Date of Award

5-2023

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

School Psychology

First Advisor

Melissa Collier-Meek

Second Advisor

Narmene Hamsho

Third Advisor

Stacy Bender

Abstract

Written expression is a complex and critical skill that many students in the U.S. struggle to master (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Meanwhile, the COVID pandemic has expedited the need to find feasible interventions that support students writing in a virtual landscape (The National Association of School Psychologists, 2020). Brief, mindful breathing exercises may be one viable option for promoting the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that are executed during the writing process (Minkos et al., 2018; Cornell et al., 2019). As such, the present study provided three elementary-aged students with the a virtual, after-school opportunity to practice mindful breathing and writing and examined the impact of this practice on students' written expression and academic engagement behaviors, specifically. Two of the three students demonstrated improvements in writing quantity and quality, as well as academic engagement behaviors, when engaging in the mindful breathing exercise. Implications for future research on the integration of mindfulness and academic practices are discussed.

Comments

Free and open access to this Campus Access Dissertation is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this dissertation through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global or through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users" link above.

Download
Off-Campus UMass Boston Users

Share

COinS