Opening the space of reasons in education: mindfulness as a potential meta-epistemic and moral virtue practice

Debates on mindfulness in education often oscillate between therapeutic affirmation and ideological critique while largely neglecting questions of epistemic and normative justification. This article develops an alternative framework grounded in analytic philosophy of education. Drawing on Metzinger’s (2024) account of mindfulness as epistemic openness, Bowell, Cowan, and Kemp's (2020) critical thinking framework, and a reasons-responsive account of normative justification informed by Scanlon (1998) and Parfit (2011), it examines when school-based mindfulness practices of decentring can be educationally justified. Mindful decentring, understood as a weakened identification with one’s own thoughts, may support openness, self-correction, and reduced self-bias. Yet it also risks epistemic and normative fallacies when non-judgemental awareness is detached from standards of truth, justification, and good judgement. Mindfulness is therefore presented not as an alternative to critical thinking, but as a practice that may support reason-responsive inquiry, moral reflection, and epistemic and moral virtues in school.