Mindfulness training at school: A way to engage adolescents with sustainable consumption?
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Authors
A central challenge in research on education for sustainable consumption (ESC) is to develop new approaches to engage adolescents with sustainable consumption (SC) in a way that addresses not only the cognitive but also the socio-emotional and behavioral levels. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) that foster awareness, (self-)reflection, and ethical values could potentially leverage learning processes in ESC. The present study was the first one to investigate the potential effects of a consumption-specific MBI on sustainable consumption behavior (SCB) in the areas of nutrition and clothing. The eight-week long intervention was carried out with 15-year old adolescents (N = 85) directly at school. A randomized pre-post waitlist control group design with mixed methods was applied. The study revealed the strong effects of the adapted MBI on precursors of SCB and further effects not directly related to but potentially conducive for SCB. Actual behavioral effects were minor. Substantial inter-individual differences and inconsistencies between qualitative and quantitative results imply case-related effects that do not allow generalizable conclusions to be drawn. Nevertheless, the results of this pilot study indicate that combining mindfulness training with ESC formats appears to be a feasible and fruitful approach to engage adolescents with SC. Future practice and research should consider more diverse target groups, other consumption areas, and longer periods for interventions and their evaluation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3557 |
| Journal | Sustainability |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| ISSN | 2071-1050 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 04.10.2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
Funding: The present work was funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) in the project BiNKA (Education for Sustainable Consumption through Mindfulness Training) under grants 01UT1416A and 01UT1416B.
In order to address this research gap, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a consumption-focused mindfulness-based intervention in the context of ESC. The intervention focused on the consumption areas of nutrition and clothing. These two areas encompass everyday behaviors highly relevant in terms of ecologic and socio-economic impact and could potentially show changes in an eight-week long intervention with adolescents [3]. The aim of the present study was to assess the potential effects of the intervention (1) on SCB in the areas of nutrition and clothing as well as (2) on pre-stages of SCB (e.g., attitudes and intention), and (3) other variables not directly related to SCB (e.g., wellbeing and compassion). This study was part of the larger transdisciplinary research project BiNKA (German acronym for Education for Sustainable Consumption through Mindfulness Training) funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). In the BiNKA project, three different target groups were addressed: adolescents at school, university students, and employees. The school-embedded intervention as well as the applied measures were especially developed and adapted for use with adolescents. Thus, this article only reports the results from the BiNKA school study (see further publications on BiNKA website http://achtsamkeit-und-konsum.de/en/publications2/).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors.
- Adolescents, Education for sustainable consumption, Mindfulness training, Mixed methods, Randomized controlled intervention study, School, Sustainable consumption behavior
- Sustainability Science