Can mindfulness improve pupils’ concentration?
By Katherine Sellgren, BBC News.
Mindfulness is a psychological technique which is said to help combat stress. But should it be widely introduced in schools?
The practice of mindfulness – which draws on Buddhist thinking – has become increasingly popular in recent years. There have been calls for brain-training techniques, using breathing to achieve mental clarity, to be introduced in schools.
In October, the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group said the practice should be made more widely available and recommended the Department for Education designate three schools to “pioneer mindfulness teaching and disseminate best practice”.
Political author and former head of Wellington College Anthony Seldon has called for daily “stillness sessions” in schools, saying a decline in traditional religious assemblies has left pupils with little space for reflection in the school day.
So can mindfulness meditation really help pupils concentrate amid the distractions of 21st Century living? A group of BBC School Reporters from Connaught School for Girls in Leytonstone, east London, decided to investigate for the project’s 10th annual News Day.
Hannah, 14, says students wanted to establish whether mindfulness meditation could help. “We wanted to find out how it could be beneficial for our GCSEs and help us in situations where we might be very stressed.”
Read also: Mindfulness and the rise of ‘therapeutic education’ – dangerous or progressive?, by Katherine Ecclestone, Family Education Trust
Also: The dangerous rise of therapeutic education, by Katherine Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes (2009)
[Editor’s note: many sections of the Church of England and other denominations are uncritically buying into Mindfulness when it clearly has roots in Eastern religion and humanist understandings of wellbeing not Christianity. Katherine Ecclestone’s work is an excellent survey of this trend.]
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