Education Commons^™

Using Mindfulness To Self-Regulate In The Upper Elementary Classroom, Ashleigh L. Bartz

Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers

The purpose of this research was to determine the effects on students’ ability to self regulate while learning about daily mindfulness lessons. The study took place over the course of six weeks in an upper elementary class of 20 students, including four fourth graders, nine fifth graders, and seven sixth graders. The study was conducted in a rural public Montessori school in the Midwest. Students participated in a six-week mindfulness unit from The Mind Up Curriculum (The Hawn Foundation, 2011). The researcher collected data through a pre-and postassessment, students’ self reflections and graphs, researcher’s observation, and researcher’s daily journal. The …

Design And Evaluation Of A Course On Social And Emotional Learning And Classroom Management For Future Teachers In Colombia, Andrea Bustamante

Dissertations

Research has evidenced the importance of supporting future teachers so they are prepared to effectively model and foster prosocial attitudes and behaviors in their students. However, these aspects are often disregarded in teacher education programs. The purpose of this study was to address this gap by designing, implementing, and evaluating a course for future teachers in Colombia. The course intended to promote future teachers’ own social and emotional competencies (SEC) and well-being, as well as their classroom management knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs. It included three components: (1) development of SEC, (2) classroom management approaches and strategies, and (3) mindfulness …

Moving And Learning: A Curriculum Designed To Reduce Stress In High School Physical Education Students, Anthony J. Bizal

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The Moving and Learning curriculum was designed to help physical education students learn skills that will help them reduce stress by using yoga, mindfulness, and breathing techniques. Methods from all three areas were used to create a three week curriculum that would allow teachers in physical education, and other content areas, to get kids moving while they are learning. The three week curriculum is accompanied by a full appendix to the all of the yoga, breathing, and mindfulness tools and is presented in a scope and sequence that lets the students build on new and prior knowledge. The results are …

Improving The Mental Health Of Students And Staff Through Mindfulness Training And Practices, Sarah Braun

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to answer the question, what impact does mindfulness training and practices have on the mental health of staff and students? This paper reviews multiple sources of research on neuroscience, mental health, mindfulness practices and website design. The author documents the creation of a mindfulness resource website, in collaboration with the district’s Mindfulness Educational Specialist. This website and it’s contents were designed purposefully to provide staff, students and parents with the appropriate literature, videos, websites and applications, to enhance their mindfulness practice.

Discovering The Leader Within: An Autoethnophenomenographic Study Of Mindfulness In Educational Leadership, Alyssa Fraser

Educational Studies Dissertations

This qualitative study combined autoethnographic and phenomenological methods to examine a researcher-leader’s attempt to cultivate cognitive, relational, and emotional capacities through regular mindfulness practice, and how the cultivation of such capacities aligns with the enactment of leadership. The interrogation of lived experience and self-analysis was entered with the intention to better understand the promise of mindfulness as a resource for the development of educational leaders. This study explored the perceived connections between mindfulness practice and the enactment of educational leadership by examining internal and external perspectives of an individual leader’s practice. Methods of self-observation, including both interval and occurrence recording …

Mindful Classroom: Developing And Testing Strategies For Resilience Among Urban 7th Grade Students, Alyssa Santos

Master's Projects and Capstones

Introduction: A growing body of research suggests mindfulness-based classroom interventions are an effective, low cost approach to reducing the effects of toxic stress among youth. The purpose of this project was to identify key sources of stress among urban 7th grade students at De Marillac Academy and develop and test mindfulness techniques to actively engage and potentially improve stress management skills among students.

Methods: Five focus groups with students were conducted to assess the most prominent sources of stress inside and outside of school as well as current self-management strategies. Additionally, anonymous online surveys were distributed to 7th grade parents, …

The Impact Of Mindfulness Exercises On The Verbal Reactive Behaviors Of Students Identified With Significant Behavioral And Emotional Difficulties, Nicole Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mindfulness exercises such as counting and breathing on the reactive verbal behaviors of students who are identified as having significant behavioral and emotional difficulties. The six participants were fifth and seventh grade students who were instructed in the self-contained classroom for emotional support a minimum of three class periods daily. Mindfulness exercises were practiced twice daily for a period of three to five minutes for twenty days. Data was collected on each participant prior to, during and after the intervention implementation. The independent variable was the mindfulness exercises employed. …

Laying Groundwork For The Use Of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy Constructs To Enhance The Identity Development Of Counselors-In-Training: An Exploratory Quantitative Analysis, Emma Christine Burgin

Doctoral Dissertations

Counselor educators aid counselors-in-training (CITs) in the process of professional identity development, which has its own challenges, such as managing anxiety and increasing self-awareness. One way proposed to enhance these therapeutic challenges is mindfulness. However, most research examining mindfulness in counselor education to-date lacks a standard theoretical framework, which may cause counselors to diminish the value of mindfulness in counselor training. One theory-driven concept of mindfulness comes from ACT, an empirically validated approach to counseling. It is possible that ACT could serve as a common language for educators to use when implementing mindfulness into counselor training, and thus, there is …

Yoga And Mindfulness In The Inclusion Classroom, Maria Petruzzelli

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the effectiveness of implementing mindfulness and yoga techniques in two sections of fourth grade inclusion language arts classes. More specifically, this paper examines the effectiveness of yoga and mindfulness techniques on the frequency of off-task behaviors and academic achievement. It was hypothesized that off-task behaviors would occur less frequently and that academic performance in writing would improve after a yoga and mindfulness intervention was implemented.

Using a pre-post no-control design, thirty-six students, eighteen per class, from a public elementary school in Southern New Jersey participated in this investigation. Baseline and post implementation data were collected using On-Demand …

Contemplative Practices And Post-Secondary Well-Being: Potential Methods For Reducing Test Anxiety, Shannon S. Hayden

MSU Graduate Theses

Students encounter numerous sources of stress in college from school work to examinations. A proposed method for reducing test related anxiety is contemplative practice (namely, mindfulness meditation and expressive writing). These interventions were used immediately prior to an exam to determine effectiveness on students’ mood and test grade. Although the study produced few statistically significant results, a promising trend in utilizing these interventions for increasing exam grades, increasing positive mood, and decreasing negative mood was uncovered. Each intervention appears to have dissimilar effects on different types of students (i.e., varying degrees of dispositional mindfulness and cognitive test anxiety; for example, …

The Relationship Between Mindfulness And Stress Among College Students, Elizabeth Marie Vonderheyde

Theses and Dissertations

College students who have high levels of stress have reported difficulties with functioning on a daily basis, whether it be high anxiety due to classes or an increase in unhealthy habits like smoking or overeating. Studies have shown that those who practice mindfulness every day learn how to live with accepting the stresses in their lives (Siegel & Allison, 2016). This study explored the relationship between mindfulness and stress in college students from a medium size public university in the northeast. Two self-report measures were used to collect data though an online survey. Data were subjected to descriptive and inferential …

Mindfulness Strategies And Childhood Trauma, Jennifer Peterson

Culminating Projects in Special Education

Although many interventions and treatment options are available to aid youth who display patterns of emotional or behavioral dysfunction as a result of trauma, researchers are discovering the effectiveness of “mindfulness” techniques to help young people cope with these symptoms. Mindfulness is the ability to experience the present moment without judgement and the techniques involve training in attending to present-moment experiences such as breath, sounds, and movements (Berceli & Napoli, 2007). Mindfulness is a useful tool for regulating emotions by increasing awareness and developing flexibility and adaptability in responding to one’s emotional experiences (Berceli & Napoli, 2007). The purpose of …

Teaching While White: White Identity Development And Antiracism For Educators, Amber Mackenzie Taylor

Master's Projects and Capstones

This project explores the use of mindfulness in antiracist professional development for educators, documenting the development and implementation of workshop curriculum across three conference settings. The purpose of the project was to engage White educators in the important inner work of understanding White racial conditioning and actively challenging the institutional and structural racism inherent in our education system. Beginning with an understanding of race, racism and Critical Race Theory, the curriculum was designed to support White educators in developing their own racial identities to further their own personal development. The workshop focuses on White Identity development (Helms, 1990) to support …

Mindfulness Program For Student Athletes, Daniel J. Savory

M.A. in Leadership Studies: Capstone Project Papers

Student athletes face challenging situations during their time at college which can cause their experience to be a negative one if they are not fully supported. This can be due to several factors; most athletes face an immense amount of pressure to succeed in the classroom as well as in their sport. Also, many athletes are moving away from home for the first time and this can be a daunting feeling. They are expected to manage all of these challenges, and if mishandled, it can lead to an overwhelming amount of negative stress resulting in an unsuccessful time as a …

Educating The Whole Being: Yoga & Mindfulness In Schools, Trang Huynh

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Positive Psychology And Happiness In The Special Education Classroom - The Effects On Academics And Self-Esteem, Jean M. Oseko

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Twenty-first century schools are not like the schools of last century. The student population brings with it an entirely new set of parameters that the standard teacher-student model of education can no longer accommodate. Special education students along with the general education population enter school with more trauma than students of the past have. This means that new ways of helping these students need to be learned and implemented so students can have successful careers and teachers will stay in the field. Positive Psychology (PP) is an avenue that may provide some of the answers to today’s classroom. Positive Psychology …

Mindfulness Meditation Practice By Individuals With Substance Dependent Behavior, Quyen Ho

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many people in the United States suffer from substance dependence, which leads to depression, anxiety, work impairment, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, crime, and health care problems. Mindfulness meditation has been applied in many aspects of mental health treatment and all belief systems. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore substance dependents' experiences related to their mindfulness meditation practice of at least 6 months and up to 3 years. A constructivist conceptual framework, which states that human beings create systems for understanding reality based on their individual beliefs, emotions, and interpretations, was used for this study. Research questions focused …

Finding Voice In The Academy Through Yellow Storytelling: An Asian American Autoethnography On Suffering In Higher Education, Thuong Thi Nguyen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions in the United States (U.S.) were founded for a select segment of the population, i.e. white Christian men from upper socioeconomic classes (Thelin, 2011). Research shows the policies, pedagogies, and practices created for use within majority populations and dominant cultures are not as beneficial or effective for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. As the U.S. becomes more diverse and college enrollment among diverse students increases, higher education institutions need to identify more holistic approaches and investigate alternative methods to better serve these populations. This dissertation is a response to that need. In order to offer other alternatives, …