Mindfulness in education has been in the news the last few years. It was recently was on the cover of Time Magazine (Pickert, 2014). How does its proven usefulness for health and wellbeing apply to instructional design, class activities, and innovating with design thinking? Let’s map out some ideas together.
Mindfulness, defined in wikipedia as “a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique,” has, over the last decade, been increasingly in the news. Mindfulness is entering more spaces, like classrooms (Davis, 2015), instructional design teams (Carbonell, 2012), and in design thinking (Krause, 2016). From contemplation in the classroom (Hart, 2004) to listening in difficult conversations (Brown, 2008), to improvisation (Royalty, 2014), what are ways in which we can enhance our workflows, relationships, and abilities to tune into deep wisdom of the moment? Let’s sift through the literature, resources and ideas related to mindfulness in education and design, and collaboratively come up with some practices and techniques as we explore how this can foster innovation in design.
Session Objectives
Participants will:
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come away with informed examples, experiences and practical tips to enrich and enhance our learning, design and instructional working environments
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experience mindfulness practices, contemplate monkey mind, and differentiate mindful thought and action and its relation to subconscious thought and action on auto-pilot
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generate ideas for practical application of the principles of mindfulness to the fields of learning experience design, teaching and learning, and design thinking
We will explore what mindfulness is and what the research says about its proven benefits for the brain, education, improvisation, and innovation. We will then collectively explore some practical ways in which individuals and teams can bring mindfulness into their instruction, design, and lives.
Resources
Asuero, A. M., Queraltó, J. M., Pujol‐Ribera, E., Berenguera, A., Rodriguez‐Blanco, T., & Epstein, R. M. (2014). Effectiveness of a mindfulness education program in primary health care professionals: a pragmatic controlled trial. Journal of continuing education in the health professions, 34(1), 4-12.
Parker, A. E., Kupersmidt, J. B., Mathis, E. T., Scull, T. M., & Sims, C. (2014). The impact of mindfulness education on elementary school students: Evaluation of the Master Mind program. Advances in school mental health promotion, 7(3), 184-204.
Schonert-Reichl, K. A., & Lawlor, M. S. (2010). The effects of a mindfulness-based education program on pre-and early adolescents’ well-being and social and emotional competence. Mindfulness, 1(3), 137-151.
Brown, P. L. (2007). In the classroom, a new focus on quieting the mind. New York Times, 16.
Li, Q., Clark, B., & Winchester, I. (2010). Instructional design and technology grounded in enactivism: A paradigm shift?. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(3), 403-419.
Jarvelä, S., Lehtinen, E., & Salonen, P. (2000). Socio-emotional Orientation as a Mediating Variable in the Teaching‐Learning Interaction: Implications for instructional design. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 44(3), 293-306.
Swan, K., Shea, P., Fredericksen, E. E., Pickett, A. M., & Pelz, W. E. (2000). Course Design Factors Influencing the Success of Online Learning.
(Davis, 2015)
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/mindfulness-education-schools-meditation/402469/
http://time.com/1556/the-mindful-revolution/
(Carbonell, 2012)
http://docplayer.net/11775063-International-mindfulness-instructional-design.html
(Krause, 2016) Design Thinking + Mindfulness
https://storify.com/MindWise_CK/mindful-by-design
Mindfulness and Pedagogy (Vanderbilt University)
(Brown, 2008)
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/contemplative-pedagogy/
(Royalty, 2014) Improv for Design Thinking
https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3091c/Improv_activities_for_Design_Thinking.html