Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, 2019
Mindfulness In, As and Of Education:
Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education
OREN ERGAS
Following the exponential rise in publications on mindfulness
in education and the emergence of some critical perspectives
on this field, this paper articulates three roles of mindfulness
practice in education: Mindfulness in, as and of education.
The three are developed based on an examination of the
practice as it is shaped by two different socio-historical
narratives, which in turn manifest in different modalities of
implementation and aims in the contemporary educational
field. While much of the field is governed by ‘mindfulness in
education’ within economic-therapeutic interventions, equal
attention is given to ‘mindfulness as education’ as reflected in
a whole school approach and to ‘mindfulness of education’ in
which the practice radicalises the ethos of critical pedagogy.
Describing these three roles, the paper introduces readers to
the practice itself, offers a framework for understanding its
associations with a variety of educational aims, and critically
discusses these associations as well as the diverse pedagogical
possibilities that this practice brings to contemporary and
future education.
INTRODUCTION
In the past decades, mindfulness practice has been increasingly incorporated
across educational settings. Broad reviews and meta-analyses point
to hundreds of thousands of students and thousands of teachers who have
been learning to practice mindfulness within school programmes of various
lengths and intensities (Carsley et al., 2018; Lomas et al., 2017; Semple
et al., 2017; Zenner et al., 2014). Great Britain-based Mindfulness in
Schools Project (MiSP) reports having trained over 4,500 teachers, many
of whom implement mindfulness in primary and secondary educational
settings.1
Research of mindfulness in education has now expanded to huge
state-funded projects, such as MYRIAD, which includes 84 UK schools
(approx. 6,000 students).2
Examining publications that discuss/study mindfulness in educational
settings, however, one finds that they hardly constitute a uniform phenomenon
(Ergas and Hadar, 2019). A practice that bears one name is framed
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 341
and implemented in a variety of ways, and toward an array of aims, such as
reduction of teacher burnout and stress (Flook et al., 2013), enhancement of
social-emotional competencies (Jennings et al., 2017), improved cognitive
functions and well-being in students (Zenner et al., 2014), transformative
teaching and learning processes (Owen-Smith, 2017), enhanced scientific
criticality (Roth, 2006), cultivation of spirituality (Wong, 2004), and critical
pedagogy (Magee, 2016). Modalities of implementations are also diverse,
spanning short term school mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs)
(Zenner et al., 2014) of 4 to 12 sessions, to whole-school approaches
incorporating mindfulness across the curriculum (Tarrasch, 2017), and integrations
of mindfulness in higher education courses across disciplines, such
as social work, communication, law and psychology (Komjathy, 2018).
Witnessing such variety, one is bound to question how can one practice
be associated with so many aims, how ‘educational’ are these aims, and how
seriously ought we to take this multifaceted phenomenon? Indeed, many
have been posing challenging questions in regards to the development of this
discourse. Eppert (2013), Hyland (2017) and Purser and Loy (2013) pointed
to ‘McMindfulness’—the commodification of mindfulness, its uprooting
from Buddhist ethics and its presentation as a panacea. Forbes (2019) and
Reveley (2015) critiqued its shallow and self-indulging implementations
that result as serving neoliberal agendas. Others warned us to ‘mind the
hype’ around mindfulness, for research in this field is still in its infancy and
suffers from various methodological flaws (Van Dam et al., 2018).
That said, implementations of mindfulness in educational institutions
across ages are clearly spreading. The number of peer-reviewed publications
in this particular field had risen exponentially from 2 in 2002 to 101
in 2017, amounting to 447 overall. Half of them were published between
2014 and 2017, 294 (66 percent) of which involve actual implementations
(Ergas and Hadar, 2019). In the face of this growth, these diverse
manifestations, and considering critical perspectives, this paper proposes
a framework for understanding different roles of mindfulness in contemporary
education. The framework is developed based on depicting the
encounter between the core facets of the practice and its socio-historical
framings on the one hand, and education on the other hand. Based on this
encounter three strands of implementations of the practice in education are
depicted to explain the diversity described above: a socialisation-oriented
mindfulness in education, a holistic mindfulness as education, and a
radical-critical mindfulness of education. Each of these reflects different
modalities of implementation, aims and roles of the practice in education.
The paper includes two parts. The first part of the paper deals with
the practice in isolation and prior to its implementations within education.
It renders its core facets and presents two narratives that contextualise
it as a path or as a tool. These narratives are then explored in relation
to parallel conceptions of education. The second part describes the three
roles of mindfulness in education in light of this exposition. Mindfulness
in, as and of education are explained, discussed critically, and grounded in
publications in the field. The three strands are given relatively equal attention
despite the fact that currently mindfulness in education predominates the
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342 O. Ergas
field. The intention behind this is to offer a broader orientation to the
practice and to shed light on some of its less known emerging potentials for
education.
MINDFULNESS PRACTICE
Three Core Facets of Mindfulness Practice
Understanding the variety within the discourse of mindfulness in education
requires a definition of the practice; however, there are various definitions
of mindfulness in the discourse (Bishop et al., 2004; Cullen, 2011; Gethin,
2011; Kabat-Zinn, 2005; Shapiro et al., 2012; Yates et al., 2015). I hence
refer to the following as a description of the practice’s core facets. The
description aims to draw boundaries that are loose enough to include a
variety of contemporary implementations, yet are sufficiently rigid to enable
distinguishing mindfulness practice from other practices.
Mindfulness is often considered as a set of meditative practices that involve
three distinct yet intertwined components: attention, intention and
attitude (Bishop et al., 2004; Kabat-Zinn, 2005; Shapiro et al., 2012). One
common way to practice mindfulness requires bringing attention to the sensation
of the breath in the abdomen and sustaining it there. An untrained
mind, however, will quickly succumb to mind-wandering; that is, one will
unwittingly transition into reflecting/ruminating on past events or planning
the future (Petitmengin et al., 2017). This transition represents the forgetting
of the object of attention and the intention to practice (Wallace, 1999).
Wandering goes on until the practitioner realises his/her forgetfulness upon
which s/he is to bring back attention to the breath. The recurrence of this scenario
can yield irritation, frustration and reprimanding oneself for the inability
to sustain attention. In the face of this inner antagonism the practitioner
practices attitude, which means mentally fostering an acceptance of any
experience within the practice, including the inability to sustain attention.
Attitude is often elaborated based on terms, including non-judgementalism,
non-striving, compassion and kindness (Cullen, 2011; Kabat-Zinn, 2005).
The third component—intention—undergirds the entire process. It consists
of the recurrent re-establishment of the intention to practice attention and
attitude rather than succumb to rumination, mind-wandering or deliberate
planning (Yates et al., 2015).
The core facets of mindfulness practice hence include attention, attitude
and intention. If any one of these elements is missing from the instructions,
then in this paper it is not considered to be mindfulness practice.
Notwithstanding, there are diverse ways to practice mindfulness, which are
introduced in contemporary programmes, e.g. body scan, focused attention,
open awareness, mindful walking, mindful yoga, and there are various
adaptations of these practices to suit diverse ages and populations (Cullen,
2011; Roeser, 2014).
The above allows for distinguishing mindfulness from other practices,
such as reflection. Though diversely implemented, reflection in education
is often based in and/or aims at drawing conclusions, conceptualisation,
improving performance, and decision making (Owen-Smith, 2017).
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 343
Conversely, mindfulness is grounded in attending to the present moment
as it is, stepping away from interpretation, elaboration and deliberate
meaning-making processes. If the latter emerge spontaneously within the
practice one is to shift from them back to the breath/bodily sensations
(Yates et al., 2015). Volitional control is exercised here over attention
but not over the unfolding of experience nor over the content of thoughts
(Webster-Wright, 2013). It is hence a practice in which one examines
pre-reflective content, grounded in ‘how’ one attends and refraining from
becoming absorbed in ‘what’ one attends to (Petitmengin et al., 2017, p.
173). Further details on the implications of these core facets and these
distinctions will be offered in subsequent parts of the paper.
Beyond depicting the boundaries of mindfulness practice as the phenomenon
under study, the articulation of these core facets serves an additional
purpose, which concerns the task of this paper. It strategically
separates the internal mental activities within practice from the external
cultural-social-historical context within which it is practiced. It is proposed
here that with some variations and remaining within the boundaries of the
core facets described, the same practice can have different aims and be
framed differently depending on when and where it is offered. The following
section turns to depict the external context that shapes these framings
and aims.
Mindfulness Practice: Two Narratives at the Gateway of Education
One way to understand the variety in contemporary discourse is by depicting
two different narratives within which the above core facets of the
practice are embedded. These two reflect different historical-social contexts
and human interests. They can be viewed as providing mindfulness
with different IDs and biographies that frame the practice differently as it
stands at the ‘gateway’ of education. When mindfulness goes through this
gateway it moulds and is moulded by contemporary educational settings,
forking into diverse modalities of implementation and aims. The following
presents these two narratives very briefly to position mindfulness at this
gateway.
The first narrative depicts mindfulness practice as having been ‘born’
around the 5th
century BCE under the Pali name sati (also meaning ‘remembering’)
(Yates et al., 2015). Sati connotes with a set of practices
elaborated by the Buddha orally and later transcribed in texts, such as
the Satipatthana Suta. Some of these practices correspond with the core
facets of the practice described above (Gethin, 2011; Repetti, 2016). When
mindfulness practice is presented based on this narrative it is both a practice
and a component within a broad Buddhist path toward liberation from
suffering. The practice is thus embedded in a robust ethical worldview, that
stresses the socio-ethical dispositions of compassion and wisdom (Hyland,
2013).
The second narrative depicts mindfulness as having been adopted and
adapted in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Kabat-Zinn, a doctor of molecular biology,
who practiced Zen meditation, realised the potential of the practice
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344 O. Ergas
to reduce the suffering of a variety of chronic physical and mental problems
(Kabat-Zinn, 2005). However, he also acknowledged that a Buddhist framing
is likely to prevent the possibility of offering it to those who may be aided
by it. He hence developed ‘mindfulness-based stress-reduction’ (MBSR)—
an 8 week structured intervention in which patients learned to practice
mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn, 2011). His rendition provided the practice with
an alternative framing; not necessarily Buddhist, but rather secular-clinical.
When mindfulness practice is presented based on this narrative it is not part
of a Buddhist path, but more of a way to cope with day-to-day stress.
These two different narratives appeal to different populations. In fact,
recontextualising the appeal of the practice was the very intention behind
the formation of the second narrative. As Kabat-Zinn (2005) described, the
patients to whom it was offered were not interested in Buddhism. They
sought a solution to health problems. The existence of these two narratives
in contemporary times reveals the phenomenon of two people interpreting
their engagement with mindfulness practice in significantly different ways.
One might be drawn to it as an inquiry into the nature of (non)self and
as a path toward cultivating wisdom and compassion (the first narrative).
Another might view it as a way to cope with stress or ameliorate burnout
(the second narrative). Very roughly the first narrative is about ‘solving the
problem of life’; the second, is about ‘solving a problem that gets in the way
of life’. Shifts between these perspectives may occur as some examples
suggest (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). However, for the purposes of this paper the
distinction here, which seems to cut through contemporary implementations
of mindfulness in general, and in education, is between mindfulness as a
path versus mindfulness as a tool. Mindfulness as a path nests the practice
within a broad framework in which it is embraced as a life-long ethicalexistential
undertaking (Hyland, 2016). Mindfulness as a tool means that
it is a particular technique applied toward solving a particular big/small
problem. In such a case, the practice has a functional role. It is valued if it
solves the problem; however, if other tools solve it more efficiently/costeffectively,
then mindfulness might be traded for them.
To be sure, each of the narratives continued to evolve since its beginnings.
The Buddhist narrative has been developing through interpretations that
had led to a variety of Buddhist schools of thought-practice (Gethin, 2011;
Wallace, 1999). The secular-clinical narrative was added the context of
therapy with the development of ‘mindfulness-based cognitive therapy’
(MBCT) (Segal et al., 2018). It then further expanded into the context of
economy as its potential to contribute to occupational health, performativity
and productivity began to manifest, and implementation disseminated into
business, technological apps, sports, the police force, and the US army
(Forbes, 2019; Purser and Loy, 2013). In the course of four decades, the
second narrative has become a conglomerate that fuses secular-clinicaltherapeutic-economic
framings and implications.
A heated debate exists as to the relationships between the two narratives.
Some view the second narrative, in its worthy manifestations as a clear
extension of the first (Kabat-Zinn, 2005; Repetti, 2016). Others construe
the progression of the second narrative as leading to ‘McMindfulness’; the
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 345
commodification of the practice and its complete separation from the first
narrative (Forbes, 2019; Hyland, 2017; Purser and Loy, 2013). Mindfulness
stands at the gateway of education with both narratives and this latter debate
following it as a trail wherever it goes.
Yet, prior to examining the encounter between the practice and education,
it is crucial to point out that the path/tool distinction has its parallel within
a broad perspective on educational theory and practice. Education as a path
appears in Plato’s cave allegory (the Republic), which depicts it as a journey
toward and reflecting moral living based on inquiry into the Good, True
and Beautiful. Education for tools and qualifications is found in the very
same text, for the above educational journey was saved for the elite. The
education of others had a functionalist-economic socialisation role aimed at
preparing citizens for a productive life. Both educational orientations have
continued to manifest in our times. Education as a path can be found in
theory and practice (Aloni, 2007; Owen-Smith, 2017; Peters, 1973), and
the economic-functional orientation can be seen clearly in our times. As
Gilead (2015) described, over the passing decades a process of ‘economic
imperialism’ has taken place. Phenomena, such as accountability, highstakes
testing, ‘best practices’, tools for teaching, and what Biesta (2009)
called ‘the learnification of education’, reflect education as a vehicle of
economic progress that stands for values of functionality, efficiency, costeffectiveness
and productivity.
For some, like Peters (1973), this path versus tools distinction would
mark a boundary between what education is and what it is not. For Peters
an activity would be considered educational only if it leads to educational
aims and is intrinsically worthwhile. Hence some contemporary activities
in school might not necessarily qualify as ‘education’. In light of these
distinctions between the two narratives of mindfulness practice and their
encounter with parallel conceptions of education, and in light of Peters, we
can turn to explore three roles of mindfulness practice in education. The
three are presented beginning with the most common and conformist to the
less common and radical.
THREE ROLES OF MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATION
Mindfulness in Education
‘Mindfulness in education’ embeds the practice in the second narrative. It
reflects the most common form of contemporary implementations of the
practice in educational settings (Ergas and Hadar, 2019; Roeser, 2014).
When analysing the role of the practice here, both an external perspective
(focusing on the facets of the practice) and the internal perspectives (focusing
on the social-historical narrative) are required because each sheds
a different light on this phenomenon. The former clearly reveals mindfulness
as a tool in this case, whereas the latter raises questions on whether
something more profound is occurring here.
The external perspective shows mindfulness in education as conforming
with ‘the system’, supporting its functioning and improving performance
and well-being within it. I refer to this as ‘in education’, thinking of
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346 O. Ergas
‘education’ metaphorically as a box made of certain ways of thinking
and practice, rules, regulations, timetables and so forth. Mindfulness in
education implies finding ways to take a practice that comes from radical
places (the first narrative) and fitting it in to the box. This involves molding
it in various ways and developing a language that appeals to policy-makers.
One can detect these processes in the ways in which the practice is
framed throughout publications in this domain. As Ergas and Hadar (2019)
demonstrate, they will generally ground it in Kabat-Zinn’s work and either
refrain from mentioning the first narrative (e.g., Bakosh et al., 2016), or
mention it in passing yet shift to scientific-secular language: ‘Mindfulness,
which is derived from centuries-old meditative traditions and taught in a
secular way, has been linked to heightened activation in brain regions . . . ’
(Flook et al., 2013, p. 183, emphasis added).
Framing the practice as a tool manifests in two fundamental conceptual
frameworks from the second narrative—therapy and economy. These shape
the modalities of implementation and affect the aims. Publications of mindfulness
in education usually structure their argument in one of two ways.
The first depicts MBIs as targeting the problem of stress—a therapeuticclinical
concept, thereby indirectly contributing to schooling outcomes (e.g.
academic achievements, cognitive functions). MBIs address the adverse effects
of stress on teachers’ and/or students’ ability to function and thus
contribute to coping with school tasks (e.g. Crain et al., 2017; Flook et al.,
2013). The second kind of argument depicts MBIs as directly contributing
to cognitive functions, readiness to learn and academic performance (e.g.
Bakosh et al., 2016; Mrazek et al., 2013), and/or to social-emotional skills
and classroom climate (e.g. Jennings et al., 2017).
The economic framing emerges in a variety of ways. It begins with
the modality of implementation framed as mindfulness-based interventions
(MBIs). The term ‘intervention’ is borrowed from the medical world and has
an economic logic built into it. It is a short-term implementation that has a
particular aim and is tested for efficacy and cost-effectiveness. This logic is
clearly captured in broad projects, such as the above-mentioned MYRIAD
titled: ‘The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a mindfulness training
program in schools compared with normal school provision (MYRIAD)’,3
and in studies that make claims, such as, ‘[I]n the long run, reducing teacher
stress and burnout may reduce costs associated with teacher absenteeism,
turnover, and health care . . . ’ (Jennings et al., 2017, p. 17), ‘[T]he personal,
societal, and financial costs associated with burnout are too high to ignore’
(Flook et al., 2013, p. 182). The economic orientation further manifests in
seeking the ‘right dosage’ of practice (Davidson et al., 2012) and in MBIs
designed to minimise practice time and expenses and maximise outcomes,
such as a ten-minute CD-delivered intervention that does not depend on
teachers and is aimed at improving academic achievements (Bakosh et al.,
2016).
The logic behind MBIs is clearly understandable from an external perspective;
however, when considering them in light of Peters’ (1973) criteria,
mindfulness here may be in education but it wouldn’t qualify as education.
Its function here is to support other processes and ends that are understood
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 347
as educational, but the educational merit of the actual practice; namely the
engagement with its core facets, remains outside of the discussion. The very
term ‘intervention’ embodies the seed of alienating the practice from education.
There’s a not-too-hidden curriculum in the message of the medium:
that which intervenes, is not the thing in which it intervenes. By comparison,
we don’t tend to view the learning of maths or literature or learning
to read as interventions in education, but rather as educational activities. A
further concern here is that some of the aims that mindfulness practice addresses
are not easily framed as educational. When they are framed within
occupational health (e.g. reduced absenteeism and burnout) it is clearly not
the case. This has little to do with the merit, logic and desirable outcomes
of addressing these matters; however, the aim here is to sustain the system
more than it is to engage in mindfulness as a worthwhile activity. If this
is about occupational health, then maybe jogging or listening to music are
preferable. An educational justification for mindfulness, construing it as
(not merely in) education, would need to highlight the intrinsic educational
value of the practice itself. That is, how and why do the core features of the
practice reflect an educational process and bring about educational aims?
Additional critique emerges when pointing to a paradoxical logic at work
here. Economic-driven policies, such as accountability and high-stakes testing
are often the source of the stress that MBIs are to address (Roeser and
Peck, 2009). Some have thus critiqued MBIs for normalising a sick system
in fact ‘adding lemon juice to poison’ (Sellman and Buttarazzi, 2019). They
enhance teacher and student resilience, ‘pathology-proofing’ them so that
they can feel ‘good’ within an oppressive system (Reveley, 2015). From
such perspective a practice originally aimed at liberation is devoured by neoliberal
agendas (Forbes, 2019), making one wonder whether this is Marx’s
‘false consciousness’ returned with a vengeance.
However, there is a need for balancing the external perspective with
internal perspectives. For example, it is crucial to note that some leading
scientists and leaders in this field describe quite remarkable personal stories
of transformation, which have led them to the practice (Jennings, 2015),
many are clearly grounded in the Buddhist path (Burnett, 2011) and some
collaborate with world-renowned Buddhist leaders (Hanh and Weare, 2018).
When looking at mindfulness in education from this perspective, its serious
manifestations parallel Kabat-Zinn’s (2011) very Buddhist motivation—to
address suffering in the world. The ‘tool’ seems to be studied/offered by
those who see it as a path within the Buddhist concept of skillful means
(upaya). Their work is one of crafting a language that appeals to a system
that would not tolerate Buddhist terms but is well-versed in the language of
market-economy. What makes mindfulness into a tool is often not those who
seriously study/implement it. It is the educational system within which this
takes place. The former might be interested in liberation and the reduction
of suffering; the latter is more interested in a lubricant that oils its engine.
An additional aspect to be noted is that MBIs are increasingly associated
with the enhancement of social-emotional skills/competencies (Jennings
et al., 2017). On the one hand skills/competencies reflect an economic discourse
(Biesta, 2009). On the other hand, these are not the early 20th
century
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348 O. Ergas
three Rs (reading, writing, arithmetic), but rather the attitudinal components
of mindfulness practice—compassion and kindness. Mindfulness in education
here is about creating prosocial classrooms and developing healthy
teacher–student relationships (Davidson et al., 2012). The potential for construing
these within education as a path toward moral living is clearly there;
however, currently the justification for mindfulness in education is mostly
confined to quantitative research. This tends to exacerbate the erosion of the
educational status of mindfulness for quantitative measures of mindfulness
and its outcomes fail to convey the phenomenology of first-person experience
(Petitmengin et al., 2017). Behind improvements in occupational
health, there may be a teacher who has become more attentive and feels
more joy and fulfillment in her job. Behind MBIs, such as Mindfulness
in Schools Project (UK) or Peace in Schools (US) there are children and
teenagers who learned to cope with anxiety revealing remarkable stories
of personal transformation.4
These need to be explored from qualitative
perspectives in order to bring forth a fuller educational justification for the
practice (e.g. Tarrasch, 2015).
The role of mindfulness in education suggests a variety of contributions to
students’ and teachers’ well-being, cognitive functions and social-emotional
competencies (Zenner et al., 2014). From an external view, however, the
medium of implementation, and the justifications provided for it within
quantitative studies, often deprive mindfulness from being fully considered
within the scope of Education. Paradoxically, this deprivation stems from
the ethos of the educational system itself. Its functional-economic ethos is
understandable from an external perspective, yet it erodes the educational
worthwhileness of the practice.
Mindfulness as Education
The conception of ‘mindfulness as education’ takes its cue from the first
narrative of mindfulness and from the broader horizons of education as a
path. It positions the practice as both serving educational aims and as an
inherently worthwhile activity (Peters, 1973) and gives it a far more robust
presence in the curriculum (O’Donnell, 2015). Such conception implies a
shift away from education that is narrowed down by ‘economic imperialism’
(Gilead, 2015); conversely, it grounds it in ancient and contemporary
conceptions of education as a path and as a holistic endeavour that concerns
character, virtue, self-knowledge and social-engagement (Aloni, 2007).
However, there is a clear issue at stake here for ideally speaking, this
would imply that the incorporation of mindfulness as education would necessitate
bringing its Buddhist roots along with it. This unlikely progression
is one reason why current discourse around mindfulness as education is
mostly theoretical and revolves around critique of mindfulness in education
(Ergas and Hadar, 2019). Critics argue against a two-layered economic imperialism
that frames education in these terms and then frames mindfulness
in this very way to serve education-framed in economical terms (Lewin,
2017; O’Donnell, 2015). This process itself is part of the broader ‘McMindfulness’
phenomenon described as ‘divorcing technique from underpinning
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 349
value foundations’ (Hyland, 2016, p. 14). Eppert (2013) hence claimed that
mindfulness and contemplative practices in general ‘are in danger of being
“used and abused”, diluted and commodified, packaged and made “easy”,
designed to fit into society rather than rigorously question and re-imagine
it’ (p. 339). She called for engaging the ancestries of these practices as an
antidote to these trends.
Some attempts have been made in this direction. Hyland (2013) proposed
Buddhist mindfulness as a ‘more suitable vehicle than religious or
faith-based strategies for fostering spirituality or other-regarding values’
(p. 10). O’Donnell (2015) suggested deploying ‘more heterodox methods
inspired by mindfulness practices rooted in the Buddhist tradition, that are
both integrated into the curriculum and school experience’ (p. 197). These
proposals are laudable, yet they may still raise concerns of proselytising a
religion to students within some Western industrialised countries (Jennings,
2016). As the following proposes, a possibly more effective way to render
mindfulness as education, can be articulated based on certain interpretations
of the core facets of the practice itself. This may offer a narrative that is not
Buddhist, nor therapeutic-economic, but rather educational.
Demonstrating the inherent educational worthwhileness of mindfulness
practice can begin with an often-cited passage from William James: ‘The
faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over
again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will . . . An education
which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence’
(1981[1890], p. 401, emphasis added). Bear in mind that the italicised
words can pass for the attentional and intentional core facets of mindfulness
practice as depicted earlier. But why did James make such claim? Explaining
this requires engaging a little more deeply with his perspective on attention,
experience and the mind.
James argued that ‘for the moment what we attend to is reality’ (1981
[1890], p. 322). Minds select what to attend to and ‘make’ reality in two
ways: actively, as one wills attention to an object, and passively, as attention
is lured involuntarily to objects of interest (James, 1962). Our lives amount
to a concatenation of moments of reality shaped by these two processes.
However, James observed that we have very poor ability to sustain attention
voluntarily (p. 234). This lack is an expression of lacking will, for willing
something implies being able to sustain it before our minds by the faculty of
attention (ibid.). Such lack prevents us from pursuing long-term goals, for
we are constantly lured and side-tracked by a mind that keeps presenting us
with alternative possibilities. These lure our judgement, resulting in weakness
of character. It follows then that improving our ability to bring attention
to an object of choice, we will become more capable of holding ideas in
mind until they are pursued. Hence if mindfulness practice indeed enhances
attention as some evidence suggests (Davidson et al., 2012; Tarrasch, 2017),
according to James it would reflect education par excellence.
Yet there is still a question about the nature of things we would want to
pursue with this trained attention, for sustained attention is an ‘ethicallyneutral
quality’ (Conze, 1956, p. 19). One can apply it toward committing a
crime as much as one can apply it toward an altruistic deed. This is why the
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350 O. Ergas
attitudinal facet of the practice is crucial. It includes non-judgmentalism,
kindness, curiosity, non-striving and in some modalities of MBIs these
are extended to practices of loving-kindness, friendliness, compassion and
gratitude (Cullen, 2011; Roeser, 2014). I suggest that these practices can be
seen as bringing attitude to the foreground and casting attention to the background
remaining within the bounds of what has been described as the core
facets of mindfulness practice. Within mindfulness practice one does not
merely bring back a wandering mind to the object; one cultivates an ability
to live within one’s body, accepting everything experienced throughout the
practice with kindness. These are hence ethical commitments built into the
practice that undergird the neutrality of attention.
When framed this way this is not about Buddhism; it is about virtues.
Aristotle claimed that one cultivates virtue by engaging in virtuous deeds.
The question is whether one becomes kinder or more compassionate by
practicing these qualities mentally on one’s own? This is a basic assumption
that undergirds mindfulness as education. Evidence from research of MBIs
and from neuroscience proposes that this is indeed the case (Condon et al.,
2013; Davidson et al., 2012; Shapiro et al., 2012). Namely, habits are formed
both by acting and by mentally acting upon ourselves through practices such
as mindfulness.
When looking at mindfulness as an educational practice in this way the
distinction between mindfulness in education and as education has far more
to do with modalities of implementation than with a full investment in the
first narrative of mindfulness. This is about showing how the means embody
the ends and the intrinsic value of the activity itself. Lewin (2017) in fact
suggested that: ‘There is something about the delicate nature of attention
that yields to intrinsic reward, where the mindful subject is not oriented to
anything, but to being present’ (p. 114). On this view, the very act of halting
our doings and attending kindly to the breath reflects a sense of gratitude
and appreciation of being.
Treating the practice thus, must imply implementing it in a way that
respects this activity and not only its outcomes. Though rarer, there are
some actual implementations of this approach in contemporary literature.
Tarrasch (2017) studied a primary public school with a student population
of low socio-economic status that in the past fifteen years has integrated ‘the
mindfulness language’ into school life. This included, weekly sessions dedicated
to mindfulness practices, as well as practices interweaved throughout
the school day within disciplinary lessons. The school principal introduced
this curricular reform after experiencing extreme violence and behavioural
issues in the school. The curricular reform began with setting aside academic
achievements completely and highlighting emotional engagement
and relationships among teachers, among students, and between teachers
and students (Frankel, 2008). The implementation of this ‘mindfulness language’
in this case, reflects the antithesis of a ‘mindfulness intervention’.
It is not a compartmentalised tool, but rather a language that undergirds all
human interactions and permeates school life.
It is not surprising that such cases are rare. Such reforms require a
huge commitment and deep understanding of the practice on behalf of the
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 351
principal and school staff. Furthermore, recruiting a community to prioritise
social-emotional aspects of school life in an age of accountability and highstakes
testing is no simple matter. Interestingly, in the course of a decade
this reform has led the school from the bottom of the country’s rankings
to the top on both school climate and academic achievements (Tarrasch,
2017). At least in this case implementing mindfulness as education, yielded
the benefits sought within mindfulness in education. One case is certainly
not enough for theory-building. It does, however, provide a concrete
example of potential. Importantly, this is not an alternative school (e.g.
Waldorf, Montessori). It is a public urban school that had to work within
the realms of the autonomy given to it by a ministry of education. This
implies that mindfulness as education can take place within the bounds of
public education. It does not seem to compromise the economic-functional
role of socialisation concerned with the need for engineers, lawyers, nurses,
teachers. It rather opens the possibility for highlighting the education of
kind and compassionate engineers, lawyers, nurses, teachers, etc.
What emerges from the analysis is that the transition from mindfulness in
to as education does not necessarily involve Buddhist liberation as much as
it involves liberating education from economic imperialism. This enables
a more creative approach to the integration of mindfulness into curricularpedagogical
practice by adopting not a ‘Buddhist language’, but rather a
‘mindfulness language’. I would still argue, however, that just as many of
the scientists and leaders within mindfulness in education are versed in the
first narrative, those teaching mindfulness in or as education need to be
grounded in the practice and its ancestries. However, the actual words they
use when teaching can rely safely on very basic human faculties of attention,
attitude and intention, which can at one and the same time be viewed as
core facets of both mindfulness practice and the practice of Education.
Mindfulness of Education
There is a third possibility that is conceptualised here as ‘mindfulness
of education’ conceived as engaging in mindfulness for the purpose of
critiquing education. It is far less obvious and only beginning to emerge in
the discourse (Ergas, 2017; Forbes, 2019; Kaufman, 2017; Magee, 2016).
However, it holds significant potential for introducing radical dimensions
of critique that can inform education and critical pedagogy. To develop this,
I begin by associating the act of critique with a further description of the
core facets of mindfulness. Then I tie it to educational possibilities.
Critique can occur in diverse contexts, involve various methods, and be
expressed in a variety of ways. Some examples include, Socratic elenchus
in which argument and counterargument are exchanged through dialogue,
self-reflection as in Descartes’ Meditations, and Freire’s dialectical analysis
of social injustice. These examples differ significantly in terms of the aims
of critique and the themes discussed, yet one thing they all share, is the
media they are all based in—thinking processes, reasoning and language. I
am well aware that pointing to what is missing from them, I will be applying
the very same media, hence it should be clear that the merit of all of them is
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352 O. Ergas
completely beyond questioning here. I do, however, point to a modality of
critique that mindfulness (and other body-based contemplative practices)
can introduce, which can substantially inform critical thinking.
Scholars in the field of contemplative studies refer to this as ‘contemplative
inquiry’ (Zajonc, 2009), and speak of ‘critical first-person perspective’
(Komjathy, 2018; Roth, 2006). Yet, unlike Descartes’ critical first-person
philosophy, the critical stance that mindfulness practice introduces, steps
away from an ‘I’ that reflects on ‘his’ thoughts. Practicing mindfulness, one
is instructed to return to the moment-to-moment experience of embodied
sensations whenever one finds oneself engaging in thinking, reasoning and
interpreting. To some degree this can be interpreted as reversing Descartes’
mistrust of the body and adopting it as the point from which the mind itself is
critiqued (Ergas, 2013). Shifting away from the content of thoughts stands
in sharp contrast to conventional philosophical and day-to-day meaningmaking
processes. As such, I argue, it reflects scepticism applied toward
the mind of the sceptic him/herself. It is a critical stance that moves away
from the thoughts one has, the schemes that bring them about, and the power
that these have on our formation, views, and ways of critique. This process
opens us to novel perspectives and can lead to insights into the nature of
experience (Zajonc, 2009).
Practicing mindfulness of ‘something’ means invoking the attitude of
curiosity and inquisitiveness, applying them to the content of experience,
while being the one who ‘has’ the experience. The expression ‘mindfulness
of’ appears in the Satipatthana Suta—the fundamental text in which the
Buddha explains the practice of sati. In this text it appears, for example,
as practicing ‘mindfulness of the breath’ or ‘of bodily sensations’. This
means bringing attention to their natural appearance without attempting
to change them. This leads to growing discernment as to the nature of
the phenomenon as it breaks down into finer elements (Young, 2016). As
attention and awareness are enhanced, the breath is noted with far more
detail unraveling more of its subtleties (Yates et al., 2015). As I argue, we
can practice mindfulness of the breath, but we can also practice ‘mindfulness
of education’ in a variety of ways to which the following serves only as a
primer.
Since mindfulness of education is a radical form of critique it can willingly
engage the first narrative if this informs the critical endeavour. Consider, for
example, the first verse of The Dhammapada, a compilation of the Buddha’s
words: ‘All phenomena are preceded by the mind, issue forth from the mind,
and consist of the mind’ (in Wallace, 1999, fn. 1). Fast-forward to our times
and compare this with Eisner’s (1993) claim, ‘what schools allow children
to think about shapes, in ways perhaps more significant than we realize, the
kind of minds they come to own . . . education is a mind-making process’
(p. 5). Looking at these two very different sources, the tautological nature
of education comes into view. All phenomena are preceded by the mind;
‘education’ is itself a phenomenon. It is a process that begins with minds
and makes minds. Would it not then be a good idea to explore the mind that
makes education? (Ergas, 2017).
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 353
To make this more concrete, I briefly present a practice that I introduce
in undergraduate courses to ignite mindfulness of education. The reader is
invited to try the following instructions I give to students, to enable for a
clearer understanding of what follows:
For the next two minutes, your intention is to just be a witness to
experience. Make a list of all things you attend to when you’re not
trying to do anything special. Whatever it is, a thought, a sound, an
itch, just write it down. I’m not going to make you read it out loud, so
you don’t have to be politically correct either.
The first thing to establish is that these instructions embody the core
facets of mindfulness practice. The difference is that here, mindfulness is
practiced in writing and not only mentally: intention is set at the beginning
and attitude of non-judgementalism is encouraged. Attention is practiced
here within a mindfulness practice known as ‘choiceless awareness’, which
requires one to note whatever attention selects and to let go of it without
getting stuck on anything in particular (Yates et al., 2015). A typical list
following the above instructions can look like this:
sound of a cough
thought: ‘who was that?’
sight of other students engaged in practice
numb sensation in the left hip
sound of pens writing
thought: ‘it’s so quiet in the classroom’
hum of the projector . . .
Broadly, such lists reflect what a mind does when it is not asked to attend
to anything in particular. Based on our lists we uncover the phenomenology
of this experience. Three fundamental observations emerge:
1. All experiences are based on the faculty of attention.
2. All represent the present moments attended to.
3. All emerge from one of two fields in space: in—private, embodied
experiences (e.g. thoughts, inner sensations) or out—stimuli like
sights, sounds, smells, which are perceived in the public sphere that
is available to everyone.
On the face of it, these do not seem to hold much, until we start to consider
how the above possibilities feature in education. For example, we may
consider a basic definition of teaching as ‘orienting students’ attention to
worthwhile content’ (Ergas, 2017). In every moment there are only two
options for teachers: either ask students to attend in to their own minds
or out. In contemporary education, the former is quite rare. The public
curriculum seems very rich with disciplines, but the mind, which ‘precedes
all phenomena’, is mostly what Eisner (1994) called a ‘null’ curriculum.
Minds created education that makes minds in a way that sends those minds
to attend to everything but to the source of the endeavour.
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354 O. Ergas
A further implication of the above practice is that it is imprecise to claim
that minds are ‘made’ by education, curriculum, schooling or teaching.
They are made by what they attend to wittingly and/or unwittingly. Sometimes
minds attend to the planned/taught curriculum; at others, they attend
to a myriad other things, many of them in fact, produced by the wandering
mind itself. Neuroscientists have become very interested in the latter
domain, which in schools manifests in sitting in the classroom yet floating
in thoughts to other places. Studies suggest that we spend close to half of
our waking hours wandering and this affects our moods, behaviours and
thought processes (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010; Segal et al., 2018).
Perhaps we should consider then, whether educational research should not
start turning its flashlight to something that minds do about half of the time
including in school and university and seems to affect who we are in significant
ways? As I developed elsewhere (Ergas, 2018), education may be
an external mind-making process determined by society, but we are also
schooled in and shaped from within our own minds as we become absorbed
in the content they produce constantly.
These ideas open additional strands of critique that emerge at the intersection
of mindfulness of education and critical pedagogy. As Magee
(2016) writes: ‘each of us teaching in traditional educational settings almost
inevitably reenacts and re-inscribes prevailing cultural norms and
imperatives’ (p. 11). In other words, when education makes minds through
its contemporary functional-economic role this may well imply social reproduction,
because minds are made to project socio-cultural norms to the
next generation. Forbes (2019) and Magee (2016) hence describe a variety
of ways in which mindfulness and other contemplative practices extend
critical pedagogy to engage directly with the mind that has been made by
education. It is this mind that reads reality through and enacts prejudice,
bias and privilege. Forbes (2019) calls for re-grounding the practice in its
Buddhist socially-engaged civic ethics in his critique of mindfulness in education
as encouraging self-indulgence. Relevant implementations to this
domain, which are still rare, begin to demonstrate such potential. Mindfulness
practice implemented within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict led to increased support for political compromise in adults (Alkoby
et al., 2017) and to reduced affective prejudice and other group stereotyping
in fourth and fifth grade students (Berger et al., 2018).
These varieties of mindfulness of education present its role as an inherently
worthwhile educational activity that opens new possibilities for critique.
They grant us the possibility of engaging in a radical act of stepping
away from thoughts and reasoning to inform our ways of individual and social
critique and engagement. They connect with the first narrative for they
bring forth an ethos of liberation, which is mutual to the Buddha’s teachings
and to critical pedagogy. Critically considering mindfulness of education,
however, the more libertarian and critical it gets, the more resistance it will
face from the very systems that it seeks to change. Its implementations are
thus likely to exist only in educational settings that are willing to face radical
challenges to their foundations. Socrates paid with his life for such deeds.
Are we willing to go there two and a half millennia later?
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Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education 355
CONCLUSION
Mindfulness practice can be depicted based on three core facets, which
can be grounded within the therapeutic-economic narrative (as a tool) or
within the Buddhist narrative (as a path). Education meets the former as
an economic-functionalist process of socialisation characterising contemporary
times. In this more common case it enables mindfulness in education—a
limited modality that is critiqued for addressing problems that the system
itself creates, yet a glance from within may reveal that it is more transformative
than realised. Education meets mindfulness as a path when it is itself
construed as a path and enables for mindfulness as education—an approach
that reflects the inherent worthwhileness of the practice itself. For this to
be applicable in contemporary public education it needs a narrative that is
not Buddhist but rather Educational. Such possibility emerges given certain
interpretations of the core facets of the practice. Mindfulness of education
brings forth the most radical possibility in which mindfulness is embraced
as a practice that radicalises the act of critique. From this perspective, the
mind that has been made by education becomes the object of the critique
seeking individual and social liberation.
The three roles proposed for mindfulness advance from relative conformity
to radicality. They reflect different potentials that are there to be
explored. Mindfulness in education is the most common, however, the other
two hold the more transformative and radical potential inherent in the practice.
Yet the seeds of radicality are there present in the core facets of the
practice. In that sense, mindfulness in education may be more radical than
we realise. Is it sustaining the box of contemporary education or reconstructing
education from within? It may be worth remembering that the fact
that we are getting more used to the idea that students and/or teachers spend
time in schools and universities attending to their breaths and examining
their interiority, even within an intervention, is quite radical. Twenty years
ago, this would have been unheard of.
Correspondence: Dr. Oren Ergas, Faculty of Education, Beit Berl College,
Kfar Sava, 44905, Israel.
Email: orenergas1@gmail.com
NOTES
1. https://mindfulnessinschools.org/about/about-us/
2. http://myriadproject.org/schools/
3. https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-017-1917-4
4. https://www.peaceinschools.org/videos/, https://mindfulnessinschools.org/
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