Mindfulness Intervention

LITERATURE REVIEW

In schools, mindfulness interventions most commonly include meditation practices focusing on breathing and awareness of emotions. According to Follette et al. (2006), “Mindfulness practices provide a method in which people can practice experiencing thoughts and feelings that have been avoided in the past” (p. 58). These studies and interventions have mainly focused on improving students’ behavior (Felver et al., 2013; Greco et al., 2008; Lee et al. 2008; Semple et al. 2010). Students who are suffering from long-term effects of trauma are often found to act out in school, avoid work, fixate on thoughts, and show a lack of flexibility (Follette et al. 2006). These students are more likely than their peers to experience maladaptive

behaviors associated with anxiety and depression (Miller, 2016).
More students are now understood to experience a high number of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before they complete elementary school, as measured on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale (ACES). ACEs describe traumatic experiences that occur in the lives of children and adolescents under the age of 18. (See Appendix A for a list of the original ACEs, the effects of trauma and related health behaviors, and the long-term consequences of unaddressed trauma. In this study, the experiences have been grouped into three categories: childhood abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual), neglect (physical and emotional), and household challenges (homes with violence, divorce, death, substance abuse or incarceration). The original ACE Study was conducted through Kaiser Permanente. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2017) continually assesses the study participants. These experiences impact their ability to interact and learn. “Children with high ACEs scores are constantly on edge from unstable home environments that can place their brains and bodies in a state of high alert” (Redford & Pritzerk, 2016, p. 3).
Research has found an increase in academic improvements and a decrease in negative behaviors among students with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism after mindfulness interventions in school (Docksai, 2013; Thomas, 2013). When students are in a state of calm, they are better able to focus on learning and respond positively to emotional triggers that may arise throughout the course of the school day. They also cause less disruptions to the students around them.
Mindfulness practices help students to identify their emotions, the thoughts around those emotions, and additional options for responding other than acting out physically or verbally. As students’ emotions stabilize, they are better able to identify and compassionately respond to the emotions of their classmates. Schools using mindfulness interventions report a reduction in student discipline and suspensions related to aggressive or defiant behaviors. Leland (2015) summarized “Mindfulness may be an effective tool to mold students into better learners and educational institutions into better learning communities” (p. 23). Mindfulness intervention practices focus on mindful acceptance and behavioral change as an effective means to positively change physical and mental suffering (Perry-Parrish et al., 2016). (See Appendix B for an illustration of different mindfulness skills and the benefits for students and teachers.)
Disruptive student behavior contributes more to the emotional distress, increased burnout and low job satisfaction of educators than class size, curriculum changes, or mandates (Black & Fernando, 2013; Darling-Hammond, 2001; the Montgomery & Rupp, 2005). Meeting the changing needs of students has an emotional impact on teachers who may not understand how trauma-informed teaching practices support their students or how to support their own emotional needs to support their students. This is an area that has not been studied in-depth. Mindfulness training may help reduce teachers’ work-related stress and influence their positive interactions with students (Gold et al. 2010). Richard Brady wrote, “My two teachers’ friends report that meditation, when they take the time to do it, gives them relief from stress they experience at work and at home” (Brady, R., 2004, p. 87).
The field of education would benefit from more research being done on the effectiveness in improving the school climate and teachers’ job satisfaction. My project will look at the impact on staff and students in an attempt to answer if improving student behavior through mindfulness practices improves school climate.
METHODOLOGY
For this project, I am using Jon Kabat-Zinn’s (2003) definition of mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” (p. 145). This definition is the most succinct and encompassing. It will be relevant to the mindfulness practices implemented in this project.
Study Context and Mindfulness Program
This will be a program implementation evaluation to study the effects of a mindfulness-based restorative practice program in an elementary school.

Social Constructivism is the underlying philosophy of this project. According to Creswell (2013), “In social constructivism, individuals seek understanding of the world in which they live and work” (p. 24). This project will take place in my school, and I will be a participant in the training of staff and ongoing professional development and support for the staff, in addition to seeking and recording their feedback and reflections from the implementation.

Mindfulness practices will begin at the classroom level to support the trauma students and teachers may be experiencing and give them calming and refocusing tools. The program will be implemented over 8 weeks with 2 to 3 sessions per week of mindfulness training with students. Two groups of teachers and classrooms will be compared given the pilot roll-out: one group will not participate in the mindfulness training, and the participating group where the teacher will participate and/or facilitate the mindfulness

training.
Participants
I will employ multiple-case sampling for participant selection. Multiple-case sampling will add confidence, validity, and generalizability (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014, pp. 33-34). This project will be conducted in the Title 1 elementary school where I currently work. All classroom teachers will be invited to participate in the mindfulness program. From those who participate, I will ask for volunteers to participate in this project. I am initially anticipating focusing on classrooms in grades one, three, and five. However, this will be flexible depending on who volunteers and agrees to participate. If teachers do not volunteer, or not enough volunteer, I will individually approach grade level teams to give them more information and answer their questions to get more volunteers.
In the participating classrooms, the teacher and all students will participate in the mindfulness program. Each participating teacher will identify three students to participate in the questionnaires and interviews. These students, and their parents, will need to consent to participate. These students will be identified by teachers as having one or more of the following characteristics: behavior challenges, high Adverse Childhood Experience scores (ACEs), or high academic achievement with high anxiety. One of the students selected by each participating teacher will be identified as an average student in both behavior and academics for comparison.
Data Collection
This is a qualitative analysis taken from a larger multi-method study. I will conduct semi-structured interviews with administrators and teachers to collect their reporting of the current climate in the school, and their job satisfaction. I have chosen this structure in anticipation that follow up questions will be beneficial to me as a researcher and also to further investigate new ideas or views that come to light during the course of the interview. Merriam and Tisdell’s (2016) statement “this format allows the researcher to respond to the situation at hand, to the emerging worldview of the respondent, and to new ideas on the topic” (p. 111) supports the selection of this interview format.
I will distribute and collect questionnaires from administrators and teachers with questions using a Likert Scale and open ended questions in regards to their personal job satisfaction and the school climate prior to beginning the study. For teachers, I will also include questions regarding classroom behaviors of each of their three selected students around time on task, paying attention, degree of active participation in class learning, self-control and regulation, and respect for others. I will survey the student participants to collect data on their self- reporting of their classroom behaviors, and their perceived ability to understand and regulate their emotions. The use of questionnaires and interviews will be repeated at the end of the mindfulness program.
Throughout the eight weeks of program implementation, I will observe each participating class a minimum of 3 times.

During these observations, I will collect fieldnotes. At the end of the eight weeks, I will hold focus groups for the participating teachers. I will have questions prepared to help facilitate the conversation as needed. My plan for these focus groups is for the conversation to be more teacher directed to highlight and analyze what they find important and choose to discuss, related to the implementation in their classrooms, what they are noticing in their students, and what they are noticing in themselves and the impact on their jobs. Monique M. Hennick (as cited by Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) explains: “Perhaps the most unique characteristic of focus group research is the interactive discussion through which data are generated, which leads to a different type of data not accessible through individual interviews. During the group discussion participants share their views in light of what they have heard” (p. 114)

I will also collect any existing institutional data that can be compared to the previous year. In the Salt Lake City School District, this may include data from Educator’s Handbook, which is a discipline tracking program used. This data will not be sufficient on its own, due to varying degrees and methods of collection between each school year and the level of reporting fidelity at the teacher and school level. However, I believe this data has the potential

to include valuable information that can verify impressions from qualitative data through triangulation and data analysis (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014).