Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, and Leadership?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as a flexible state of mind actively engaging in the present, noticing new things, and being sensitive to context. Langer differentiates mindfulness from mindlessness, which she defines as acting based upon past behavior instead of the present and being stuck in a fixed, solitary perspective, oblivious to alternative multiple viewpoints. Something called mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for some time now in American business, education, media, medicine, popular culture, and sports. Many business, legal, and medical organizations are considering how mindfulness can help alleviate stress, improve productivity, reduce mistakes, and resolve conflicts. Many people from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street practice some form of mindfulness. Much of the widespread popularity of mindfulness stems from (popular media coverage about) empirical, experimental research data in psychology and neuroscience about how practicing mindfulness improves emotional, mental, and psychological health by boosting attention, concentration, immune response, and positive affect, while reducing mind wandering, distress, emotional reactivity, and negative affect. Practicing mindfulness is a form of experiential learning that provides a temporal space to pause and reflect upon more thoughtful decisions, including sustaining ethical behavior and leadership. This Article draws upon various novel interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches, ranging from biology, decision theory, financial economics, management science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to analyze how practicing mindfulness can improve the decision-making, ethics, and leadership of non-lawyers. To date, there is little empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects law students, lawyers, or law professors. There is a large and growing body of empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects people who are not in the legal profession. Based on this research, this Article makes three recommendations. First, law professors and lawyers should team up with neuroscientists and psychologists to conduct multimethods waitlist controlled research studies involving law students, lawyers, and law professors to determine if practicing mindfulness improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Second, law students, lawyers, and law professors should try practicing mindfulness to see if they improve their legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Third, law schools, law firms, and bar associations should try offering voluntary mindfulness training and supporting mindfulness practice to see if doing so improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership

Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, and Leadership?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as a flexible state of mind actively engaging in the present, noticing new things, and being sensitive to context. Langer differentiates mindfulness from mindlessness, which she defines as acting based upon past behavior instead of the present and being stuck in a fixed, solitary perspective, oblivious to alternative multiple viewpoints. Something called mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for some time now in American business, education, media, medicine, popular culture, and sports. Many business, legal, and medical organizations are considering how mindfulness can help alleviate stress, improve productivity, reduce mistakes, and resolve conflicts. Many people from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street practice some form of mindfulness. Much of the widespread popularity of mindfulness stems from (popular media coverage about) empirical, experimental research data in psychology and neuroscience about how practicing mindfulness improves emotional, mental, and psychological health by boosting attention, concentration, immune response, and positive affect, while reducing mind wandering, distress, emotional reactivity, and negative affect. Practicing mindfulness is a form of experiential learning that provides a temporal space to pause and reflect upon more thoughtful decisions, including sustaining ethical behavior and leadership. This Article draws upon various novel interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches, ranging from biology, decision theory, financial economics, management science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to analyze how practicing mindfulness can improve the decision-making, ethics, and leadership of non-lawyers. To date, there is little empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects law students, lawyers, or law professors. There is a large and growing body of empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects people who are not in the legal profession. Based on this research, this Article makes three recommendations. First, law professors and lawyers should team up with neuroscientists and psychologists to conduct multimethods waitlist controlled research studies involving law students, lawyers, and law professors to determine if practicing mindfulness improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Second, law students, lawyers, and law professors should try practicing mindfulness to see if they improve their legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Third, law schools, law firms, and bar associations should try offering voluntary mindfulness training and supporting mindfulness practice to see if doing so improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership

Projects to Enhance and Innovate Learning in the High School English Classroom: A Final Master’s Portfolio

My purpose for this portfolio is for each reader to look at teaching in a new and innovative way that will guide students and educators. I have resources in each project that will push ideas for new projects or encourage readers to try a new writing mode or novel that they have never tried before. I hope my students are engaged in my variety of lessons and research and feel challenged to push themselves in their own research and writing. I encourage the reader to use the following projects to create a positive writing and reading environment in the classroom

Knowledge sharing by entrepreneurs in a virtual community of practice (VCoP)

PurposeThis paper examines how entrepreneurs engage in a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) to share knowledge. Intensity of engagement is taken as a proxy to measure the strength of knowledge sharing.Design/methodology/approachThe archival data spanning over a three-year period from ‘Start-up-Nation©’ (a VCoP purposefully setup for entrepreneurs) is used for analysis. A set of indices are introduced to measure participants’ intensity of engagement in terms of message length, message frequency and reciprocity in the knowledge sharing process. Content analysis is employed to test a sample of ‘highly engaged’, ‘moderately engaged’, ‘low engaged’ and ‘not engaged’ discussion topics as part of the on-line discourse.FindingsWe find that entrepreneurs normally use short (fewer than 100 words) or medium (fewer than 250 words) message size to contribute to the discussions. In addition, we find that senior members and discussion moderators play important roles in igniting the ‘reciprocity’ behaviour in stimulating the interest of the community with the topic discussion. We also findthat highly engaged topics usually lead to further discussion threads.Originality/valueThis is the first study of its kind to explore how entrepreneurs engage in a VCoP to share their knowledge and experiences. The set of measurement indices tested here provide a tool for the owner, designer and moderator of the VCoP to measure the utility of their website in terms of its members’ participation. In addition, the set of textual and subjective interventions identified here enable the moderator (administrator) of a VCoP to design effective interventions to facilitate on-line discourse and augment the knowledge sharing process amongst its community members

Syllabus design for 4th year of Secondary Education in Spain

Máster Universitario en Formación del Profesorado de ESO, Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanza de Idiomas. Especialidad en Inglés (M086

Basic Skills for Complex Lives: Designs for Learning in the Community College

Outlines the Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges project's activities, results, and lessons learned, including five principles for teaching underprepared students. Recommends an institution-wide focus and faculty collaboration

Innovative learning in action (ILIA) issue six: Innovative practice in assessment

Welcome to this, the sixth edition of Innovative Learning in Action (ILIA) which focuses our attention on the theme of innovative practice in assessment. On the face of it, innovative assessment may be regarded as any form of assessment which involves the application of a new technique, method or tool. However, to quote Graham Mohl (2007): ‘Innovative assessment is not just some trendy new technique dreamt-up purely to save on the amount of time teachers spend on marking, it is a genuine attempt to improve quality of learning in higher education. If we do save time in the process then all the better for our own learning.’ http://www.city.londonmet.ac.uk/deliberation s/assessment/mowl_index.html. The range of work in this edition of ILIA demonstrates how colleagues are readily embracing this fundamental principle. These papers and snapshots show us how contributors are actively exploring, reviewing and modifying their practice to address assessment principles and strategies helping to produce active learners who are reasoning, critical, highly motivated, capable of self-evaluation and equipped with transferable skills to enable them to flourish in the 21st century global economy. Whilst covering diverse and extensive territory both conceptually and practically, in their entirety these works share common ground in embracing the notion of ‘the redistribution of educational power’ (Heron, 1981). Assessment therefore becomes something which is not simply ‘done to’ students, but it is also ‘done by’ and ‘done with’ students (Harris and Bell, 1990) and is as much about enhancing the quality of their learning as it is about measuring their performance. Some of these works may challenge traditional positions and approaches and in so doing I hope they will provide you with a stimulating and thought-provoking opportunity to reflect on practice and student learning

Youth Media Still Matters: Elevating the Voices and Identities of Young People in Disruptive Times

When schools, colleges and youth organizations shut down en masse in March 2020 in response to the emerging pandemic, none of us had any idea what lay ahead. Amid all the uncertainty, one thing quickly became clear: With opportunities to meet in person sharply curtailed, teens and young adults needed new outlets to connect, collaborate and find their creative voice more than ever.Using Zoom and other digital platforms, Spy Hop mentors delivered instruction remotely and students collaborated virtually on projects and performances. While the experience wasn't always the same, Spy Hop programming was able to reach a larger group of students who were no longer limited from participating by their geography.Through surveys, interviews and focus groups with Spy Hop mentors and students, we have assembled a comprehensive picture of the outcomes from Spy Hop programming in 2020 and 2021. In the course of our evaluation, we have found that Spy Hop continues to play an invaluable role in youth development and media skills.While Spy Hop programming continues to have indelible and far-reaching effects on youth participants in Utah and beyond, we believe the organization can deepen its impact even further by following a few suggestions. These include supporting youth employment opportunities beyond high school, broadening access to Spy Hop for students with fewer resources and being more intentional about mentor development

Teaching Communication in the Chinese as a Foreign Language Classroom

This portfolio is a collection of the author’s teaching beliefs and approaches regarding Chinese as foreign language teaching, which she developed during her time in the Master of Second Language Teaching program. The centerpiece of the portfolio is the author’s personal teaching philosophy. It is followed by three artifacts. The language artifact analyzes one of the complexities encountered by learners in the Chinese as a foreign language classroom: the three particles 的 (de), 地 (de), 得 (de). The culture artifact illustrates the difference between American and Chinese language teachers. The literacy artifact talks about using literature circles in the CFL class. The portfolio also includes a reflection on a 50-minute video of teaching a beginning-level college Chinese class. The last section of the portfolio contains an annotated bibliography and a list of references