Use of mindfulness in ESD: an assessment of its effectiveness to nurture interpersonal competencies

Abstract

Many international agreements have emphasized that students should acquire key competencies for the promotion of sustainable development. Particularly, collaborative-decision making has been found in Education for Sustainable Development. Yet, this competence has been proven difficult to nurture. There is initial evidence that the practice of mindfulness may promote the enhancement of the collaborative/interpersonal cluster of competencies in ESD but there are missing studies assessing its effectiveness. This paper examines whether the practice of mindfulness could be introduced to foster the interpersonal competencies for sustainability. Mindfulness has been proven to be an effective intervention to achieve educational goals and mindful individuals have been shown to have better dispositions towards sustainability. Despite this encouraging evidence, there is a lack of studies assessing and measuring overall effects. By performing a systematic review and a meta-analysis, this paper shows that mindfulness could be an effective intervention to enhance three components of the interpersonal competence: ego decentering, emotional control and resilience. Also, we provide some guidance on how to implement mindfulness to enhance its effectiveness in education.