Teaching Mindfulness to Undergraduates: A Survey and Photovoice Study
Ramaswami Mahalingam, Verónica Caridad Rabelo
Journal of Transformative Education April 23, 2018 DOI: 10.1177/1541344618771222 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Mixed methods study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 24 |
| Population | College students (emerging adults) |
| Intervention | Mindfulness curriculum |
| Duration | 7 weeks, twice-weekly meditation |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Citations | 21 |
| Key points | Students who meditated twice a week for 7 weeks showed improvements in creativity, self-compassion, compassion toward others, mental health, and emotional regulation. Photovoice analysis indicated they understood self-compassion as self-acceptance, self-reflection, or self-care, and compassion toward others as active alleviation, familial affection/affinity, interdependence, and mortality. The authors argue mindfulness can help students cope with emerging adulthood stressors and that contemplative education benefits from mixed methods. |
Abstract
How do emerging adults experience mindfulness and compassion? The goals of this study were to (1) evaluate the effectiveness of a mindfulness curricular intervention and (2) examine how students interpreted their experience. We delivered a mindfulness curriculum to 24 college students who meditated twice a week for 7 weeks. Students completed a survey at the beginning and end of the course where they self-reported information about their mental health, compassion, and creativity. Results showed that, over the course of the semester, students demonstrated improvements in measures of creativity, self-compassion, compassion toward others, mental health, and emotional regulation. To gain a more nuanced understanding of students’ interpretations of and experiences with the course material, we used interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to analyze student photovoice projects (wherein they collected and analyzed images to represent mindfulness concepts). Findings illustrate how students typically understood self-compassion as self-acceptance, self-reflection, or self-care and understood compassion toward others as active alleviation, familial affection/affinity, interdependence, and mortality. Triangulating survey and IPA results demonstrate how contemplative practices such as mindfulness can help students cope with stressors associated with emerging adulthood. Integrating mindfulness practices in higher education is important for students’ transformative learning and holistic development. Further, our research suggests that contemplative education can benefit from using mixed methods (e.g., surveys and photovoice) to help students understand mindfulness and its connections with personal outcomes (e.g., learning, creativity, and well-being).
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on meditation, most cited first.
Citations in the library
Cited by 5
- Efectos psicológicos de una intervención de mindfulness realizada en la vuelta a la calma de la clase de Edu-cación Física: un estudio cuasi-experimental (Psychological effects of a mindfulness intervention performed during the cool down in the Physical Educa-tion class: a quasi-experimental study) Retos June 20, 2023
- Using PhotoVoice to understand mindfulness in health care practitioners. Health SA Gesondheid September 28, 2022
- Mindfulness y educación física en la población universitaria. Una revisión sistemática (Mindfulness and physical education in University population. A systematic review) Retos June 10, 2021
- A Meta-Analysis Examining the Efficacy and Predictors of Change in Mindfulness- and Self-Compassion-Based Interventions (MBSCIs) in Reducing Psychological Distress Among University Students. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education March 27, 2026
- Towards a contemplative approach to ethnography and education: an ethnography of a contemplative classroom at a North American university Ethnography and Education February 10, 2022