Minds@Play: Understanding whether mindfulness in the classroom can improve student outcomes

Teacher-led mindfulness activities within the classrooms of students in the first and second year of primary school Teacher training: For schools assigned to the intervention group, Foundation (2019) and Grade 1 (2020) teachers will attend a 1-day professional development (PD) day. The PD day will provide teachers with the theoretical and practical foundation about the program, and training for running the program in their class. The training will be provided by Dr Deery, who developed the program and is a registered clinical psychologist and teacher. Using principals of effective teacher professional development, the training will focus on increasing content theoretical and practical knowledge, active learning and examples of effective practice and provides coaching and expert support. Teachers will be provided with a manualised version of the intervention, which includes a program schedule for the 12-week intervention, lesson plans and communication templates, examples of activities, parent homework sheets, video and music clips, and a copy of the training slides. As part of the training, they will review the material, experience some of the activities and can ask questions. A pre and post survey will be administered to understand teacher knowledge and confidence changed through the PD. During the next 12-weeks, the teachers will implement the intervention, using the manual to help them to learn, practice, implement, and reflect on the new strategies that help change practice implement. Adherence to the initial 12 weeks will be monitored via fortnightly ‘check in’ emails to measure what teachers have been implementing, as well as any barriers experienced during the past fortnight. The three types of mindfulness activities within the classroom will be: 1. Conduct mindfulness activities during the day, targeting key school transitions (e.g., coming from outside to inside, after lunch/recess, before a test/specialist class, or on arrival or before school departure). This is to occur at least twice a day for three days a week. 2. Read relevant readily available storybooks (i.e. Inside Out, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and discuss with children connections to mindfulness and other skills/concepts. This is to occur at least three times per week. 3. Establish a ‘Mindful Space’ in the classroom and include mindful props (e.g., mind jar), games (e.g., Uno, rock balancing), activities (e.g., mindful drawing, maze drawing), and storybooks/audiobooks from the week. Teachers will also be asked to look for and embed spontaneous ‘mindful moments’ into their day, such as using ‘slow motion’ walking to the library or watching ‘rain drops racing’ on a rainy day. Along with the manualised program and initial PD training, three additional forms of support will be provided to the teachers. 1. Props, books and other resources (e.g. door posters) will be provided, which also include key elements of the program and prompts for mindful moments. 2. Teachers will hold 30-minute fortnightly meetings at their school to reflect on the intervention’s progress, implementation, and any support needs, providing peer support and shared commitment to the program. Notes from these meetings will be collected and used as part of the process evaluation. In Year 2, Foundation teachers will continue to participate in these meetings, providing their own reflections and expertise to the Grade 1 teachers. This will examine the intervention’s sustainability in a ‘train the trainer model’. 3. Teachers will be provided with access to a secure, online social networking site that will be monitored by the research team. They will be encouraged to post examples of mindful activities, artwork and discussions. Parents will be invited to the community to be able to understand how they may implement mindfulness activities within the home which complements what is implemented at school, enabling connections between school, home, and ongoing support/resources. They will be encouraged to access the at least once per week. After the end of the 12 weeks, we will conduct a 2-hour meeting with teachers at each school to reflect on the learnings from the initial 12-week manualised implementation and to develop an ongoing implementation plan.