Using Mindfulness as Heuristic for Writing Evaluation: Transforming Pedagogy and Quality of Experience

Abstract

Mindfulness, or present-moment awareness, and its associated qualities of calm/relaxation, nonjudgment, intentionality, concentration, and compassion, are increasingly being used to help cultivate self-awareness, attention, and optimal learning experiences. After defining mindfulness and selecting key concepts, we apply the construct and features of mindfulness to writing evaluation in the form of contract grading, offering a model for using mindfulness as a generative heuristic for pedagogy. In turn, we create a new, innovative, mindfulness-based writing evaluation process and pedagogy, widely applicable across disciplines. This Mindful Grading Agreement Process, or MGAP, helps cultivate several desirable teaching-learning outcomes, including: 1) student agency, creative risk-taking, and intrinsic motivation; 2) enhanced potentiality for transfer of learning through more co-created reflection; and 3) a pedagogy grounded in collaborative evaluation processes, privileging quality of experience for teachinglearning writing and student agency. In effect, the MGAP makes possible an integrated pedagogy of “what is”—paying better attention to students lived experiences and literacies. We offer, then, a model for productively applying mindfulness to teaching and learning as well as a mindfulness-based tool for evaluating writing in a variety of disciplinary contexts.