Mindfulness: a meditator of interpersonal style in predicting academic achievement

Mindfulness: a meditator of interpersonal style in predicting academic achievement

The transition to university not only requires academic
learning, but there are also a range of social skills that
are required for adaptation to tertiary level education.
The current research identified interpersonal style
and mindfulness as frameworks and theoretical perspectives to address first-year university students' adjustment to their new milieu. This quanitative research examined the relationship between students' attachment styles, mindfulness and academic adjustment using self-report measures with students who identified as being in their first-year of university.
The methodology used to examine these relationships was a demographic-matched design, with groups of self-identified mediators and non-mediators. The results indicated that in a meditative sample of first year university students who scored higher in insecure attachment style, their results negatively predicted academic adjustment, and this was partially mediated by higher scores in mindfulness. However, this was not the case for students who endorsed higher levels of avoidant attachment style. Research implications and limitations are discussed with future research suggestions, which may provide the impetus for further work in the area of student adjustment to first year of university.