Mindfulness training as social work pedagogy: Exploring benefits, challenges, and issues for consideration in integrating mindfulness into social work education

Social work students consistently experience stress during their social work education.

“Social work students consistently experience stress during their social work education (Gockel and Deng, 2016).”

Studies have linked mindfulness with enhanced practice skills, including reduced reactivity and more compassionate responses.

“Studies have also linked mindfulness with enhanced practice skills, including reduced reactivity and more compassionate responses (Gockel et al., 2013;Gockel and Deng, 2016).”

Research in social work mirrors other disciplines in finding correlations between mindfulness and improvements in students and practitioners' ability to cope with stressful situations.

“It mirrors other disciplines in finding correlations between mindfulness and improvements in students and practitioners' ability to cope with stressful situations (McGarrigle and Walsh, 2011;Gockel and Deng, 2016).”

Participants had enhanced awareness of their own emotional states, their potential negative impact on interactions, and used mindfulness practices to bracket them.

“This rests firstly on participants' enhanced awareness of their own emotional states, their potential negative impact on interactions and the use of mindfulness practices to bracket them (Gockel and Deng, 2016;Kinman, Grant and Kelly, 2019).”

Mindfulness and NVC practices are valuable for enhancing reflexivity in emotionally-charged situations, including depersonalising anger from service users.

“Second, it relates to the value of mindfulness and NVC practices for enhancing reflexivity in emotionally-charged situations, including depersonalising anger from service users (Gockel and Deng, 2016).”

Mindfulness practices offered participants space to acknowledge and hold, but not become overwhelmed by, their experiences.

“Mindfulness practices were found to offer participants space in which to acknowledge and hold, but not become overwhelmed by their experiences, in line with broader evidence (Birnbaum, 2008;Gockel et al., 2013;Gockel and Deng, 2016).”