Using Mindfulness as a Heuristic for Writing Evaluation: Transforming Pedagogy and Quality of Experience

Mindfulness, or present-moment awareness, and its associated qualities of calm/relaxation, nonjudgment, intentionality, concentration, and compassion, are increasingly being used to help cultivate self-awareness, attention, and optimal learning experiences. After defining mindfulness and selecting key concepts, we apply the construct and features of mindfulness to writing evaluation in the form of contract grading, offering a model for using mindfulness as a generative heuristic for pedagogy. In turn, we create a new, innovative, mindfulness-based writing evaluation process and pedagogy, widely applicable across disciplines. This Mindful Grading Agreement Process, or MGAP, helps cultivate several desirable teaching-learning outcomes, including: 1) student agency, creative risk-taking, and intrinsic motivation; 2) enhanced potentiality for transfer of learning through more co-created reflection; and 3) a pedagogy grounded in collaborative evaluation processes, privileging quality of experience for teaching-learning writing and student agency. In effect, the MGAP makes possible an integrated pedagogy of "what is"--paying better attention to students lived experiences and literacies. We offer, then, a model for productively applying mindfulness to teaching and learning as well as a mindfulness-based tool for evaluating writing in a variety of disciplinary contexts.