The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Program on Academic Engagement: the Mediating roles of Academic Stress and Academic Burnout

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness program on academic engagement with an emphasis on mediating roles of academic stress and academic burnout. For this purpose, we used a pretest-posttest design with a control group. 40 students were selected through a convenience sampling and randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental group was trained for 8 sessions of 120 minutes. The groups answered the questionnaires of academic engagement, academic stress and academic burnout in three stages: pre-test, post-test and follow-up. For data analysis, partial least squares approach was used in the form of the multiple indicators multiple causes. The results showed that mindfulness program could firstly reduce academic burnout and academic stress significantly and in the second step could promote academic engagement indirectly. The follow-up model also confirmed these effects. In sum, the conceptual model of research explained 68% of academic engagement variance in the post-test phase as well as 50% in the follow-up phase. Regarding these results, it can be said that MBSR was effective since it increased non-judgmental awareness and make the participants more aware the challenges they faced. Counselors with this template can influence students' academic engagement.