Browsing by Author "Hämäläinen, Karla"

Goals The subject of the study is teachers' perceptions and experiences in teaching mindfulness at schools. The study focuses on showing both the teachers' experiences in teaching mindfulness as a part of everyday school life and the possible effects they have observed in their students behavior and learning because of using mindfulness and alike exercises. The purpose of the study is to find out whether mindfulness is a suitable method to be used in the school context. Earlier studies show that mindfulness affects on a person's cognitive processes by changing their brain structure. There has also been criticism towards these results' reliability. This thesis explores this particular framework and tries to increase knowledge of applicability of this method in school context by finding out teachers' experiences related to use of mindfulness exercises with students. Methods An electronic questionnaire including open questions related to study theme was created for data collection purpose which was conducted between February and April 2017. Thirteen teachers with previous experience in using mindfulness with students participated in this survey study. The gathered data was analyzed by qualitative content analysis method. Results and conclusions The results show that teachers find finding a right type of exercise, building a functional group, students' orientation, teachers' role and the supporting attitude of those people belonging to near environments important in teaching mindfulness at schools and issues dealing with time management as a negative aspect. The results also show that the teachers' experiences on mindfulness effects were mainly positive, including the relaxation and increased efficiency in studying of students as well as improvement of emotional skills and social skills.