Increasing the attitudes toward sustainable development through mindfulness: an innovative approach for higher education institutions

Purpose The paper aims to examine mindfulness as innovative approach to foster the attitudes toward sustainable development among future professionals within higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach The paper highlights a quasi-experiment with 36 future professionals to explore the interrelatedness of mindfulness with attitudes toward sustainable development. This included an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course with a pre-, post- and longitudinal test. Findings The study revealed that the training of mindfulness significantly increased the dispositional mindfulness and the overall attitude toward sustainable development of future professionals. Furthermore, their slope of state mindfulness significantly predicted this increase. Originality/value The novelty of the paper lays within the operationalization of mindfulness which aims to train the inner development instead of solely imparting knowledge about education for sustainable development.