ABSTRACT
Developmental brain science has recently come together with Buddhist-derived meditation, leading to a less than obvious new candidate for educational programs for children and adolescents: brain-based mindfulness techniques. In this chapter, we explore the scientific and cultural contexts that have made possible this emerging trend in education and propose reasons for the enormous excitement and investment surrounding it. Teaching children and adolescents mindfulness meditation in school is a reflection of recent dialogue between neuroscientists and mindfulness practitioners and promoters as well as of a desire for new pedagogical tools, cast in neurological terms, that address the moral and emotional formation of children. Although from a strictly scientific perspective, it is premature to state that mindfulness meditation accomplishes the educational goals toward which it is being implemented in schools across North America and the UK, it is nonetheless being used as a practise that aims to shape “better” (i.e. more resilient, emotionally intelligent, and wellregulated) modern humans as they develop. While current research projects such as The Oxford Mindfulness and Resilience in Adolescence study seek to answer the effectiveness question, we are more concerned with addressing the issue of how it is that mindfulness has come to be promoted in education at this particular moment in time. The trend of adopting mindfulness in the classroom may be understood
through the lens of what some researchers have identified as a “therapeutic turn” in education (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2009). It is indicative of a wider therapeutic behaviour change agenda closely associated with the notion of psychological governance developed in this book (see Ecclestone, this volume). This describes a host of new pedagogical interventions that prioritize the emotional well-being of children. The backdrop evoked by such interventions is one of crisis, with the educational system not adequately responding to pedagogical needs of children who are viewed as inadequately equipped to handle the demands of modern life. Mindfulness, as a psychological and emotional intervention, is promoted to render the educational system more effective in achieving both traditional and more contemporary goals; according to its
proponents, “mindful” teachers and students may be better able to succeed not only in reading and arithmetic but also in building resilience, through the acquisition of tools for weathering the stresses of modern life, and in developing effective emotional self-regulation, particularly as it is viewed in the context of a proper relationship to others and oneself. That last goal, of course, is traditionally the domain of morality and ethics, and it is for this reason that mindfulness is also being promoted under the rubric of moral and ethical education (Roeser et al., 2014). How is it, then, that a secular and science-based version of mindfulness has
entered the realm of contemporary education? The convergence of Buddhism and neuroscience through the flourishing field of consciousness studies during recent decades provides a premise to this trend, making the link between the brain and meditation almost self-evident. Several research groups in laboratories around the world have focused their investigations on the “meditating brain” using neuroimaging techniques, with questions about empathy, attention networks, the brain’s “default mode,” the self, and mind-wandering driving their questions. Furthermore, the increasing trend to take embodied and extended mind approaches in neuroscience converges with, and is even inspired by, theory from Buddhism (these connections are developed explicitly within education by Claxton, 1998). Simultaneously, education researchers have come together with neuroscientists seeking scientific guidance for effective pedagogical strategies based on the latest brain research. Of course, there is considerable “neuro-hype,”motivating – and at times distorting – neuroeducation and educational brain-based strategies and policies. Even in the case of mindfulness, where there is a body of research that suggests significant and positive effects on the brain, the science is not yet in a position to adequately inform interventions. Nonetheless, we illustrate how the “plastic” brain provides the conceptual basis by which educators and even children and adolescents themselves can imagine the effects of mindfulness as an intervention. Neuroeducation, especially in putting forward mindfulness as a scientifically valid neurological intervention, is in this respect a crucial support for the ambitions of the “therapeutic turn” and for modern moral and ethical education. Although others have pointed toward a larger and more general shift
toward “therapeutic societies” as a way of explaining how mindfulness and other practices and attitudes have come to be adopted in education (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2009; Furedi, 2003; Nolan, 1998), we identify a discourse about children and adolescents, informed by findings related to neuroplasticity, that creates an imperative for practices that can intervene and promise positive outcomes for this demographic. As such, the example of mindfulness interventions as a tool of neuroeducation can be analysed under the broader rubric of psychological governance as a strategy for molding the adolescent brain, behaviour, character and resilience. It has been suggested that teaching “critical thinking skills” has reached a dead end, that as a strategy, it was largely ineffective in achieving the desired goals (namely actions based on greater reflection), and that a move to virtue ethics within philosophy and the teaching of
morality and ethical practices in schools, as it relates to “character” development, could provide a more effective way forward (Haidt, 2006). Mindfulness, in this regard, provides an excellent test case. Mindfulness is promoted as an evidence-based practice to shape brains and, by extension, the “character” of children, conceived in terms of emotional regulation. Our research indicates that teachers and students think about mindfulness according to its presumed impacts on the brain and the consequences of these impacts in terms of resilience and the “executive” control and modulation of emotions and actions. However, it is only after decades of heavy investments in neuroscientific research, along with the popularization of the “plastic” brain and mindfulness as a brain-transforming practice, that it is possible to have mindfulness promoted as a scientific pedagogical intervention for the ethical development and emotional well-being of schoolchildren. Notions of “working on the self” by means of “sculpting” or “shaping the brain” with measurable outcomes are made possible through the conceptual anchor of plasticity (Pitts-Taylor, 2010); training young people in scientifically informed mindfulness programs provides the possibility of shaping young brains with the particular goals of cultivating self-regulation, emotional intelligence and resilience. In this chapter, we present insights from an ongoing study of the social and
cultural contexts of neuroeducation involving teachers and mentors working with young people using mindfulness education. By examining trends in neuroscience, education and policy, we propose reasons that explain the recent excitement around mindfulness-based education for children and adolescents. In particular, we suggest that the neuroplastic understanding of the brain provides state-of-the-art evidence for practices capable of molding young brains, fulfilling long-standing concerns about the social, moral and cognitive development of children and adolescents. We suggest that what is actually molded, through mindfulness, is the brain as an ethical substance. We discuss how the widespread appeal of mindfulness as a brain-based technique is symptomatic of “eastward journeys” – the melding of Eastern philosophy and medicine – to remedy existential deficiencies in the West. Furthermore, the convergence of spirituality, malleable brains and ethical development of young people provides powerful mechanistic notions of hope and possibility for the futures of children and adolescence as well as for education.
