Improving Academic Outcomes and Experiences

Steve Haberlin, assistant professor at the College of Community Innovation and Education is one of the college鈥檚 researchers studying the impacts of meditation interventions and other mind-body practices in the classroom.

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Haberlin first started incorporating meditation into his own academic life when he says he was a stressed-out undergraduate student. Having been introduced to meditation techniques as a child through martial arts, he already had a foundational knowledge of it. He learned that just 15 minutes of mantra repetition and meditation daily gave him the mental clarity he needed to navigate his academic responsibilities.

鈥淎t my first professor job, I noticed when the undergrads first came into the classroom, they looked stressed out, unhappy and just tense,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 thought, 鈥業 can鈥檛 just start teaching them; we need to transition into the classroom.鈥� That鈥檚 when I started trying mindfulness meditation, like ringing a bowl and having them just focus on their breathing or heartbeat for a couple minutes. I noticed it was starting to help them with their stress and prepare for class. Soon, other faculty wanted me to teach them.鈥�

The results of incorporating meditation into academic life are promising. Haberlin has seen firsthand the positive effects mindfulness can have on students鈥� mental well-being from years of integrating the practices in his own classrooms, and he鈥檚 received positive feedback from former and current students. His latest publication in the Journal of American College Health found that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) show more conclusive evidence for reducing stress, decreasing anxiety and helping students control mind-wandering during lectures.

While research suggests a link between meditation and improved mental health, the correlation between mindfulness practices and academic performance is inconclusive. However, Haberlin says the indirect benefits 鈥� such as improved mental clarity and reduced anxiety 鈥� may naturally lead to better academic outcomes.

鈥淢indfulness helps students with stress management, and while it might not directly boost grades, it certainly impacts their ability to focus and stay calm during stressful situations like exams or presentations,鈥� Haberlin says.

Digital Mindfulness

The research has also been extended to graduate students. Haberlin, alongside Professor co-founded the Mindfulness Signature Research Group as a way for doctoral students interested in mindfulness research to collaborate and contribute to future research with like-minded peers.

Such research also examines ways that meditation and mindfulness are evolving. The use of technology, or 鈥渄igital mindfulness,鈥� is a new area of meditation that Haberlin believes to be promising. It includes looking at how virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) can be integrated into meditation practices to better help students.

鈥淭echnology has been blamed for mental health issues, but I believe it could also be the key to teaching students mindfulness and helping them maintain better mental health,鈥� he says. “Students鈥� attention span has shortened, and they鈥檙e already used to being on devices. If you can link meditation training to the devices 鈥� which a lot of people have done 鈥� then it can be a good entry point.鈥�

Whether through VR meditation environments or AI-driven meditation apps that guide students based on their individualized needs, the goal is to make meditation more accessible and engaging for today鈥檚 learners.

鈥淲e鈥檝e got a number of grant proposals for virtual reality meditation,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檝e done a pilot with psychology students with a device called The Muse 鈥� a headband that provides neurofeedback through audio. As brain waves are starting to deepen or slow, you鈥檒l get feedback as to whether you鈥檙e on the right track or not. There鈥檚 even AI now being introduced as a meditation teacher or mental health coach. I鈥檓 very interested in how we use those tools to help these digital learners deal with all the challenges that they face.鈥�

The APA publishes prominent journals, and it makes many important recommendations for policies related to psychological health and education. Its Board of Educational Affairs is primarily tasked with making recommendations regarding educational and training affairs 鈥� something Professor Michele Gill now will provide guidance on as a newly elected board member. The board provides oversight for educational policy on all academic levels, from early childhood to higher education.

Gill, a professor of educational psychology in the Department of Learning Sciences and Educational Research, will serve a three-year term on the board beginning this month. Gill was selected following a rigorous campaign process, during which she had to be nominated and interviewed by various committees within the APA to gain their recommendation.

鈥淚’m thrilled that I was chosen,鈥� says Gill, who also serves as academic program coordinator for the Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction. “I’ve done a lot of work locally on educational policy, but what I haven’t done is have a voice in the national debate about education. We will create policy papers so that when staffers in Congress are looking at educational policy, they can look at the APA recommendations for policy and what psychologists say best practices are for education.鈥�

Gill has formerly been involved in multiple roles with the APA, including serving as treasurer of Division 15 鈥� the Educational Psychology division 鈥� along with serving on the Council of Representatives and the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education.

This new role will give Gill a national voice in education policy, fulfilling a long-time mission of hers.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a cause that is just so close to my heart,鈥� Gill says. “The whole reason I became a professor was to improve education. When I was 20 years old, I wrote an undergraduate thesis dedicated to the transformation of the public education system in the United States. That dedication has been my motto. It’s why I got my doctorate.”

Gill will join the board as a representative focused especially on K-12 education.

鈥淥ne of the things I’m particularly interested in is the re-humanization of education,鈥� Gill says. 鈥淭he teacher attrition rate is terrible right now; teachers aren’t staying in the profession. Kids need teachers to stay in their profession because getting a new teacher every year can negatively impact student success. I鈥檓 excited to help support policy that makes schools better places for teachers and students 鈥� I think that鈥檚 part of my mission in this world.鈥�

Some other passion areas for Gill include mental health issues in schools, the teacher shortage and safety in schools.

鈥淭hese are all critical issues that APA deals with through policy papers, setting national research agendas on education and even creating policy briefs that get distributed to staffers for Congress members,鈥� Gill says. 鈥淭hose are the kinds of things to which I think can make a powerful contribution.鈥�

For Gill, the selection means so much more than just taking on a voluntary leadership role.

鈥淚 want to be changing education,鈥� Gill says. 鈥淭his is what I want to be doing with whatever time I have left on this planet. If I can help make schools better, or if I’ve even done a little bit to advance us in that direction, that will make me so happy.鈥�

I go to a great school. There’s no market for private schools in my rich Westchester, New York, suburb because the local schools are fantastic. The high school has a planetarium. The middle school has an Olympic-sized pool. Still, my classes are all mostly the same.

The teacher stands at the front and teaches, through lecture, activities, sometimes even games. But the classroom is tightly controlled, and students have no voice in what they are learning or how they learn it.

My social studies teacher is very good 鈥� I learn a lot of history in his class. He teaches me how to conduct research by identifying subtopics on index cards, then writing all the key facts I can find about each topic on cards related to that topic. At the end of the project, I have a fat stack of cards I can barely hold, and a solid foundation for a good paper on Andrew Jackson.

I begin to question the complacency I have had about my life.

The high school is even better. My ninth grade social studies teacher is unlike any other teacher I’ve ever had. I come alive in his class, begin to question the world and my place in it. He has us choose protest songs about the Vietnam War and analyze the lyrics. We watch Walkabout, an Australian film about the survival of two stranded children in the outback, and analyze the symbolism hidden throughout this disturbing film. I begin to question the complacency I have had about my life.

For our research projects, he lets us select our own among an abundant list of topics. I choose to analyze the tenets of Confucianism and how this philosophy shaped ancient cultures. In English class, we get to choose how to represent our understanding of To Kill a Mockingbird. I write a Ballad of Mayella Ewell from the perspective of Boo Radley. I do a good job; I care about this project. It sticks with me, even 35 years later.

So, if my middle school gave me a strong foundation in academics, my high school set me free to become deeply curious about the world.

When we move to Florida, the quality of my schooling declines, though I have a handful of really good teachers here, too. My 10th grade English teacher allows us to pick a major project that incorporates various techniques she’s taught us (sonnets, research, analysis), and I write Sonnet of Myself that is appropriately inward-focusing and poignant for a 15-year-old on the cusp of self-discovery. My 11^th grade English teacher, though, apologizes for assigning us a superficial three-page paper, as even this is too much to expect of us.

I’m now a mom of two boys, and through them I’ve witnessed good teaching and poor teaching, great schools and awful ones. The same undercurrent exists, though 鈥� this idea that we have to control children and make them learn according to our agenda. It’s even worse than when I was a kid, in this era of high-accountability and testing-saturated classrooms. There are so many reforms proposed to increase student achievement or engagement 鈥� inquiry learning, collaborative groups, differentiated learning, technology-based instruction.

And yet, to me, as someone who has spent much of her lifetime exploring questions related to schooling, I think they all miss the mark. We become so focused with single-pronged solutions that we miss the bigger picture 鈥� the overall end of education: What do we want our students to be like as a result of their school experiences?

I ended up becoming so fed up with the difficulty of improving schools via teaching teachers that I created a school where the culture would be different, focused on what really matters in education rather than on Band-Aid reforms.

It comes down to deep respect of each child and providing them with opportunities and guidance to nurture their unique gifts and talents…

And what does matter? It comes down to deep respect of each child and providing them with opportunities and guidance to nurture their unique gifts and talents in service to the problems that exist in the world. Sure, skills must be taught, too, but always in the context of authentic projects and endeavors related to big, important ideas. And school activities must engage students; learning independent of engagement does not stick, does not last. High expectations are critical, but they must be unique to the individual; not a rigid standard all must achieve, but a particular student’s best efforts.

I think we overcontrol and undervalue our students in the United States and that is to the detriment of each child and to our greater society as a whole, as all the underdeveloped talent lies dormant, unused 鈥� unless you happen to be the privileged child able to attend an exceptional school or someone who has parents able to engage them in meaningful extracurricular learning opportunities.

But this is what schools are for, and they are for ALL students, not just the privileged few, and we are wasting their potential. It’s not enough to create one good school. What is needed is a paradigm shift in how we think about education. Two of my colleagues and I want to be part of that conversation, so we created the Center for Creating and Sustaining Innovative Schools, which is part of the 麻豆原创 College of Community Innovation and Education.

It is time to create schools that are places of true excitement and passion for our kids 鈥� not just for them, but for the greater good of the world.

Michele Gregoire Gill is program coordinator of the 麻豆原创鈥檚 education doctorate in curriculum and instruction and is a professor of educational psychology in the Department of Learning Sciences and Educational Research. She can be reached at Michele.Gill@ucf.edu.

The 麻豆原创 Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns presented by 麻豆原创 Communications & Marketing. A new column is posted each Wednesday at /news/ and then broadcast between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday on W麻豆原创-FM (89.9). The columns are the opinions of the writers, who serve on the 麻豆原创 Forum panel of faculty members, staffers and students for a year.

When a School of Rock opened near my home to offer music classes, I took my son on a tour, wishing someone had signed me up for voice lessons when I was a teen.

The performance room was incredible. It was like being on stage鈥攁mps everywhere, posters of Led Zeppelin adorning the walls, a drum kit, microphones.

I turned toward my son. “Aaron, don’t you want to do this? You could pick any instrument or even sing.”

I’m gleeful at the possibilities.

Adam, the instructor, is super chill. Wearing an old T-shirt and backwards baseball cap, he talks about not just taking lessons but performing with a group weekly because it improves skills faster that way. Plus it’s just fun.

Adam shows us different instruments and doesn’t cringe when my son bangs on them, making a lot of noise. He’s patient and kind, and I want him to be my son’s teacher stat.

Aaron, though, is not interested, and he starts heading out the door.

I hesitate, not wanting to leave the magic in these walls, so I blurt out a question, fully expecting the answer to be no: “You don’t happen to teach adults, do you?” What Adam says next changes the next year of my life. He tells me they do have an adult performance group that meets at night, and one is just about to start if I want to come by for a visit.

My heart leaps at first, but with two young boys and a full-time job, I don’t see how I could make time to do anything like this. Plus, I think I’m too old to learn to play in a band.

I leave reluctantly and try to convince Aaron to pick an instrument for just a month. He’s adamantly opposed, so I drop it and go about my life as usual.

A few weeks later, though, I get an email saying the adult group has launched. The email lingers in the back of my mind for weeks.

One evening, as I’ve finished teaching my evening graduate class on learning theories, I sit in the parking lot, checking my email. It’s 8:20 p.m., and the kids are already in bed, and I just don’t feel ready to go home yet. The email says that the group meets at 8:30 p.m. If I hurry, I won’t be that late.

This is so unlike me. I’ve become a creature of routine. Work during the day, make dinner for the kids and help them with homework, head to teach my grad students a few nights per week, go home, tuck the boys in if they are still awake, exercise while I watch a show I’ve recorded, answer emails, then head to bed.

I feel daring and hopeful as I drive. When I enter the building, I see a handful of others already there talking and tuning guitars.

And I’m frozen in place.

These are not adults. Not these kids. Nope. I feel like their mom鈥攖hey are all in their young 20s, with maybe one of them in his early 30s. I am easily the oldest person there, and so I consider sneaking out and leaving. Adam sees me, though, and introduces me to the group.

“What instrument to you play?” he asks.

“None,” I reply. “I was thinking of singing.”

They already have a singer though, and she’s good.

“Why don’t you try the bass?” suggests Adam, handing me a heavy, four-stringed instrument. I take it in a kind of stupor, still looking for a way to sneak out.

We head in to the performance room, as Adam smiles and makes us all feel welcome. He shows me a couple of chords to play, says the group has been together for just a few weeks and is practicing Sublime’s What I Got.

“Just play D like this,” Adam demonstrates, “and then play G like this, alternating between the two. Start with holding each note for two beats, then switch, like this.” I practice a few times, till he nods, assuring me that I’ve got this. Then he turns to the other musicians and calls out the chords for them as well. Not only am I the oldest person in the room, older than even the teacher, I am the only one here who cannot play an instrument. I thought we’d all be beginners, but nope. Just me.

Adam counts us in, Chris starts singing and I start playing, D then G, over and over. I soon start to relax as I find myself moving to the beat. My mind switches off, and I just start feeling the music.

We are playing in perfect rhythm.

For an academic, this is life-changing. And as an introvert with a fair amount of social anxiety, I have never felt this in tune with a group鈥攅ver. When the music ends, I jump up in the air and scream: “That. Was. Awesome!”

The other guys laugh a little, but it鈥檚 not mean-spirited. I’m in. I am part of the band.

We stay together for just under a year, playing weekly, and our culminating performance is at a bar where we booked a gig. I sing backup and play wonderful songs: Zombie, Seven Nation Army, 1979. I am lost in the music. My smile feels like it’s going to break my face.

I look around the room and it doesn’t matter what age I am or how much older I am than my bandmates. All that matters is that I keep good time and play the right chords. I’m a part of this group. I’m 49, and I play bass in a rock band.

(YouTube video of me playing bass in our final concert: )

Michele Gregoire Gill is program coordinator of the 麻豆原创鈥檚 education doctorate in curriculum and instruction, and is a professor of educational psychology in the Department of Learning Sciences and Educational Research. She can be reached at Michele.Gill@ucf.edu.