Awareness
- Familiar experiences
- Notice where attention goes
- Competing demands
- Notice shifts and omissions
- Unfamiliar settings
- Recognize patterns across settings
Current work
A framework for
attentional literacy.
The research priority is to develop a competency framework that can inform a developmental pathway across K–12. A middle school proof of concept is the preferred first application.
Research in development
What must a person know, notice, understand, and be able to do to work skillfully with attention?
The framework is the foundational research output. A source-supported brief, one learning prototype, and a plan for a later pilot support its development and examination.
01 / Current work
Four strands of attentional literacy
A proposed progression in complexity
Influence and choice
- Familiar experiences
- Name a plausible influence
- Competing demands
- Weigh competing purposes
- Unfamiliar settings
- Reconsider choices with new information
Navigation and agency
- Familiar experiences
- Try a suitable adjustment
- Competing demands
- Adjust strategy or conditions
- Unfamiliar settings
- Adapt and seek appropriate support
Metacognition
- Familiar experiences
- Review what helped
- Competing demands
- Check assumptions and understanding
- Unfamiliar settings
- Use feedback in new situations
All four areas can recur together as situations become more complex.Illustrative contexts. Sequence, age expectations and learning outcomes remain under investigation.
A developmental pathway
across K–12.
The longer-term aim is to describe how attentional literacy could develop across schooling. Questions for each setting help frame that work:
- Elementary school: Can I notice and understand my attention?
- Middle school: How does my attention work, what influences it, and what choices can I practise?
- High school: How can I direct and review my attention in complex environments?
These are planning questions. The research needs to determine which competencies belong at each stage, how to account for different learners and supports, and what a useful progression would look like in practice.
Middle school first.
The preferred proof of concept would work with middle school students, initially through an afterschool program. One substantial prototype would provide a way to examine the language, learning activities, and proposed progression before considering broader applications.
Afterschool settings may offer a more practical route to initial development and delivery than adoption within the school-day curriculum. A lower barrier to entry is a planning assumption to explore with potential hosts.
The age group and setting are strategic starting choices. A host, delivery arrangements, participation process, and reviewed learning plan would need to be agreed before a later pilot. No host or pilot is confirmed, and a youth program is not open for enrollment through this site.
What a proof of concept
would examine.
A later pilot would help refine the competency framework and learning progression. Questions include:
- Which ideas learners can explain and recognize in their own experience.
- How learners notice influences, give reasons for choices, and use strategies or support in increasingly complex situations.
- How personal and relational tasks can include listening, checking understanding, and considering other people.
- What learners and educators find unclear, impractical, or in need of revision.
Evidence about feasibility, learning, and use in other settings needs an appropriate evaluation design. An immediate activity or positive response would not establish lasting learning or program effectiveness.
Phase One
What the research
will produce.
01 / Planned outputA draft competency
A draft competency
framework.
A proposed account of relevant knowledge and abilities, including personal and relational attention, to inform a K–12 developmental pathway.
Development priorities
- Clear definitions and examples of observable capacities.
- How awareness, influence and choice, navigation and agency, and metacognition may recur at increasing complexity.
- Specialist review that challenges the distinctions, complexity, and educational usefulness.
02 / Planned outputA source-supported
A source-supported
foundation brief.
The brief will examine the concept, its intellectual sources, and the rationale for the proposed competencies.
Questions for review
- Which claims are supported by established research?
- Which applications are interpretations of contemplative sources?
- What does the framework contribute alongside related educational concepts?
03 / Planned outputA middle school
A middle school
learning prototype.
One learning and practice prototype would show how selected competencies might be taught, with an afterschool setting as the preferred initial context.
Before a pilot
The actual group and host would help shape the learning tasks, pace, and supports. Phase One prepares the prototype. Youth delivery and participant data collection would belong to a later agreed pilot.
04 / Conditional outputA pilot and
A pilot and
evaluation plan.
A plan for how a later proof of concept could test and refine the framework and developmental progression.
What the plan must specify
- Learning questions and evidence appropriate to them.
- Feasibility, participation, and delivery requirements.
- How findings would inform revision, and what they could not establish.
Ways to contribute
Help shape
the framework.
Research and review
Relevant literature, conceptual critique, or specialist expertise in attention, contemplative sources, education, and learning development.
Educators and afterschool programs
Conversations with middle school educators and youth-serving organizations about learning needs, feasibility, and a possible later proof of concept.
Development support
Discussion of resources for research, specialist review, prototype design, and evaluation planning.
Discuss a connection.
Share relevant expertise or a possible educational connection. The first step is a conversation about fit and scope.
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