Thanks for that Zen, I will read that properly when I get chance but on the face of it I get the sense that teacher training days are for various and varying reasons. I asked my question because I was speaking with a parent yesterday whose child had been at home on Monday and she didn’t know what the extra day was for, so this thread just popped up at the right time.
A concern I sometimes had about whole school Inset training was to do with with the evidence for the efficacy of whatever innovation we were being introduced to. Often, that evidence was lacking.
For example, many years ago I asked a facilitator if they could direct me to studies demonstrating that getting pupils to set targets for their own academic achievement genuinely raised attainment. They were unable to do so.
Eventually, I came across a small one that did suggest that this approach had something going for it. Which is just as well, as by then I had made this for the Year 10 form I was a tutor to (Rooney was still playing at the time), in order to model the method:
Just before I retired, I also started receiving a few e-mails offering Inset training for teachers in Mindfulness, maybe because I taught Buddhist philosophy. Am not sure whether any school has trained their entire staff in this technique, but it turns out that the jury is still out on it.
For example, the training teachers receive in mindfulness can often be superficial and insufficient, and may not equip them with the skills needed to deal with adverse student experiences in meditation. Mindful school programs also do not usually adequately screen children for prior psychiatric disorders, nor are they cognizant of criteria for exclusion, which for adults would include depression, social anxiety, psychosis, PTSD, and suicidal tendencies. On top of that, students are told to focus exclusively on themselves whilst immersed in a stressful regime of high-stakes testing and the micromanagement of student performance which perhaps suggests that there might actually be something wrong with the system itself.
On the other hand, a review of ongoing research authored by Professor Katherine Weare that appeared in 2018 notes that there is ‘little evidence of harmful (so-called ‘adverse’) effects from these short, focused interventions’, whilst acknowledging the need to look into this issue in greater depth, as well as the quality of the training that a mindfulness instructor receives and the need to reduce possible bias in reportage resulting from a lack of separation between ‘those who develop the programmes and those who evaluate them.’ Weare is also aware of the tendency to ‘oversell’ mindfulness, and emphasises the requirement to report results with ‘modesty and caution.’
These concerns notwithstanding, the studies that are included demonstrate that MBIs have tended to have a modest, small to medium impact on pupil well-being, specifically with respect to overall mental health, cognition (as evidenced by an enhanced ability to focus and sustain attention), and problem behaviour. Intriguingly, improvements in physical health have also been noted across a spectrum that includes blood pressure, heart rate, sleep patterns and quality of sleep, and eating-related issues.
Weare’s summative conclusion is that – while research on MBIs is still in its infancy – ‘mindfulness in schools appears to be well worth pursuing [as] it has already demonstrated a great deal of promise’.
Unfortunately, a much more recent article suggests quite the opposite, with the Guardian reporting in 2022 that ‘
School-based mindfulness training does not appear to boost wellbeing or improve the mental health of teenagers, according to research that found many pupils were bored by the course and did not practise it at home…While it has been found to help with the symptoms of depression and anxiety in some studies, researchers from the My Resilience in Adolescence (Myriad) trial found the broad school-based mindfulness offered was no more effective than what schools were already doing to support student mental health with social-emotional learning.’
Have gone on at length about mindfulness because there is a vogue for it right now, and it hopefully illustrates my point that if a day is going to be set aside for staff training, it is important that whatever that day is about is founded on gold standard, peer-reviewed, empirical research.
Just sneaked the above in for the benefit of lovebitesandeveryfing, who will no doubt recognise the literary allusion in this instance.
