Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools A Guide for Teachers and Practitioners

CHAPTER 8: SCHOOl-BASEd MindFulnESS PROTOCOlS • 157

and school achievement. Those researchers will look at grades, maybe a self-report of
students’ academic engagement, and other measures that help them know if these things
change across time as students engage in mindfulness practices, the active control activity,
or school as usual. As you will see, researchers are interested in a variety of student out-
comes including attention, self-regulation, behaviors, academic achievement, and engage-
ment. Some researchers take measurements along the way, while some researchers wait
until after the intervention has ended to do a posttest. The best studies do all of those things
and do a follow-up after several weeks, at a few months post intervention, at 6 months
post intervention, and perhaps even a year or more later to see if the intervention effects
remained intact over time.
As a doctoral student, I thought, “Why would anyone do anything other than an RCT?”
As an assistant and now associate professor, I now understand. RCTs are very challenging
to conduct, even in the most controlled environments. Schools provide a host of challenges
including the need to deliver the academic curricula, state and federal tests, teacher per-
formance assessment, children with a variety of behavior and learning problems that may
or may not be included in the study, complex schedules, limited free or elective time, and
more. School districts and schools are complex systems with one of the most important
mandates in our culture—to educate our youth. School personnel must put that charge first.
School-based research comes second. I have watched my own studies and those of my col-
leagues devolve from the most beautifully planned RCT, to a shadow of the original vision
as the many challenges of delivering research in schools were negotiated. This is not due to
anyone acting as an intentional obstacle. Rather, schools and school systems are extremely
complex systems with a primary charge, other than research, that they must take as their
highest priority.
I now read each study with substantial empathy and respect for the researchers as well
as the administrators who took the risk to approve the study in their district and schools;

Meta-

Analysis

Systemic Reviews

(methodologically

sound)

Controlled Trials

(comparisons made but not

randomized)

Observational Studies

(surveys and questionnaires)

Randomized, Controlled

Tr ials

Anecdotal Evidence, Expert Opinions

Bias

Reducing

Evidence and Bias

Hypothesis

Generating

FiguRE 8.1 Evidence and bias.