Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) in Educational Settings (In-Person and Blended): A Protocol for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: Mindfulness is a psychological process directing an individual’s attention to the experiences in the present moment. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been widely studied as a means of improving teaching-learning in educational environments (e.g., schools and universities). The main objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of MBIs on students’ academic achievement in schools or universities. Additionally, the present study aims to examine the effect of MBIs on stress reduction, executive function, and working memory performance in educational environments. Methods: Several bibliographic databases such as PubMed, Embase, and Web of Sciences will be searched to find relevant studies with interventional designs. A combined approach using a thesaurus (MeSH and EMTREE) and free-text-based methods will be applied to find the search terms and construct the search syntax. The intervention of interest is any type of MBI, alone or in combination with other cognitive interventions. The control is considered as “no intervention” or “any similar cognitive intervention(s)” such as different teaching-learning processes. The Cochrane Collaboration tool will be used to assess the bias risk in randomized trials for examining the quality of the studies. Effect size measurements such as dppc۲, Cohen’s d, and Hedges’ g will be performed. Discussion: This review will provide necessary data for examining the effectiveness of MBIs in educational programs. Additionally, by performing subgroup analyses, a comparison between different types of MBIs will be made to find suitable interventions for particular groups of students. Furthermore, the major sources of heterogeneity between the included studies will be investigated.

Keywords:

Mindfulness , Mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) , Educational research , Self-efficacy , Student empowerment , Blended Learning