Casselson, Tammy

Tammy’s Fellowship aims to develop best practices and an implementation strategy for mindfulness-based wellbeing programs. The goal is to proactively equip staff, educators, and students with resilience skills to improve their wellbeing and performance. The program focuses on building inclusive communities, future-readiness, mental health improvement, and enhanced wellbeing. Research supports integrating mindfulness-based wellbeing into teaching and learning in VET & DUAL sector environments.

The research ranged from clinical placebo- controlled trials to student feedback surveys. All the research identified positive results irrespective of the type or duration of the intervention. Mindfulness interventions were effective in increasing students’ attention, concentration and working memory. Results have been seen in performance and persistence and engagement. Students were better able to manage stress and symptoms of pain, depression, and anxiety. They showed improved overall wellbeing and compassion. This paper shows the gap in knowledge of the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions on higher education students, not attending university, particularly in Australia. It focuses our research on the students’ perspective of mindfulness programs, and how to implement them in a diverse cohort effectively in TAFE, Melbourne, Australia.

This research aims to identify best practice, as well as implementation strategy, of mindfulness-based wellbeing programs to proactively offer staff, educators and students resilience skills to thrive; to ncrease wellbeing, mental health and performance.