An Exploration of Middle School Students’ Experiences of Mindfulness Training in an International School Environment

Conference: The Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences (ACP2022)
Title: An Exploration of Middle School Students’ Experiences of Mindfulness Training in an International School Environment
Stream: Mental Health
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation
Authors:
Mary Kelly, Irish College of Humanities and Applied Sciences, Ireland

Abstract:

The following presentation profiles an exploration of middle school students' experiences of mindfulness training within an international school environment in The Netherlands.

A cohort of 11-year-old middle school students participated voluntarily in a pilot run of the Dot B mindfulness program. Dot B has been designed by the Mindfulness in Schools Project for adolescents, and it consists of eight one-hour sessions. In the case of this study, these sessions were held once weekly, after school, over an eight-week period. Eighteen participants were involved, and they came from a range of countries including Korea, France, India, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. 10 were girls, and 8 were boys, and all were in Year 1 of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years' Program. This was a qualitative study, characterized by the interviewing of the students following their participation in the program. The interviews were semi-structured and they explored students’ personal perspectives on the impact of the mindfulness program on their daily lives.

The themes that emerged through the responses indicated that participation in the training positively impacted students’ capacity to calm themselves, to manage anger, to respond to stress, to focus, to step back from thinking, to sleep better, and to perform under pressure. Students identified the strategies that they found most useful in this regard, which included the 7/11 breathing technique, grounding exercises such as the FOFBOC, and beditation exercises which foster sleep.
The positive nature of students' perspectives following the pilot run prompted the rolling out of the Dot B program across the grade level.

Virtual Presentation

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