Experiential Learning

Project Details

Students’ well-being has received increasing attention around the globe. Starting from its 2015 cycle, on top of the literacy and numeracy-focused assessments, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has also started studying students’ life satisfaction and well-being in one of its assessments. In the hopes of promoting students’ well-being, mindfulness practice has gained its popularity among different educational contexts around the globe. Featuring on TIME magazine in 2014, mindfulness has surfaced from its obscure religious root to a practice adopted by many. In terms of education policy, mindfulness is now on the agenda in transnational policy-discussions in education (OECD, 2018). It has been reported that hundreds of thousands of students and thousands of teachers had been learning to practice mindfulness with school progammes of various lengths and intensities (Ergas, 2019).

To understand its exponential growth in specially the educational context, this course aims to offer an opportunity for students to understand mindfulness through their own practice. Using their insight gained from their own experience, students will have the opportunity to learn and experiment on how the ‘Ps’ of mind –presence, patience, practice and many more elements of mindfulness, can be incorporated into the curriculum in a classroom context.

In Semester 1, students will first engage in an eight-week embedded course of interactive, practical and skills-based workshops on mindfulness, aiming to cultivate the ‘Ps’ of mind. During this period, students are expected to commit to a 40-minute daily practice to cultivate mindful habits and gain insights through first-hand experience.* In Semester 2, students will work in groups to design, implement and evaluate a series of mindfulness workshops to be implemented at a local leadership camp for groups of secondary school students with other international volunteers.

*During Semester 1, students will be participating in an eight-week Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Life programme (MBCT-L). Students are expected to attend ALL sessions (including a full-day retreat). Upon completion of the programme, students will be receiving a Certificate of Attendance for further exploration in the field of mindfulness.