This week I delved into some mindfulness research. I wanted to look at at least one scholarly source, one source that was credible but not necessarily scholarly, and one video.

For scholarly sources, I searched using the UVic Library Summons. There are a surprising amount of studies that have been done into mindfulness-based practices in the classroom. One of the most useful sources that I found was a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology called “Mindfulness-based interventions in schools—a systematic review and meta-analysis”. The research consisted of 12 compiled studies, both published and unpublished, to give a general overview of available data regarding mindfulness in schools. The data is quite dense and does require time to digest, but the paper delves into the factors of mindfulness interventions that are successful, how it affects students, and what is missing from the research or needs to be studied further.

I found two great video sources that explain more of the logistics of what mindfulness is. The first one is from a YouTube channel called Happify and is directed more towards adults in its explanation.

The other video would be a great resource to share with students, as it is comprised of students talking about what mindfulness means to them.

For my non-scholarly source, I looked at an article from Forbes called “Destress the Classroom: Bringing Mindfulness to Students and Teachers”. The article was informative regarding organizations that are trying to bring mindfulness into classrooms. Mindful Schools offers online courses and teaching kits for educators. Similarly, Mind Up offers Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) programs to implement in classrooms. The article also mentions how some mindfulness apps, such as Calm, are offering teachers in the United States free memberships to use the apps in their classrooms.

Overall, I feel more versed in what mindfulness is and can look like. These are resources to be included in our final compilation.

Featured image by Tim Goedhart on Unsplash