Association for Mindfulness in Education

Laying the Foundation for Teaching and Learning

What is AME?

Mindfulness in Education:
the Foundation for Teaching and Learning

The Association for Mindfulness in Education is a collaborative association of organizations and individuals working together to provide support for mindfulness training as a component of K-12 education.

Research over the past few decades has found that mindfulness training develops:

  • Increased attention
  • Increased executive function (working memory, planning, organization, and impulse control)
  • Decreased ADHD behaviors—specifically hyperactivity and impulsivity
  • Fewer conduct and anger management problems
  • Increased emotional regulation
  • Increased self-calming
  • Increased social skills and social compliance
  • Increased care for others
  • Decreased negative affect, or emotions
  • Decreased anxiety in general and text anxiety in particular
  • Decreased depression
  • Increased sense of calmness, relaxation, and self-acceptance
  • Increased self-esteem
  • Increased quality of sleep

As such, mindfulness is a foundation for education; mindfulness provides the optimal conditions for learning and teaching and also supports all pedagogical approaches.

Research Roundup

Integrating Mindfulness Training into K-12 Education: Fostering the Resilience of Teachers and Students

By John Meiklejohn, Catherine Phillips, M. Lee Freedman, Mary Lee Griffin, Gina Biegel, Andy Roach, Jenny Frank, Christine Burke, Laura Pinger, Geoff Soloway, Roberta Isberg, Erica Sibinga, Laurie Grossman, Amy Saltzman

Integrating Mindfulness K-12 downloadable articleOver the past decade, training in mindfulness—the intentional cultivation of moment-by-moment non-judgmental focused attention and awareness—has spread from its initial western applications in medicine to other fields, including education. This paper reviews research and curricula pertaining to the integration of mindfulness training into K-12 education, both indirectly by training teachers and through direct teaching of students.

Research on the neurobiology of mindfulness in adults suggests that sustained mindfulness practice can enhance attentional and emotional self-regulation and promote flexibility, pointing toward significant potential benefits for both teachers and students. Early research results on three illustrative mindfulness-based teacher training initiatives suggest that personal training in mindfulness skills can increase teachers’ sense of well-being and teaching self-efficacy, as well as their ability to manage classroom behavior and establish and maintain supportive relationships with students.

Since 2005, 14 studies of programs that directly train students in mindfulness have collectively demonstrated a range of cognitive, social, and psychological benefits to both elementary (six studies) and high school (eight studies) students. These include improvements in working memory, attention, academic skills, social skills, emotional regulation, and self-esteem, as well as self-reported improvements in mood and decreases in anxiety, stress, and fatigue. The educational goals, target population, and core features of ten established mindfulness-based curricula are described. Finally, the need for more rigorous scientific evidence of the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions in K-12 education is discussed, along with suggestions of specific process, outcome, and research-design questions remaining to be answered.

Click to read and download the full article.

To stay up to date with the latest mindfulness research, visit AMRA.