y10-Y13 and 4 students from Y9. There was a wide range of religious and non-religious backgrounds i.e. the students self-declared as:

Agnostic = 22
Atheist = 14
Christian Catholic = 8
Christian Other = 12
Deist = 2
Muslim = 2
Non-religious = 4
Sikh = 1

The paired conversations were recorded, transcribed and then analysed for quality.

Main findings and outputs

The findings from the academies are particularly encouraging in that twenty-seven out of twenty-eight conversations are rated as either high quality or mid quality. High quality requires a minimum of 700 words and 70% cumulative talk and exploratory talk.

Further, using a series of 10 test items for the survey questionnaire it was ascertained that, to a high degree of statistical significance, the students claim that paired conversations promotes a deep approach to learning.

Also, the students clearly enjoyed the experience since from the sixty-two responses only two are negative; seven are mixed; and fifty-three are positive. Typical students’ comments include –

“I think this approach is generally helpful for learning in RE as it makes me question my opinion and the opinions of others when learning.”

“Useful for reinforcing information and critically analysing the information.”

“I think this way of learning is beneficial as it makes you engage in a subject and broadens your understanding through worked examples; it encourages openness.”

Some transcripts were viewed by two experienced heads of department of RE and elicited the following:

“You are getting pupils to really engage in the topic and I think it’s very difficult in a class situation where pupils can express their views clearly… I think honestly it’s just excellent, it’s so nice to see them doing critical thinking…”

With regard to future research –
The community of enquiry identifies software like Book Creator, GarageBand and i-Tunes U as having the capacity to offer pedagogic strategies whereby students can have a degree of privacy for their conversations before sharing these with teachers and peers. Such technologies should feature in future interventions and research intended to promote the development of dialogic skills in RE.

Relevance to RE

A good place to start would be with A-level students and 6th formers. With no safeguarding issues to consider, they can be assigned easily to a room / place in the school to undertake their paired conversations.

Alternatively, tech savvy RE teachers could use GarageBand, Book Creator or i-Tunes U for paired conversations within the classroom that can then be shared with the rest of the class.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The research findings are both indicative and relatable as they are based on a sample of 10 schools that skews towards the lower end of both the socio-economic spectrum and Ofsted ratings. The 65 students who participated are primarily in KS4 and KS5.

Find out more

Luby, A. 2019. Dominican Thomist Pedagogy for a Post-Secular Society: Developing Dialogic Skills in RE for Students in UK Secondary Schools. Unpublished PhD thesis. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

http://theses.gla.ac.uk/41201/

Research Summary: Asking pupils to make predictions about religion, to sharpen up their critical thinking

UK education and RE are highly politically controlled, and some writers think that RE’s emphasis on tolerance of different religions has prevented pupils from thinking critically about religion. Pupils’ learning about religions has often been found to be superficial and many popular resources present religions in terms of familiar stereotypes. The writer shows how this is especially true regarding Islam, which has undergone a transformation (once a world religion associated with the Middle East, now a potential source of terror), but its transformation is not reflected in syllabuses or resources used to teach about it. She argues that bringing questions in to RE from Sociology could help to address this weakness. Students could critically consider questions such as: how are Muslims likely to be treated and understood in the UK? Why are young Muslim girls more likely than their mothers or grandmothers to wear the veil?

Researcher

Lynn Revell

Research Institution

Canterbury Christ Church University

What was done?

This is a critical survey of relevant literature and other materials including official documents, RE text books and examination papers.

Main findings and outputs

• There is a discrepancy, generally, between religions as they are experienced and known in the world and religions as they are presented in textbooks and examined in RE.
• Regarding Islam, there tends to be an assumption that Muslims have common views and concerns and that the religion is not really diverse.
• Examination papers from 1997 to 2013 were analysed; it was striking how little questions about Islam had changed. On page 58 the author states:
• ‘Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the developing world, the meaning of Jihad has become a matter of popular discussion and the role of women in Islam has become an issue of international debate. These changes are not reflected in most of the questions: it is as though the Islam examined by students is the same Islam that existed a generation ago.’
• Yet examination papers do sometimes ask pupils to think critically, and the relationship between liberal values of tolerance and a lack of pupil criticism is not clear. The fact is that many different kinds of ideas influence RE in different ways.
• Using sociological questions may help pupils to be more critical. How are Muslims likely to be treated and understood in the UK? Why are young Muslim girls more likely than their mothers or grandmothers to wear the veil? This should not be based on ‘projection’ (unfounded assumptions) but ‘prediction’ (where observation and analysis are used).

Relevance to RE

• Regarding policy and curriculum, it would appear that examination boards should take a fresh look at their specifications and examination papers.
• In relation to school-level curriculum and pedagogy, teachers might reconsider approaches to Islam in the light of this research. They should take care to address the variety of Muslims and experiences and ask pupils to follow suit.
• Teachers should test the sociological questions mentioned by the author (above) for their value in helping pupils to think critically. Further, no doubt teachers and pupils will have questions of their own about the experiences of Muslims in UK society. These can be added to the list and would provide an interesting basis for follow-up research, based in classrooms.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The research draws on a varied and wide range of resources and uses these as a basis for a potentially very useful suggestion to teachers to test in their own practice.

Find out more

Predicting religion, Journal of Beliefs and Values 36:1, 54-63

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2015.1014652