For more than a decade, a variety of techniques have been introduced in Danish educational settings to bring mindful awareness into teachers’ and students’ lives in order to increase the mental, emotional and social health of the participants.

In this workshop we present five studies that address the question “how mindful awareness practices in educational settings influence participation and wellbeing?”, and we explore what kinds of knowledge different qualitative and quantitative research methods have produced in empirical studies of mindful awareness practices in education in Denmark.

In accordance with an international understanding mindful awareness is often defined as paying conscious attention to present moment experiences with openness, accept, and curiosity. Mindful awareness in education as a research field is fairly new in Denmark. We share a common interest in this research field, but we also want to challenge the widespread focus on attention and mindful awareness as phenomena solely related to the individual student’s knowledge, skills and behaviour. In education, where individuals participate in collective settings, mindful awareness phenomena emerge and develop as dialectical relations and encounters involving context, interaction and individuals.

Based on a socio-cultural and phenomenological approach our aim with this workshop is therefore to present and discuss how mindful awareness practices can be studied as they are dialectically formed and developed, and how these practices influence and facilitate participation and well-being for teachers and students in various educational contexts.

When studying these complex issues we draw on different theoretical concepts and approaches, as well as related methodologies. The social and situated dimensions of learning and participation are inspired by situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and cultural psychology (Vygotsky, 1978). Theoretical elaborations on the teacher’s openness and responsiveness to the student’s perspective and participation in an ongoing relational and didactic practice are inspired by phenomenological approaches (Merleau-Ponty, 2014/1962, Fink-Jensen, 2003; Waldenfels, 2011).

We will address the methodological reflections by presenting examples from five studies on how different educational settings integrate mindful awareness practices into ongoing didactic strategies. Overall the five studies are concerned with how mindful awareness practices in a context sensitive and relational approach can be integrated in ongoing didactical considerations and interactions in different educational settings and how mindful awareness practices facilitate participation in these educational settings.

The studies address the following research questions: (1) How do practitioners in toddler-care settings use touch and massage to create zones of intimacy with children and how does this practice influence toddlers’ wellbeing and participation? (2) How do school-children experience contemplative activities during school lessons to reduce stress and support their participation and confidence in school tasks? (3) How do stressed adolescents in the meditation-based Open and Calm Youth program experience changes in everyday life participation and does it affect their self-perception? (4) What educational strategies and empirical findings characterize the large-scale implementation of the Open and Calm Mental Health Promotion program for stressed adults? (5) How did contemplative teacher education contribute to pre-service teachers’ relationship building competences in school-practice with students?

Fink-Jensen, K. (2003). Den forskende lærer i et fænomenologisk perspektiv. In H. Rønholt, S.-E. Holgersen, K. Fink-Jensen & A.M. Nielsen (Eds.), Video i pædagogisk forskning (pp. 241-282). København: Hovedland. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning – Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/2014). Phenomenology of perception. New York: Routledge. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society – The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. London: Harvard University Press. Waldenfels, B. (2011). Phenomenology of the Alien. Evanston, Illinois: North-Western University Press.