The Garrison Institute's Initiative on Contemplation & Education works with educators to help improve school environments, boost academic achievement, and support social and emotional development, especially for students exposed to risk factors such as poverty, violence, and divorce.
The Initiative on Contemplation and Education is currently focused on two projects, Contemplation and Education Field Leadership and Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE):
- Contemplation and Education Field Leadership promotes development, testing and use of contemplative-based methods for teachers and students via research partnerships with scientists, educators and other experts.
- The CARE Teacher Training Development Project develops and tests a professional development program for teachers, combining training in contemplation and emotion awareness with instruction on how to apply these skills in the classroom.
Meeting the Need
American schools are facing a crisis. Educators, policymakers and parents are searching for evidence-based approaches to improve educational outcomes. While rigorous standardized testing has been institutionalized, comparatively little attention has been paid to the core emotional and social competencies which research shows underlie successful learning environments and help students and teachers excel. Evidence suggests that awareness and concentration training may enhance the broad range of goals identified for K-12 education including both academic achievement and social and emotional learning by promoting attentional skills and emotion regulation capabilities.
Cognition, emotion regulation, behavioral control, and academic performance are interrelated, and research confirms that gaining competency in focusing attention and maintaining emotional balance increases children's resilience for meeting the life's challenges. It makes sense to apply these techniques in educational settings. School environments have the potential to teach students effective strategies to refine attention, regulate emotional responses, control their behavior, improve their academic performance, deal with stress and anger, develop greater empathy and communication skills, and in time, cultivate a compassionate approach to life.
Techniques for developing concentration and awareness in this context may include attention training and refinement practices, breath awareness, mindfulness and other forms of simple concentration techniques, kindness practice and activities involving movement such as yoga and martial arts.
Over the past three years, we have played a central role in developing the field, mapping existing programs and bringing together leaders in education, contemplation, psychology, and neuroscience to explore ways of promoting awareness and concentration in the schools.
