Welcome to the Mindfulness in Schools Project Evidence Base. This repository collects just some of the wealth of research, data and experiences around the implementation and effectiveness of mindfulness in schools.
Summary
Mindfulness programmes are becoming increasingly popular in schools and educational settings worldwide, with a growing quantitative evidence base emerging from research studies. Most evidence is from controlled studies of discrete mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs).
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses on MBIs have shown a moderate to small positive impact on children and young people’s:
- mental health
- social and emotional skills
- cognition and learning.
There is also emerging evidence for effects on general wellbeing, behaviour, and physical health. However, mindfulness in education is a young field, and there is still much to learn from research on effective delivery.
Mindfulness in schools is about introducing children to skills as early as possible to support their lifelong wellbeing. It also benefits educators, including stress regulation and reduction, increased self-compassion and teaching efficacy.
The following evidence is based on 13 published systematic reviews, including six meta-analyses:
The strongest evidence of at least a moderate to small impact
- Mental health – All 10 reviews that looked at mental health suggest that mindfulness shows moderate to small impacts on burnout, anxiety, depression*, and stress. There is smaller but emerging evidence for impacts on trauma, eating and sleep disorders.
- Cognition and learning – All 10 reviews that considered this found evidence of a moderate to small impact on the processes that underlie effective cognition and learning, including the overall capacity of executive function, and also self-regulation, attention and focus, metacognition, and cognitive flexibility. There is a small amount of emerging evidence of impacts on academic performance, results on standardised tests of achievement, and grade scores.
- Social and emotional skills – Social and emotional skills underlie mental health and are fundamental for all aspects of success in education and life. The 10 reviews considering this area all deduced moderate to small impacts on social and emotional learning, including improving self-regulation, emotional regulation, resilience, motivation, persistence, self-concept, empathy, compassion, caring, kindness, and relationship skills.
*Some more recent reviews and a recent large-scale randomised control trial (MYRIAD) have found less evidence for impacts on mental wellbeing, including depression.
Some positive findings, but fewer studies and/or lower levels of confidence
- Wellbeing – Of the six reviews that looked specifically at wellbeing, five concluded that mindfulness interventions reliably show small positive impacts, but one review did not. It would appear easier to improve negative psycho-social states than to enhance positive ones. Wellbeing is a composite concept and measured by constructed scales which include items areas such as positive mood, optimism, self-efficacy, resilience, empathy, sense of connectedness, sense of meaning, and happiness.
- Behaviour – Four reviews found a small amount of emerging evidence for demonstrable impacts on behaviour, including reducing aggression, hostility and symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
- Physical health – There is a small amount of emerging evidence captured in four reviews on physical health, including heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones such as cortisol, sleep quality, and days absent from school.
The field is growing rapidly and overall the evidence suggests that well-designed and conducted mindfulness interventions show moderate to small impacts on various student outcomes. However, recent reviews with more and larger studies have been more cautious in their conclusions, particularly regarding depression.
While there are fewer studies, based on five systematic reviews (including two meta-analyses), the evidence regarding teachers is still positive and holds promise. The wider evidence on the impacts of mindfulness on working adults supports the general positivity of findings on outcomes for teachers.
Taken together the reviews suggest a consistent impact in the following:
- Wellbeing, including a sense of meaning and purpose, resilience, optimism, connectedness, self-care, self-compassion, self-agency, happiness, and fulfilment.
- Mental health, including reducing and helping prevent depression, stress, anxiety and burnout.
- Social and emotional capacity, including improved emotion regulation, self-regulation, and meta-cognition (standing back from passing thoughts and impulses), including when under stress.
- Teaching effectiveness, including improved ability to focus on concepts and processes rather than just content, and to set priorities, stay on task, be more present and resist distraction.
- Classroom management and relationships, including relating more effectively to pupils with greater empathy and compassion.
- A greater understanding of ‘difficult’ pupils, including helping pupils manage their behaviour and create calmer and more focused classroom environments.
- Physical health – There are indications from a few studies of impacts on physical health including lower heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones, improved sleep quality, and fewer days absent from school.
Conclusion
The long-term cumulative evidence from a growing and promising body of international research is that good-quality mindfulness has many tangible benefits for pupils and teachers.
Mindfulness in Schools Project would like to express our gratitude to Katherine Weare, Emeritus Professor at the University of Southampton and Lead for Mindfulness in Education the Mindfulness Initiative, for her support and expertise in compiling the above summary.
