Principals’ Perspectives on Mindfulness Implementation in Schools

Mindfulness practice has been shown in the literature to enable school students of all ages to have better coping skills and academic achievement. The school milieu is a good fit for the delivery of mindfulness interventions. Implementing programming in schools is challenging, and there is a gap in understanding whether schools will successfully adopt mindfulness programs. This qualitative description study was aimed at understanding facilitators and barriers to mindfulness programming implementation through principals’ perspectives. The participants were a purposeful sample of five public school principals; one who attempted and four who successfully implemented mindfulness programming. Principals answered 21 questions from semi structured interviews. Diffusion of innovation theory was used to analyze the data through five stages of implementation to identify barriers and facilitators. The principals described facilitators as stakeholders and buy-in, program features and delivery, confirming data, and funding resources. Barriers included negative stakeholders, program challenges, competing demands, the COVID-19 pandemic, and financial constraints. Four principals used a professionally packaged mindfulness program resulting in successful adoption. One principal did not purchase a mindfulness program, which appeared to thwart adoption. The study shows principals’ perspectives on mindfulness implementation, and the results can illuminate how other principals may further positive social change for students by implementing mindfulness programming.