There is ample evidence that meditation can regulate emotions. It is questionable, however, whether meditation can down-regulate sensitivity to emotional experience in high-level cognitive representations such as words. The present study shows that adept Zen meditators rated the emotional valence of (low-arousal) positive and (high-and low-arousal) negative nouns significantly more neutral after a meditation session, while there was no change of valence ratings after a comparison intervention in the comparison group. Because the Zen group provided greater "openness to experience" and lower "need for achievement and performance" in the "Big Five" personality assessment, we used these scores as covariates for all analyses. We found no differential emotion effects of Zen meditation during lexical decision, but we replicated the slowdown of low-arousal negative words during lexical decision in both groups. Interestingly, Zen meditation elicited a global facilitation of all response times, which we discuss in terms of increased attentional resources after meditation.

This work represents one of the first attempts to examine the effects of meditation on the processing of written single words. In the present longitudinal study, participants conducted a lexical decision task and rated the affective valence of nouns before and after a 7-week class in mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation, or a control intervention. Both meditation groups rated the emotional valence of nouns more neutral after the interventions, suggesting a general down-regulation of emotions. In the loving-kindness group, positive words were rated more positively after the intervention, suggesting a specific intensification of positive feelings. After both meditation interventions, response times in the lexical decision task accelerated significantly, with the largest facilitation occurring in the loving-kindness group. We assume that meditation might have led to increased attention, better visual discrimination, a broadened attentional focus, and reduced mind-wandering, which in turn enabled accelerated word recognition. These results extend findings from a previous study with expert Zen meditators, in which we found that one session of advanced meditation can affect word recognition in a very similar way.

Ein Lehrkräftemangel zeigt sich derzeit in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Der vorliegende Artikel gibt einen Überblick zu den regionalen Problemlagen und Hauptursachen. Dazu gehören vor allem die Pensionierungswellen, der starke Zuwachs an Schüler*innen, teilweise schwierige Arbeitssituationen der Lehrer*innen, hohe Abbrecherquoten in den ersten Berufsjahren und vermehrte Teilzeitarbeit. Kurzfristige und nachhaltige Lösungsansätze werden beleuchtet, wie zum Beispiel die jährliche Aktualisierung von Bedarfsprognosen für Lehrer*innen, die Einführung multiprofessioneller Teams und die Verbesserung der Arbeitssituationen von Lehrer*innen. Es gibt verschiedene Zugänge zu diesen Lösungsansätzen bis hin zu radikaleren Ansätzen der Reorganisation von Schule, besonders unter der Perspektive des digitalen Wandels.

Der schulische Personalmangel in Österreich, Deutschland und der Schweiz hat weitreichende Folgen, für die Schüler*innen, die Mitarbeiter*innen an den Schulen und auch für die Lehramtsstudent*innen, wie eine Studie aus Österreich zeigt. Die Bedarfsprognosen sehen für die nächsten zehn Jahre keine Verbesserung der Situation, teilweise eher eine Verschlechterung. Es sind also alle Akteure gefragt, Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um diese stellenweise Notsituation so gut wie möglich abzufedern. Der vorliegende Artikel stellt kurz-, mittel- und langfristige Lösungsansätze zur Abfederung des Personalmangels für die Bildungspolitik, die Schulaufsicht, die Hochschulen und die Schulen selbst vor, idealerweise gebündelt und strategisch abgestimmt als konzertierte Aktion, bei der alle Akteur*innen Verantwortung tragen.

Objectives Research on the effects of meditation practice on reading performance is a new and promising field of research. However, the evidence on whether meditation improves reading comprehension and/or speed in continuous reading is inconclusive. The present work addresses this question. Method For the present longitudinal study, undergraduate students (n = 52) participated in a 6-week mindfulness meditation course or an active control condition. We assessed reading comprehension and speed before and after the intervention/control condition, as well as emotion regulation, sustained attention, and personality traits. Results Reading comprehension improved significantly after the meditation intervention (B = 2.15, t = 3.47, p = 0.002, d = 0.69), but reading speed did not change, contrary to our expectations. The control group showed no significant changes in either text comprehension or reading speed. Further, we found that meditation led to better attention capacity. Improved attention was positively associated with improved reading comprehension in the meditation group, though attention capacity did not mediate the effect on text comprehension. While we found that meditation can increase the acceptance of one’s own emotions and decrease emotional overload, these covariates did not affect comprehension performance. Conclusions The present work shows that mindfulness meditation improves attention capacity and text comprehension. However, mindfulness meditation does not affect reading speed. Finally, we confirmed that meditation can help in emotion regulation. Preregistration This study is not preregistered.