Contemplative Education: A Systematic, Evidence-Based Review of the effect of Meditation Interventions in Schools

By L. Waters, Adam Barsky, Amanda Ridd, Kelly-Ann Allen. 2015

243 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Schools need reliable evidence about the outcomes of meditation programs before they consider if and how such programmes can influence learning agendas, curriculum and timetables. This paper reviewed evidence from 15 peer-reviewed studies of school meditation programmes with respect to three student outcomes: well-being, social competence and academic achievement. In total, there were 76 results where effect sizes could be calculated. The overall number of participants in the effect size analyses was 1,797. Of the 76 effect sizes calculated, 61 % were statistically significant. Sixty-seven per cent of the results had small effects on student outcomes, 24 % of the results had medium effect strength and 9 % showed a large effect of meditation upon student outcomes. Transcendental meditation programmes had a higher percentage of significant effects than mindfulness-based and other types of meditation programmes, but this may be to do with the settings and programme delivery rather than the technique itself. Programme elements such as duration, frequency of practice and type of instructor influenced student outcomes. A conceptual model is put forward based on two propositions: proposition 1—meditation positively influences student success by increasing cognitive functioning; proposition 2—meditation positively influences student success by increasing emotional regulation. Suggestions are made to stimulate future research and to assist in the development of more efficacious applications for meditation in schools.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e43293e00e2cc5024b20f726ff2b9e3730375d81

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Citations in the corpus

SEARCH: A Meta-Framework and Review of the Field of Positive Education (2019, background): “There is some evidence already to suggest that interventions have the greatest impact on students when they are delivered by teachers (Waters et al. 2015;Chodkiewicz andBoyle 2017) but thismay also depend on the particular nature of the intervention.”
Review of Brief School-Based Positive Psychological Interventions: a Taster for Teachers and Educators (2017, background): “In terms of academic performance, a recent meta-analysis (Waters et al. 2015) on 15 studies (n=1797 participants) carried out on meditation practices in schools (not only mindfulness practices) found seven studies (n=1210) assessing cognitive functioning (attention) and only three studies had measur”
The impact of mindfulness on the wellbeing and performance of educators: A systematic review of the empirical literature (2017, background): “also an argument for the development of new programmes suited specifically to certain contexts, as we have seen with the creation of bespoke MBIs suited to schoolchildren (Waters et al., 2015).”
Trauma-Informed Positive Education: Using Positive Psychology to Strengthen Vulnerable Students (2016, background): “Finally, mindfulness enhances the ways in which teachers can consider their classroom tasks, interactions, and relationships in a mindful way (Burke 2010; Waters et al. 2014).”