The use of mindfulness has gained popularity as a promising approach for improving mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. However, several gaps remain in our understanding of how these practices are defined, implemented, and contextualized in school settings. This scoping review examines 150 school-based mindfulness program (SBMP) studies published from 1973 to 2022, focusing on study characteristics (e.g., participant demographics, targeted outcomes, operational definitions of mindfulness), intervention features, and the extent to which studies acknowledge the historical and cultural foundations of mindfulness practices. Over the past 50 years, there have been modest methodological improvements, particularly in reporting interventionist training, while critical aspects such as implementation fidelity measurement and operational definition clarity have seen little change. Additionally, only 21% of studies acknowledged the Eastern origins of mindfulness. Implications for future research and practice include strengthening methodological rigor, clarifying conceptual frameworks, and increasing cultural transparency in SBMP implementation
O’Neal et al. (Sun,) studied this question.