Take a Deep Breath: How Elementary School Students Perceive the Utility and Impact of Mindfulness Education
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Mindfulness education has been increasing in popularity in recent years as a means to improve both student performance and student wellbeing. Within the emerging field of mindfulness education, little research has been done on student perceptions of mindfulness and its applicability outside the classroom, once they have been involved in the program. This study took place at an elementary school in Northern California. Through semi-structured student interviews supplemented with classroom observations and a teacher interview, I explore how 22 fourth-grade students receiving weekly 30-minute mindfulness lessons reported understanding and using mindfulness in their daily lives. Findings demonstrate that most students understood mindfulness as the act of being present or as a tool for becoming calm, with some misperceiving it as the state of being calm. The vast majority of students reported having used mindfulness outside of the classroom of their own accord. Furthermore, most students perceived mindfulness as having a positive impact on their emotional state at the time of use. Similar and occasionally surprising themes mentioned across student responses, including certain books they engaged with and activities they enjoyed, indicate that mindfulness educators could strengthen their elementary-school programs by taking student opinions into account. These findings suggest that fourth-grade students in this mindfulness education program generally find mindfulness useful outside of class, and that student opinions are a valuable source of insight into the effectiveness of mindfulness education programs.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 27, 2016 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Arjmand, Isabel |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Lit, Ira |
| Advisor | O'Keeffe, Jamie |
| Advisor | Willinsky, John |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Graduate School of Education |
Subjects
| Subject | mindfulness |
|---|---|
| Subject | social-emotional learning |
| Subject | elementary education |
| Subject | Stanford Graduate School of Education - Undergraduate Honors Program |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Arjmand, Isabel. (2016). Take a Deep Breath: How Elementary School Students Perceive the Utility and Impact of Mindfulness Education. Unpublished Honors Thesis. Stanford University, Stanford CA.
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education
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- Contact
- iarjmand@stanford.edu
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