Salomon and Globerson define mindfulness in the context of learning as volitional, medicognitively guided employment of non-automatic, usually effort demanding processes. I found their definition of “high road” learning vs. “low road” learning interesting. They mention that, to become an expert, “it is reasonable to assume that much of the practice involved in attaining relative expertise does not involve much mindfulness.” I am not convinced of this particular statement. In my own research, I know that becoming an expert in physics requires more than “low road” practice. I have seen students work through many physics problems, but this practice does not help them make connections to previous learning. I feel that practice physics problems should be designed so that they help the student see the connection to prior learning. So many times, students feel that if a homework problem from the book is from “chapter 2,” then they should only use the information found in “chapter 2” to solve it. This is very detrimental to the students’ learning, and it forces students to jump into the “implementation phase” before completing the “analysis phase.” It is all about “plug and chug.” So I feel that mindful learning of physics can only occur if problems are designed to help students build a robust knowledge structure, taking pieces of prior knowledge and making appropriate connections. I do like their point that “high road” learning results in better comprehension, memory, and deeper processing and allows de-contextualization of concepts.

Zabat-Zinn’s article shed quite a different light on mindfulness. It is defined as awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment. I found it interesting that the words for mind and heart are the same in Asian languages, so mindfulness includes an affectionate, compassionate quality within attending, a sense of openhearted, friendly presence and interest. It is considered to be “insight” meditation, seeing into the nature of mind and world. Although I’m not sure I completely understand what exactly mindfulness entails, I think that this quality would be very important for a teacher to develop. I believe that having a sense of empathy for my students has helped me to become a better teacher. This requires putting myself in their “shoes,” so to speak. It also helps me to consider their viewpoints about learning physics. I feel that this quality is lacking in many teachers today. This can severely affect students and their future learning. It is very interesting that they found that meditators’ skin cleared more rapidly than nonmeditators. I believe more research should be done on this topic to verify their results, but I personally have always felt that there is a “mental” component of healing and health that should not be ignored.

In the Bishop article, they define mindfulness as a two-part process of 1) regulating attention in order to bring a quality of non-elaborative awareness to current experience and a quality of relating to one’s experience within an orientation of curiosity, experiential openness and acceptance and 2) as gaining insight in to the nature of one’s mind and the adoption of a de-centered perspective. It seems as though mindfulness would need to be repeatedly practiced in order to master it, since our minds seem to wander so easily from thought to thought. Additionally, distractions such as internet, television, phones, and other technology are so

abundant and make it difficult to engage in mindfulness. I am still a little unsure as to what the goal of mindfulness is, but it seems that it is about gaining insight about oneself without judgment.