Thesis advisor: Lillie R. Albert / This study builds on a small, under-acknowledged body of educational works that speak to the problem of an overly technical focus on teaching, which negates a more authentic consideration of what it means to teach, including an exploration of the spiritual and moral dimensions. A need for educational change and the teacher's authentic way of being are presented as the basis for the primary research question: "What does it mean to be an authentic teacher?" The study consists of two equally intensive parts, i.e., a theoretical and empirical investigation. The theoretical developed a framework on authenticity, drawing from the Buddhist and Christian theological traditions; the Twentieth Century philosophical writings of Buber and Heidegger; and the in-depth review of conceptual and empirical educational literature. This framework supported the empirical design, which was a phenomenological study of six teachers in a small Catholic urban K-8 school. An empirical framework on authenticity evolved through the data analysis. Ultimately, the theoretical and empirical parts were integrated into a comprehensive framework on teacher authenticity, defined as follows: Teacher authenticity is a trust that, through the desire and intention to care, the teacher can awaken through teaching a profound life-giving potential for the well-being of oneself, others, and the world. This trust is the teacher's faith perspective, and is lived, dynamic, and iterative, which makes authenticity an ongoing process. A sub-question was also presented in the study: "What does it mean for the researcher to engage as an authentic learner in the research process?" The focus on the researcher as an authentic learner presented an expanded view of reflexivity, probing deeply into the philosophical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of the researcher's learning process throughout the study. The implications of the study are presented, focusing on the professions of teaching and research, and also showing the relevance for education and society. The most impending implication pertains equally to teachers and to researchers, and emphasizes the need for professional development programs of self-learning and self-formation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

In daily life there are numerous experiences and events that divert people's attention and cause stress, which may be linked with aspects of ill-being and lowered well-being. Mindfulness meditation may alleviate such issues. Mindfulness can be summarized as a form of awareness and attention in the present that is characterized by an open-minded and non-judgemental perspective, and meditation as a group of practices that engage many of the same processes and may involve mindfulness. There is evidence that both mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are associated with activity in brain regions relating to, for example, attention, emotion-regulation, and bodily awareness. Consequently, mindfulness meditation was hypothesized in the present study to improve attention as measured by the Attention Network Test, and decrease negative affect as measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule when compared to a control condition. The mindfulness meditation instructions employed were largely based on the work of Kabat-Zinn (1982). 14 participants were recruited to the study, and 7 of them completed the experiment. 3 participants were randomized to the experimental group, and 4 to the control group. Results were largely contrary to the hypotheses, with only executive attention having statistical significance (p < .05) and supporting one hypothesis. Although effect sizes were on average large for the variables of the study, the small sample size may have limited the power and increased the risk for type-II errors.

Parents of children with developmental disabilities (DDs) often suffer from psychological distress stemming from their children’s behavioral problems. One cause of distress is their challenge to accept their children’s illnesses mindfully. A culturally tailored and readily accessible mindfulness intervention may increase mindfulness and reduce distress. Also, there were insufficient studies regarding culturally relevant mindfulness trainings that have been conducted in Thailand. Therefore, a Brief Culturally Tailored Thai Mindfulness intervention (BCTTMi) was developed, merging the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn with Buddhist philosophy. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the BCTTMi on stress, anxiety, and mindfulness in these parents. An experimental waitlist control crossover design with the 2-weekend BCTTMi was employed in 22 Thai parents and caregivers of children with DDs. They were all Thais and Buddhists; more than half had practiced meditation. They completed three Thai-version questionnaires: (a) the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form-4th edition; (b) the State Anxiety Inventory-Form-Y-1; and (c) the Mindfulness Assessment Scale, at three measurements (baseline, posttest, and two-week follow-up). Repeated measure ANOVA analyses were used to analyze data. The findings showed that anxiety significantly decreased from baseline to posttest, and mindfulness significantly increased with the BCTTMi. Nevertheless, stress did not significantly reduce over time, and change between intervention and control conditions did not differ for anxiety level. Moreover, there were no differences in any outcomes from posttest to two-week follow-up. In spite of Buddhist homogeneity of participants and sustained stress, mindfulness increased, and anxiety decreased following the BCTTMi. These findings indicate the feasibility of tailoring the mindfulness-based training to specific cultures and its usefulness as an efficient option for parents and caregivers of children with DDs. Further studies regarding the BCTTMi are warranted in broader populations and settings. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The current study utilized a quasi-experimental nonequivalent groups design to investigate whether a 5-week long Mindfulness Meditation Intervention (MMI), would impact measures of attention, positive and negative affect, state and test anxiety, mindfulness, and reactive cortisol levels in 107 school aged children. A series of reliability corrected ANCOVAs were performed on all behavioral variables. Results indicated that those in the MMI group did not differ from their cohorts on any of the behavioral measures. Reactive levels of salivary cortisol were also collected and assayed in a subsample of 25 participants. An ANCOVA on cortisol change scores was performed and findings did not reach statistical significance. Post-hoc power analyses revealed that this could be due to inadequate sample size. To conclude studies utilizing a MMI of longer duration or with larger sample sizes may be required in assessing the usefulness of MMIs in behavioral and physiological measures in non-clinical child populations. / by Maria L. Corbett. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Many studies have supported the overall health benefits of mindfulness meditation practices for adults, but research exploring such benefits for children is sparse. The present study explored the psychophysiological effects of mindfulness meditation over a 10 week-period on a sample of 2nd-and 4th-grade children. Electroencephalograph (EEG) asymmetry and coherence were recorded at baseline and immediately after the meditation intervention for the experimental group, and at baseline and after 10 weeks for the control group. Measures of affect, behavioral motivation, creativity, and depression were also administered. The primary findings indicated that when improvement in depressive symptoms occurred for 4th-grade students who were somewhat engaged in meditation practice, left-sided frontal EEG activity was also more prominent. Additionally, 4th-grade students who actively participated in meditation practice experienced decreases in self-reported levels of negative affect. Results suggest that mindfulness meditation is beneficial for improving 4th-grade students’ mood and brain regions associated with mood. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

L’objectif de ce travail de thèse était d’évaluer la faisabilité, l’acceptabilité et de fournir des résultats préliminaires du programme MBRP (Mindfulness Based relapse prevention) pour le traitement des addictions. Dans un premier lieu ce travail nous a permis de démontrer que ce programme représentait un type de prise en charge thérapeutique acceptable et faisable pour le traitement du trouble de l’usage de l’alcool. La participation au programme augmentait le niveau de pleine conscience et de flexibilité psychologique et réduisait le craving. Ensuite, nous avons pu identifier que la pratique à domicile, occupant une place centrale dans les traitements basés sur la pleine conscience, était facilitée par la motivation initiale des participants et de leur sentiment d’auto-efficacité quant à la capacité de mettre en place une pratique, à l’inverse, l’impression de « mal faire » ou l’absence d’effets immédiats de la pratique présentait un frein à la pratique autonome. Nous avons également pu rendre compte de l’intérêt de ce programme pour le traitement du trouble lié à la pratique de jeu d’argent et de hasard. A travers nos résultats descriptifs, nous avons pu montrer que la méditation de pleine conscience était un outil dont la majorité des patients joueurs se saisissaient volontiers pour gérer les envies de jeu et l’impulsivité. Nous avons trouvé que la participation au programme a permis de réduire la pratique de jeu, les symptômes de jeu, le craving, ainsi que les symptômes dépressifs et anxieux et augmenter le niveau de pleine conscience. Par ailleurs nous avons pu montrer à travers un cas clinique, que l’association de la pratique de pleine conscience et de training cognitif, pouvait représenter une prise en charge complémentaire et augmenter le contrôle de soi, chez une patiente résistante aux TCC classiques. Nous avons également montré que l’initiation à la pleine conscience chez des soignants travaillant dans le domaine de l’addictologie a été très bien accueillie, qu’en moyenne ils ont participés à 4 séances sur 5 et qu’ils ont tous mis en place une pratique autonome après l’initiation en groupe. Pour finir nous avons validé le Transdiagnostic Craving Trigger Questionnaire (TCTQ) visant à évaluer les déclencheurs de craving, dans une population présentant un trouble de l’usage de l’alcool. Nos analyses ont montré une solution à trois facteurs, les émotions désagréables, les émotions agréables et les déclencheurs externes et pensées associées aux consommations. Finalement ce travail de thèse nous a permis de conclure que le programme MBRP est un programme qui a tout son intérêt pour le traitement des addictions avec ou sans substances. Nous avons pu montrer qu’il agissait sur des processus sous-jacents de cette pathologie tels que les affectes dépressifs et l’anxiété, qu’il permettait de réduire le craving et qu’il mobilisait des ressources telles que la flexibilité psychologique. Nous avons l’objectif de conduire des travaux supplémentaires afin de pouvoir statuer sur son efficacité en comparaison à une condition contrôle. / The purpose of this work was to investigate feasibility, acceptability and preliminary outcomes of the MBRP (Mindfulness Based relapse prevention) program as a treatment of addictions. First, this work allowed us to establish that this program represented an acceptable and feasible therapeutic approach as a treatment for alcohol use disorders and that it increased the level of mindfulness and psychological flexibility and reduced craving. Secondly, we were able to identify that home practice, which is central to mindfulness-based treatments, was facilitated by the participants' initial motivation and their feeling of self-efficacy in terms of their ability to set up a practice, while the impression of "doing wrong" or the absence of immediate effects of the practice was a barrier to it. We have also been able to highlight the interest of this program as a treatment for gambling disorder. Through our descriptive results, we showed that mindfulness meditation was a tool that most gamblers readily used to manage craving and impulsive behavior. In addition, we found that participating in the program reduced gambling, gambling symptoms, craving, as well as depression and anxiety and increased mindfulness levels. In addition, we were able to show by examining a case report that the combination of the MBRP program and cognitive training could increase self-control in a patient who was resistant to conventional CBTs. We have also shown that the initiation to mindfulness among caregivers working in an addiction facility has been very well received. On average they participated in 4 out of 5 sessions and, all set up a personal home practice after the group initiation. Finally, we validated the Transdiagnostic Craving Trigger Questionnaire (TCTQ) to assess craving triggers in a population with an alcohol use disorder. Our analyses showed a three-factor solution, composed of unpleasant emotions, pleasant emotions and external triggers and associated thoughts. This thesis work allowed us to conclude that the MBRP program has a strong interest in the treatment of addictive disorders, with or without substances. We were able to show that it worked on underlying processes of this disorder, such as depression and anxiety, that it reduced craving and that it was a way of mobilizing resources, such as psychological flexibility. Our objective is to carry out further research which would allow us to state on its efficacy as compared to a control condition.

Vårdpersonal har kategoriserats som en yrkesgrupp med höga stressnivåer och ungefär 70 % av tillfrågade sjuksköterskor har beskrivit sitt arbete som psykiskt påfrestande. Sjuksköterskestudenter upplever liknande problematik. Tidigare studier har visat att mindfulnessbaserade interventioner (MBI) kan reducera stress, öka mindfulnessförmågor samt främja mer positiva tidsattityder. Befintlig forskning har dock inte undersökt sambanden mellan dessa variabler tillsammans. Syftet i denna studie var att undersöka sambanden mellan tidsattityd, mindfulnessförmåga och grad av stress. Ytterligare syften var att granska effekten av mindfulnessträning på dessa variabler hos sjuksköterskestudenter samt att undersöka om tidsattityd och mindfulness kan predicera stress. Studien var en randomiserad kontrollerad studie med pre-post-kontrollgruppsdesign. Urvalet bestod av 75 sjuksköterskestudenter som genom randomisering delades in i kontrollgrupp (n=37) och experimentgrupp (n=38). Experimentgruppen genomförde ett tvåveckors webbaserat mindfulnessprogram medan kontrollgruppen stod på väntelista. Mätningar genomfördes innan och efter interventionen med formulären Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ), Adolescent Time Inventory (ATI) samtMindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). Resultaten visade på signifikanta interaktioner där experimentgruppen ökade sin mindfulnessförmåga, minskade i grad av stress och fick en mer positiv syn på sin framtid medan det omvända gällde för kontrollgruppen. Mindfulnessförmåga och negativ attityd till nuet predicerade stress. Resultatet stödjer att MBI kan vara en relevant intervention för stressreducering i denna urvalsgrupp.

This thesis explored the relationships between 1) Self-compassion 2) Cognitive Emotion Regulation and 3) Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and teacher stress in a foreign international school setting. The retrospective, multi-tiered study investigated a total of 177 expatriated teachers working in multiple international schools around the globe; at least 17 of whom indicated that they had completed a MBSR course. A mixed-methods approach was used over three stages utilising the following instruments: 1) an adapted stress impact survey, 2) Teacher Interview Protocol (TIP), 3) the short forms of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ-SF), the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS-SF), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4). Results suggest that teachers’ beliefs about stress correlate with job satisfaction; 82.6% of respondents who reported that stress has ‘hardly any effect’ also reported that they liked their job overall; whereas, 76.9% and 36.4% of respondents that believed stress had affected their teaching ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ reported liking their job, respectively. Results also indicate that higher perceived stress is strongly correlated with both 1) decreased self-compassion (r = -.491, p < .001) and 2) increased use of non-adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies, such as Catastrophizing (r= < 0.392, p < .001). All five adaptive cognitive coping strategies were positively correlated with Self-Compassion, four were significant; only Refocus on Planning failed to reach significance at p < .05. The data indicated no statistically significant differences between MBSR and non-MBSR participants, regarding perceptions of stress (PSS-4), self-compassion (SCS-SF), and eight of the nine coping strategies (CERQ-S), with the exception being that MBSR participants experienced reduced Self-Blame (p < 0.007). Conclusions find that policies and practices aimed at supporting the three aspects of self-compassion offer one possible avenue to reducing teacher stress and maladaptive thinking strategies, and thereby increasing job satisfaction, for teachers working in a foreign country.

In this study, I investigated the precursors and the outcomes of team resilience. In contrast to many resilience studies, which focus on low-probability, high-impact challenges, I investigated resilience in the face of high-frequency, low-impact challenges that teams can face in their operational environments. I conducted an extensive literature analysis of the field of resilience and on the basis of this constructed a model of team resilience by integrating insights from high reliability organizing, positive organizational scholarship, sensemaking and disaster resilience studies. I then tested and improved this model through an exploratory study of team behaviour in two 'Escape Game' settings in which teams of 5 people worked through a series of puzzles under time-constrained and somewhat stressful conditions. Following the exploratory study, I developed the resilience model into an operationalizable format and tested it using seven runs of a simulation study involving 547 individuals in 68 teams. In the simulation, teams had to work both quickly and accurately whilst adapting to the changing conditions of a turbulent, competitive environment. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected on various team attributes, team resilience and team performance. I have used quantitative data as the main source of analysis and qualitative data as a supporting tool. Self-completion questionnaires, objective performance indicators, direct observation and post-simulation team and individual reflections were among the data collection tools that were used to obtain data. Team resilience shows highly significant associations with a range of objective measures of team performance. In turn, resilience is supported by several team attributes, including collective mental models, effective channels of communication and systems of information gathering and team cohesion. When teams faced challenges outside of their existing action repertoires their ability to improvise also contributed to resilience. Finally, when teams overcame (novel) challenges, this fed back into their accumulated knowledge through collective learning, enriching action repertoires. Together, these features bestow teams with resilience, which, in turn, enables them to overcome disturbances that might otherwise impede operational performance. In its final form, my resilience model serves as an explanation of the mechanisms of resilience and identifies its antecedents and outcomes. It can inform teams operating in uncertain, ambiguous and volatile work conditions about the capacities and capabilities they need in order to create and sustain resilience in daily operations.

abstract: Research on self-regulatory variables like mindfulness and effortful control proposes strong links with physical and mental health outcomes across the lifespan, from childhood and adolescence to adulthood and old age. One pathway by which self-regulation may confer health benefits is through individual differences in reports of and emotional responses to daily negative and positive events. Mindfulness is broadly defined as non-reactivity to inner experiences, while effortful control is broadly defined as attentional and behavioral regulation. Mindfulness and effortful control have both been conceptualized to exert their beneficial effects on development through their influence on exposure/engagement and emotional reactivity/responsiveness to both negative and positive events, yet few empirical studies have tested this claim using daily-diary designs, a research methodology that permits for examining this process. With a sample of community-dwelling adults (n=191), this thesis examined whether dispositional mindfulness (i.e., non-reactivity of inner experience) and effortful control (i.e., attention and behavioral regulation) modulate reports of and affective reactivity/responsiveness to daily negative and positive events across 30 days. Results showed that mindfulness and effortful control were each associated with reduced exposure to daily stressors but not positive events. They also showed that mindfulness and effortful control, respectively, predicted smaller decreases in negative affect and smaller increases in positive affect on days that positive events occurred. Overall, these findings offer insight into how these self-regulatory factors operate in the context of middle-aged adults’ everyday life. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2018