Barre Town Middle and Elementary School

PurposeThe following narratives describe how successful relationships between mentors and pre-service and inservice teachers go beyond observations and feedback. The purpose is to share the multifaceted approach mentors take to support teacher candidates in generative ways so they can develop their potential as practitioners and how they nurture a culture of professional respect and understanding about how the school–university partnership supports teachers and students across the school and beyond the individual placement classrooms.Design/methodology/approachThe article contains first-person experiences of the recent National Association for School–University Partnerships (NASUP) Exemplary Mentor Award Winners for 2023 and 2024.FindingsThe work of mentors facilitates the growth of pre-service and inservice teachers, empowering them to innovate and enjoy a sense of autonomy within their placement site and supports the growth of the university program, making the partnership more responsive to the needs of the pre-service and inservice teachers. These narratives are evidence of the power of the school–university partnership in growing teachers who exemplify the profession.Originality/valueA successful Professional Development Schools (PDS) partnership includes exemplary mentors who support pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and teacher candidates as they prepare for the profession.

The article explores the potential impact of insight meditation and mindfulness practices on the body’s energy system. Basic principles of energy psychology, whose efficacy has been corroborated in current research, are surveyed from the viewpoint of their potential to help in dealing with hypersensitivity resulting from mindfulness practices, combined with presenting a set of specific techniques relevant to hindrances in meditation.

A case study of the descriptions of the progress of Buddhist insight meditation provided by Daniel Ingram shows how a forceful form of mindfulness combined with high-speed mental noting can result in the construction of meditative experiences to accord with expectations created by maps of the progress of insight, culminating in claims to having reached levels of awakening. The potential impact of personal bias evident in this way reveals challenges faced by those researching meditative practices and cautions against overvaluing subjective reports by yogis. In particular, potentially adverse effects of mindfulness practices in the health care setting need to be placed into proper perspective, as the contention that even those who do not engage in deep and intensive insight meditation can suffer from repercussions potentially resulting from undergoing the insight knowledges is not accurate. Progress in research on mindfulness requires the sobriety of evaluating meditative experiences within their context, be it psychological, doctrinal, cultural, or social, in order to arrive at balanced assessments that avoid the two extremes of uncritical enthusiasm and exaggerated apprehensions.

The present article briefly examines attention and mindfulness in the way the functions of these two mental qualities emerge in selected Pāli discourse passages and their extant parallels. The survey shows that, alongside a considerable degree of affinity between the two, attention and mindfulness also differ in several respects. Early Buddhist mental analysis considers attention a constantly present mental quality, whereas mindfulness is intermittent, in the sense of needing to be aroused and, at least when cultivated by itself, stands for a more receptive quality of the mind. Descriptions of the deployment of attention cover a range of different functions, ranging from the more conceptual tasks of storing teachings in memory and later recalling them to the supportive role of facilitating experiences of deep concentration and liberating insight. In meditation-related contexts, attention is explicitly mentioned as a foundation for the cultivation of mindfulness. With later Buddhist traditions, understandings of attention and mindfulness evolved, leading to an increased similarity in function between these two qualities.

In this paper, I examine the potential of mindfulness in relation to facing anger and aggression from the viewpoint of early Buddhism. After a brief survey of relevant current research, I investigate the indication in one Pāli discourse that mindfulness on its own is not sufficient for emerging from enmity. A consultation of the Chinese parallels to this discourse suggests this presentation to be the result of a textual error. The instructions on the four establishments of mindfulness confirm that, from an early Buddhist viewpoint, mindfulness was considered an effective means to counter anger. Closer study of these instructions shows a considerable degree of overlap with current research findings and suggests a possible direction for future research.

In his memoir, Comrade Ambassador, Stephen FitzGerald recalls his time as a fledgling diplomat in the late 1960s. He characterises Australia's China policy at the time as being ‘illogical, delusion...

In light of a growing interest in contemplative practices such as meditation, the emerging field of contemplative science has been challenged to describe and objectively measure how these practices affect health and well-being. While "mindfulness" itself has been proposed as a measurable outcome of contemplative practices, this concept encompasses multiple components, some of which, as we review here, may be better characterized as equanimity. Equanimity can be defined as an even-minded mental state or dispositional tendency toward all experiences or objects, regardless of their origin or their affective valence (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral). In this article we propose that equanimity be used as an outcome measure in contemplative research. We first define and discuss the inter-relationship between mindfulness and equanimity from the perspectives of both classical Buddhism and modern psychology and present existing meditation techniques for cultivating equanimity. We then review psychological, physiological, and neuroimaging methods that have been used to assess equanimity, either directly or indirectly. In conclusion, we propose that equanimity captures potentially the most important psychological element in the improvement of well-being, and therefore should be a focus in future research studies.