The Effects of Mindfulness Training on Wisdom in Elementary School Teachers

Aims: School teachers have hundreds of spontaneous interactions with students each hour, requiring
frequent decision-making. Often these interactions require social understanding, perspective taking
and emotional self-regulation, constructs often identified with wise reasoning and mindfulness.
Increasing mindfulness could aid wiser reasoning in addressing the challenges of classroom
demands. The present study evaluated effects of an online mindfulness course on measured wisdom
in a sample of public elementary school teachers.
Study Design: This study used a pretest/posttest design using data collected immediately before
taking the online mindfulness course and after completion of the course. End of the school year
follow-up data was analyzed for all teachers.
Place and Duration of Study: Participants were enrolled from multiple cities across the United
States including Boston, Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, and San Diego between June 2014
and June 2015. Data were collected online and analyzed at the University of Chicago.
Methodology: Public elementary school teachers (n = 12) were assigned to a mindfulness training or
a matched wait-list condition (11 female, 1 male; age range 26 – 57 years). Teachers had a range of
teaching experiences from 1 to 36 years (median =18 years) and taught grades K-4 at schools with
30% - 50% Caucasian students with 40%-60% students receiving free and reduced-price lunches. We
used standardized measures for mindfulness, wisdom, emotion regulation, compassion, theory of
mind, state/trait anxiety, stress, burnout, and efficacy.
Results: Online mindfulness training produced a significant increase in mindful awareness and
changes in cognitive wisdom implying increased understanding of inter/intrapersonal concerns. There
was a significant increase in mindful attention in those who completed both pre- and post-class online
evaluations (n = 10) solicited by Mindful Schools (t (9) = 2.738, p = .02) from 54.3 to 59.9 following
training (ΔM= 5.6, SD = 6.5). Wisdom, measured with Ardelt’s Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (n
=12), demonstrated a significant increase in the cognitive dimension of wisdom (t(11) = 2.39, p =.03)
with a non-significant increase in the affective dimension (t(11) =1.38, p =.19) and a non-significant
reduction in the reflective dimension of wisdom (t(11) =.96, p = .35) following mindfulness training.
Conclusion: Online mindfulness training may help develop wise decision making as a skill for
teachers to aid classroom management and social problem solving.