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Laura Margarita Daza-Murcia
Universidad Industrial de Santander - UIS, ColombiaTitle: Meditation practice: A Welcome Activity in a Pre-service Teacher Education Program during Pandemic
Abstract
Emergency Remote Teaching, ERT, was the instruction
modality adopted by universities to face social distancing generated by the
Covid-19 pandemic. This sudden adjustment mostly affected undergraduate
students from an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teacher
education program offered at a public university in Colombia, who expressed
having felt challenged, sad, disappointed, uncomfortable, and anxious before
the virtual lectures began. For this reason, a Meditation practice was
implemented as a welcome activity in three different Pedagogy courses during
the first 2020 academic semester. Thus, this mixed study analyzed the effects
of the Meditation practice from the students’ perspective. The participants
were 74 undergraduates, with an age range between 18 and 25 years (M = 20.33).
The data was gathered through two semi-structured online surveys and a Semantic
Differential Scale with two questions. The qualitative data were studied
following the Grounded Theory, whereas the quantitative data were analyzed
according to the emotional reactions in the activity scale. Final results
identified the following effects of the Meditation practice: inner peace,
readiness to learn, strong focus, mental health, innovation, comfort with ERT,
and empathy. It can be concluded that the Meditation practice had positive
effects on students’ attitude towards ERT.
Biography
Mrs. Laura Margarita Daza-Murcia is a passionate educator who holds a Master’s degree of education, a Specialization in educational management, and a Bachelor of arts in English. She works as a Pedagogy professor for the UIS School of Languages and as an Academic Consultant. Among her research interests is easy to identify Growth Mindset, Metacognition, Self-regulated Learning, Meditation in education, Neuroeducation and Social justice in education.