Responsibility for nurturing a child’s wellbeing: teachers teaching mindfulness with children

ABSTRACT

A thriving and evolving pool of research and commentary is emerging in relation to the integration of mindfulness techniques in school and out-of-school settings. In the current study the author explored how experienced mindbody wellness instructors make sense of teaching children mindfulness. The methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to interview eight teachers teaching mindfulness with children from the United States and Australia. Four thematic categories emerged from the analysis and in this article the author discusses findings related to the theme of, Responsibility for Nurturing a Child’s Wellbeing. It was discovered that having a holistic-wellness-orientated vision was an important aspect of how teachers made sense of mindfulness instruction. The findings showed that teaching children mindfulness has the capacity to raise academic performance while synergistically enhancing a child’s spiritual, environmental, emotional, social, creative and physical wellbeing. It is recommended that mindfulness teacher training programs be established in universities to better prepare students to meet the demands of 21^st Century education.

KEYWORDS:

• Mindfulness
• mindfulness education
• wellness
• meditation

Acknowledgments

Appreciation to Dr Patricia Maria Albrecht, my mother, for proof reading the article.

Ethics statement

Ethics permission was obtained from the Flinders University Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee to interview participants in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicole Jacqueline Albrecht

Nicole lectures and conducts research related to mindfulness and wellbeing within the Wellness Department of the School of Bio-medical and Health Sciences at RMIT.