{"id":4977,"date":"2019-09-27T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4977"},"modified":"2019-09-16T16:45:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T21:45:15","slug":"even-more-good-news-about-mindfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/even-more-good-news-about-mindfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Even More Good News about Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I described a small but persuasive study about the benefits of mindfulness.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This study combined techniques from both psychology and neuroscience to show that mindfulness really can help students manage stress<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And, it even had an active control group. Just what a research wonk would desire.<\/p>\n

As I noted at the time, however, this study focused on\u00a0stress<\/em> and not on\u00a0grades.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, stress<\/a> is important. (Let me say that again. Stress is important<\/a>.) But, as teachers, we probably care about grades too.<\/p>\n

We’d love to see another study: one that includes information on topics other than stress. Like, say, learning.<\/p>\n

We’d also be delighted it were larger. 40 people is nice…but several hundred would be even more persuasive.<\/p>\n

Today’s News<\/h2>\n

Sure enough, a just-published study<\/a> focused on mindfulness and several academic measures:<\/p>\n

Grades<\/p>\n

Attendance<\/p>\n

Standardized math and literacy tests<\/p>\n

Number of suspensions<\/p>\n

Yup: mindfulness correlated with more of the good stuff (higher grades and test scores) and less of the bad stuff (suspensions).<\/p>\n

And, this study included 2000 students in grades 5-8.<\/p>\n

This study is, in fact, the first to show strong connections between mindfulness and these academic measures.<\/p>\n

A Reminder<\/h2>\n

We might be tempted to jump to a strong conclusion. If<\/p>\n

Study #1: mindfulness interventions reduce stress, and<\/p>\n

Study #2: higher mindfulness correlates<\/em> with better academic outcomes,<\/p>\n

We’re tempted to conclude that<\/p>\n

Mindfulness interventions lead to<\/em> better academic outcomes.<\/p>\n

But, as we remind ourselves daily<\/p>\n

Correlation is not causation.<\/p>\n

Until we run a large<\/em> study (with active controls<\/em> and random<\/em> assignment) which shows that students who practiced mindfulness ended up with more learning, we can’t be sure of that conclusion.<\/p>\n

However, that’s an increasingly plausible possibility, given these two studies.<\/p>\n

A Final Note<\/h2>\n

Both these studies were supervised by John Gabrieli, at MIT. He’ll be speaking at this fall’s Learning and the Brain conference. If you’d like to learn more about the connection between mindfulness and school, come join us<\/a> (and Dr. Gabrieli) in Boston.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A second recent study, this one correlating mindfulness with academic progress, gives us further hope that mindfulness can help our students and our school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,59],"class_list":["post-4977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-mindfulness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4977"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4983,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4977\/revisions\/4983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}