INTEGRATING MINDFULNESS, SELF-INQUIRY AND COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SKILLS, VALUES AND ATTITUDES

In this globalized world we need a new educational system that manufactures not only workers but citizens increasingly committed to society, and that is why at this time there is so much talk of the development of skills, abilities, and even attitudes and values such as empathy and compassion in the people of the 21st century. To achieve that new educational model, both a methodological change and a new definition in the role of teachers and students are required. This paper proposes a new educational paradigm based on the integration of active methodologies, such as Cooperative Learning (CL), which provides better results in the development of skills and abilities, together with Mindfulness techniques, which represent a true revolution in the scientific field since it favors the development of attitudes and values and especially personal responsibility. Mindfulness can be understood as the capacity to pay attention to the present moment, non-judgment, with acceptance, and curiosity. Nowadays, mindfulness is used in many contexts and to different ends. There is scientific evidence of the efficacy and usefulness of mindfulness in education. The purpose of this work is to contribute towards the introduction and expansion of mindfulness in education in an aim to transform it, and to contribute to the quality of life of those involved (parents, teachers and students): conscious educators forming conscious human beings.

The aim of this paper is to present a study on how to integrate Mindfulness in the educational system through active methodologies of cooperative work in the training of future teachers, so that they can put it into practice in their classrooms, once they have acquired the skills, abilities and training needed. We have analyzed different ways of combining Cooperative Learning (CL) and and Mindfulness. After that, we promote a new way of training not only Mindfulness attitudes but also meditation practices, while, with CL, we relate with our partners to learn and develop skills, values, as well as a better self-knowledge of ourselves.

Three work proposals in the classroom with the future teachers are presented:
1. Cooperative activity proposal to bring students closer to Mindfulness through the puzzle technique.
2. Proposal of cooperative activity to train attitudes of Mindfulness through the technique of the research groups.
3. Proposal for the Integration of CL and the practices of Mindfulness
- Development of Body Attention and Awareness. Includes meditative practices of attention to breathing, attention to the body and attention to thoughts.
- Emotional Development and Self-knowledge. It includes group practices to learn to cultivate feelings of joy, empathy and compassion, to learn to listen and to embrace our intense emotions, fear, anger, frustration and learn to solve conflicts within the group creatively.

The use of cooperative learning in conjunction with Mindfulness is something new in the educational field, since there are hardly any works in this regard. The results of this proposal show significant improvements both in the degree of learning and satisfaction, as well as in the motivation and degree of attention perceived by students. These results have been evaluated with the students (future teachers) of the Master's Degree in Secondary Education Teaching at the University of Almería (Spain), through the use of clickers.