Deconstructing mindfulness in education
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to contribute to critical discourse on mindfulness in education through Heidegger’s notion of Besinnung and what I have called an “appropriative approach” to selfhood and social ontology. In particular, I focus on the “contemplative turn” towards the self as a crucial site of contestation and debate within the current literature on mindfulness in education. In the process, I show how Besinnung as an extension of the appropriative approach can provide the basis for an account of mindfulness as desubjectivation which, according to Michel Foucault, has “the function of wrenching the subject from itself, of seeing to it that the subject is no longer itself, or that it is brought to its annihilation or its dissolution”.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
Educational Philosophies and Pedagogies
Education
Philosophy
and Society
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Asia Pacific Journal of Education
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 435–450
- Publication date
- 10 February 2026
- Language
- EN