Attentional Literacy as a New Literacy: Helping Students Deal with Digital Disarray La littératie attentionnelle comme nouvelle littératie : aider les élèves à faire face au désarroi numérique

When students learn online, they do so within a wider context of digital disarray, marked by distraction, disorder, and disconnection, which research shows to be far from conducive to effective learning. Specific educational issues include a lack of focus, linked to information overload in an environment characterized by misinformation and disinformation, as well as a lack of connection to the self and others. Arguing that today’s growing focus on digital literacies in education already serves as a partial response to digital disarray, this evidence-based position paper proposes the concept of attentional literacy as a macroliteracy which interweaves elements of now established literacies with the emerging educational discourse of mindfulness. Through attentional literacy, students may gain awareness of how to focus their attention intentionally on the self, relationships with others, and the informational environment, resulting in a more considered approach to learning coupled with an appreciation of multiple shifting perspectives. Armed with this developing skillset, students stand to benefit more fully from digital educational experiences. Considerations for continuing research in this area include the need to adopt a critical stance on mindfulness, and the need to operationalize attentional literacy for the classroom.


Digital Disarray Outside Education
The COVID-19 "infodemic", so named by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020), is the latest global information event to shine a light on the issue of digital disarray, comprising three principal interlinked components.
Digital distraction refers to a lack of focus caused by information overload in today's attention economy (Palalas, 2018;Pegrum, 2019b), with our devices having extended our attentional choices beyond our attentional capacity (Levy, 2016), and with technology companies' algorithms constantly seeking to ensnare our attention (Berthon & Pitt, 2019). Our distraction is compounded by the "headline stress" (Stosny, 2017) derived from the unrelenting stream of alarming news that flows via mass media, social media, and messaging channels onto our ubiquitous mobile devices. The result is fragmented attention and chronic stress, linked to a range of physical and mental health issues (Dobelli, 2020).
Digital disorder, a term derived from the Council of Europe's work on "information disorder" and "information pollution" (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017), refers to the circulation of misinformation, disinformation and "fake news", a term chosen as the word of the year by the Macquarie Dictionary and the Collins Dictionary in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Confronted with a bewildering mixture of "hoaxes, conspiracy theories, honest misunderstandings and politicized scientific debates" (Wong, 2020), audiences cannot, or will not, disentangle fact from fiction due to a lack of time, expertise, or inclination -indeed, a certain "reality apathy" has set in (Ovadya & Bienstock, 2018). The acceptance or rejection of given information -on polarizing topics such as climate change, vaccines, and the coronavirus -has become dangerously tribal (Beck, 2017;Harford, 2017). In the COVID-19 era, the costs of this digital disorder are mounting; they include deaths from delayed medical treatment, self-poisoning from false cures, and vandalism of 5G towers (Spring, 2020).
Digital disconnection refers to the inability or unwillingness to engage effectively or constructively with difference, stemming partly from a lack of awareness of oneself and the parameters of one's own worldview. It is manifested in recent political and social backlashes against globalization and superdiversity (Creese & Blackledge, 2018;Vertovec, 2007), whether in the form of physical and digital mobility of unwelcome people, or predominantly digital flows of unwelcome perspectives (Pegrum, 2019b). The ensuing retreat into disengaged stereotyping has provided the backdrop to verbal and physical attacks on the Chinese in Asia, Asians in much of the rest of the world, and foreigners, especially Africans, in China, as tracked by the media (List of incidents, 2020). Meanwhile, global political collaboration on COVID-19 has been hesitant; if, as Harari (as cited in Lew, 2020) has suggested, the antidote to epidemics is "information and cooperation" -and if the same is true of infodemics -then there is much work to be done in education.

Digital Disarray Inside Education
Education itself has been directly impacted by COVID-19, with the global rush to remote delivery fast-forwarding a longstanding gradual shift towards online learning as an alternative or complement to face-to-face, in-person learning. Consequently, a number of pre-existing challenges in online education, stemming from digital disarray, have become more widespread. Moreover, "emergency remote teaching", which occurs when offline courses are hastily shifted online in a crisis (Hodges et al., 2020), frequently with little guidance or reflection, is plagued with such challenges to a far greater extent than the more carefully designed online teaching of past years. While the current paper focuses on learners, it is clear that helping learners inevitably requires helping teachers too (cf. Hadar et al., 2020).
There is thus an enduring, but now more pressing, need to address digital distraction, given the impact of "continuous partial attention" (Stone, 2009) in education and other areas of life. The same technologies that create new options for learning can simultaneously distract from learning, which depends on concentration, engagement, and reflection over time (Palalas, 2018(Palalas, , 2019b. Ever more studies warn of the distracting effects of screens, especially mobile screens, coupled with social media and broader Internet access in learning and other contexts (Darghan Felisoni & Strommer Godoi, 2018;Ward et al., 2017;Whelan et al., 2020). The specific instantiations of digital distraction include media multitasking, which is not only cognitively inefficient and ineffective (Palalas, 2018;Wallace, 2006) but may be correlated with depression and anxiety (Page, 2019). Such multitasking can shade into addictive behaviors, which are educationally problematic and again may be correlated with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues, along with reduced empathy or prosocial attitudes (Bonnardel et al., 2018;Melo et al., 2020).
There is equally a need to address digital disorder. There is little doubt that the spread of misinformation and disinformation erodes attention. Although many end users, as noted, are disinclined to try to disentangle fact from fiction, there is certainly a need for educators and students to develop the skills to weed through the disorder (Palalas, 2019b). After all, "the abundance of information" accessed via our devices can serve "either as noise or as invaluable input for learning" (Palalas, 2018, p. 39). Since there is no louder or more distracting noise than fake news, it is vital to learn how to navigate this digital soundscape.
Finally, there is a need to address the paradox of digital disconnection, with digital users being superficially present online but in actuality disconnected from the self (i.e., diminished intrapersonal connection) and, relatedly, from others (i.e., diminished interpersonal connection). An inability to communicate across differences is a stumbling block in the internationalization of education. Recently rising in prominence, telecollaboration, virtual exchange, or collaborative online international learning (COIL) projects seek to address this disconnection in education and the wider world (Helm & Guth, 2016;Helm et al., 2020). Indeed, psychological research has established that individual reasoning is deeply flawed, while collaborative reasoning is far more robust (Gee, 2017;Mercier & Sperber, 2017), perhaps above all when it involves cognitive diversity, often linked to identity diversity (Page, 2017;Sloman & Fernbach, 2017). It is, moreover, apparent that today's global problems require the widespread development of the intercultural skills to collaborate across differences in the pursuit of common pathways forward (Gee, 2017;Shi-xu, 2005). As such, in an insight broadly aligned with today's burgeoning field of social and emotional learning (SEL; e.g., Durlak et al., 2016), it may be that identifying ways to develop students' intrapersonal skills (amongst other things, recognizing the contours of their own worldviews) and interpersonal skills (including respecting others' worldviews) constitutes today's grand challenge in education.

Exploring Digital Literacies as a Partial Solution
Recent years have seen increasing interest in digital literacies as a skillset integral to managing meaning in an era of digitally networked communications (Dudeney et al., 2013). Often linked to 21 st century skills and commonly discussed in the plural, these literacies are seen as encompassing a growing number of component literacies which are emerging or rising in significance in tandem with evolving technological and sociopolitical conditions (Pegrum et al., 2018). More than 100 digital literacies frameworks were identified as far back as 2015 (Brown, 2017) and more frameworks and definitions are emerging, each tailored to varying needs and contexts, ranging from the global focus of work by UNESCO and UNICEF (Law et al., 2018;Nascimbeni & Vosloo, 2019) through the national foci of school curricula (Hockly, 2016) to a focus on specific domains such as language learning (Pegrum et al., 2018). Differences of detail and terminology notwithstanding, there is considerable common ground between these frameworks in respect of their broad ethos as well as the often overlapping literacies they subsume (Pegrum, 2019a).
A case can be made for viewing digital literacies in general, and certain digital literacies in particular, as having been invoked as part of an incipient response to the spread of digital disarray inside and outside education. From this perspective, digital literacies are effectively "habits of mind" (ELI, 2019) which can be developed to deal with the challenges of distraction, disorder, and disconnection, opening up scope for more purposeful use of digital technologies to participate in learning, as well as to participate in the wider world for which learning prepares students.
Many digital literacies frameworks include a focus on information-related literacies such as information literacy or critical literacy, often explicitly aligned with the 21 st century skills of critical thinking and problem-solving, and sometimes seen as stepping stones to other skills like creativity and innovation. In a narrow formulation, information-related literacies are about how to "effectively evaluate and critique information and its use in the digital age" (ELI, 2019); in a broad formulation, they are about how to "apply a critical lens to all things digital and, by extension, the non-digital world from which digital data emerges and to which it refers" (Pegrum, 2019b, p. 265). Corollaries of information or critical literacy include data literacy, referring to the ability to evaluate and utilize big data and its representations (e.g., Ridsdale et al., n. d.), and algorithmic literacy, the ability to understand the operation and impact of data-driven algorithms (e.g., Rainie & Anderson, 2017). These interrelated literacies may offer a partial antidote to digital disorder. Meanwhile, in an extension of the wider notion of critical literacy, critical mobile literacy zeroes in on issues created or exacerbated by mobile technologies, ranging from privacy and surveillance concerns to the physical and mental health consequences of "devices eating away at our attentional resources day and night" (Pegrum, 2019b, p. 268). As such, critical literacy may also offer a partial antidote to digital distraction.
Some digital literacies frameworks also include a focus on collaboration-related literacies, aligned with the 21 st century skills of collaboration and teamwork. Key literacies include personal literacy, referring to the ability to use digital technologies to mold a meaningful online presence as a basis for connecting and interacting with others, which is in turn governed by network literacy (e.g., Rheingold, 2012), participatory literacy (e.g., Hauck & Kurek, 2017), and even intercultural literacy (e.g., Pegrum, 2014). While the notion of constructive interaction is embedded in such literacies, it can be argued that in the contemporary context of a superdiverse world riven with backlashes against diversity, there is a need for a more robust conception of intercultural literacy conjoined with ethical literacy, involving the adoption of a stance of ethical pluralism and intellectual humility, recognition of diverse perspectives, respectful communication across differences, and positive and proactive contribution to common global challenges (Forte et al., 2020;Pegrum, 2019b;Pegrum et al., 2018). Putting the self and the other back into education in this manner may offer a partial antidote to digital disconnection.
These kinds of literacies may help us respond to digital disarray, facilitating more positive online experiences inside and outside education. It would seem timely to highlight the common thread connecting such literacies by proposing another literacy explicitly focused on the attentional needs of our time. Like some of those discussed above, it is effectively a macroliteracy, one specifically conceived to simultaneously and coherently address digital distraction (drawing on elements of critical literacy and its extension, critical mobile literacy), digital disorder (drawing on information, critical, data, and algorithmic literacies), and digital disconnection (drawing on personal literacy and its connection to the self, alongside network, participatory, intercultural and ethical literacies and their connection to others). In short, the moment has come to propose a multidimensional concept of attentional literacy, centered on achieving awareness and focusing attention amid digital disarray, and informed by the burgeoning general and educational literature on mindfulness which, recasting ancient traditions for the current era, has emerged in response to the exigencies of our accelerated, globalized, digitized lives.

From Mindfulness to Attentional Literacy
In the last decades, there has been a contemplative turn in the social sciences, including education, manifested in a growing focus on mindfulness (Ergas, 2019a;Ergas & Todd, 2016). The spreading interest in mindfulness is reflected in the growth of studies and publications alongside the growth of interventions in schools and universities (Ergas & Todd, 2016;Goleman & Davidson, 2017;Khng, 2018;Page, 2019).
This contemplative turn has emerged in a particular sociopolitical, educational, and scientific context. First, our global, technologized knowledge economy is increasingly experienced as alienating and disorienting (Ergas & Todd, 2016), especially given the attentional demands flowing through our informational and recreational media channels (Berthon & Pitt, 2019;Page, 2019;Palalas, 2018), and it may well be both socially and environmentally unsustainable (Fairclough, 2015). Concurrently, there has been a growth in mobility of people, ideas, and practices, in part supported by the global economy and digital technologies. On the negative side, there have been kickbacks against diversity and, in places, a retreat into political isolationism, religious absolutism, and cultural exceptionalism (Pegrum, 2019b), at the very moment when global co-operation is needed more than ever, given that the planetary consequences of mindlessness are now much greater than the more localized consequences of the past (Berthon & Pitt, 2019). On the positive side, the knowledge flows beginning to build up from the East and South to the West and North have facilitated the "literal and conceptual migrations" (Ergas, 2019a, p. 251) underpinning the expansion of interest in mindfulness.
Second, the contemplative turn is grounded in a subjective turn in the social sciences in general and education in particular. It has been argued that we may be entering an era of post-secularity where boundaries are blurring "between religiosity/secularity/education, subject/object, and science/healing/education" (Ergas, 2014, p. 58). This is an era where the objectification of science (which of course remains valuable) may be balanced out by the development of what Zajonc (2006) has called "an epistemology of love instead of an epistemology of separation"; and it may equally be an era of post-criticality, where the negativity of critical theory and pedagogy (which likewise retains some value) is balanced out by what Hodgson et al. (2017) have called "a love for the world" (p. 18). Certainly, research in the social sciences, including education, has seen a methodological expansion from quantitative to more subjective qualitative approaches, now beginning to be complemented by contemplative methods (Ergas, 2014(Ergas, , 2019a. In parallel, education has seen a growing critique of the modernist, objectivist approach to knowledge, as built into highly standardized education systems, and a growing respect for reflective, first-person education, in the tradition of James, Dewey, and Freire, as a complement to third-person education (Barbezat & Bush, 2014;Bush, 2011;Ergas, 2019a;Owen-Smith, 2018). The openness to knowing oneself that this occasions naturally dovetails with an openness to knowing others, perhaps best reflected in today's aforementioned COIL initiatives. Interestingly, there is also some overlap between contemplative practices and the recent valorization of "slow approaches" to teaching, learning, and research (e.g., Berg & Seeber, 2016;Boulous Walker, 2017;Frith, 2020;Miedema, 2009).
Third, the contemplative turn is grounded in our current stage of scientific development, with evidence now accumulating of the benefits of mindfulness (Ergas & Todd, 2016;Goleman & Davidson, 2017), as espoused in both Eastern (notably Buddhist) and Western contemplative traditions (Owen-Smith, 2018). Neuroscience has shown that sustained mindfulness practice can lead to intentional shaping of the brain through self-directed neuroplasticity (Hanson & Mendius, 2009;Schwartz et al., 2005), with such neurogenesis being activity-dependent (Lillard & Erisir, 2011); that is, regularly repeated experiences, behaviors, and practices can alter the brain and body (Goleman & Davidson, 2017), impacting neurological and psychological functions (Schwartz et al., 2005), including attentional and emotional regulation (Goleman & Davidson, 2017). The construct of mindfulness thus "bridges spiritual traditions and their focus on transforming the 'self' with the evidence-based understanding of the habits of mind offered by contemporary sciences" (Palalas, 2019b, p. 113). Goleman and Davidson (2017) distinguish between a "deep path" of mindfulness, practiced by monks and dedicated meditators and linked to the Buddhist tradition of self-transformation, and a "wide path" involving the mainstreaming of meditation techniques for secular therapeutic purposes. The latter "minimalist" version of a Buddhist approach (Gethin, 2013, p. 275), despite the pseudoscientific hype that sometimes accompanies it, has shown considerable promise. Following some interest in contemplative practices in the 1960s and preliminary research in the 1970s (Goleman & Davidson, 2017;Page, 2019), the spread of wide-path mindfulness accelerated from 1979 onwards with the introduction of secular clinical mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) practices as described by Kabat-Zinn in 1990 (with his seminal book later revised and republished as Kabat-Zinn, 2013). His empirically supported MBSR program has entered mainstream medicine and society, becoming widely accepted as a treatment for various psychological and medical disorders, and for promoting general well-being (Ergas, 2014;Goleman & Davidson, 2017;Page, 2019).
The growing interest in mindfulness has produced some conceptual pluralism (Goleman & Davidson, 2017;Owen-Smith, 2018). Nevertheless, core notions relating to awareness and attention span all scholarly discourse, with mindfulness characterized as involving attention, intention, and attitude (Ergas, 2019b); awareness, presence, and acceptance (Owen-Smith, 2018); or presentcentered, non-evaluative, non-reflective awareness (Berthon & Pitt, 2019, with ref. to Kornfield, 1977. Perhaps the best-known definition of mindfulness that embraces these concepts comes from Kabat-Zinn (2013): "the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally" (pp. 28-29). Sometimes misunderstood, non-judgment does not mean avoiding all evaluation but rather distancing ourselves from reactive or habitual judgments to create a clear space for more reflective and discerning choices.
Highly relevant to educational settings is the socio-cognitive lens offered by Langer (1993), who views mindfulness as "a state of mind that results from drawing novel distinctions, examining information from new perspectives, and being sensitive to context" (p. 44), and indeed recognizing the conditional nature of information. Langer (2016) elaborates that a mindful approach entails "the continuous creation of new categories; openness to new information; and an implicit awareness of more than one perspective", which stands in direct contrast to the mindlessness of "being on automatic pilot" (p. 4). Taking a mindful approach and being aware of changing contexts affords an ability to make skillful choices about where to place attention. With educational settings in mind, and in light of Langer's research, we therefore adopt the following working definition of mindfulness: the mental capacity to pay attention intentionally and non-judgmentally to an object of choice while remaining aware of changing experiences and contexts.
For lasting effects, it is essential to develop the "muscle of mindfulness" (Kabat-Zinn, 2013, p. 27) through systematic intentional practice. In other words, an investment of time and energy is required at the "mental gym" (Goleman & Davidson, 2017, p. 309) where the muscle of attention can be trained (Levy, 2016, p. 40). Indeed, all well-designed mindfulness practices, starting with traditional meditation techniques, "at their root are practices in strengthening attention" (Goleman & Davidson, 2017, p. 306). Beyond regular meditation, mindfulness can be cultivated through a host of everyday contemplative practices, such as mindful breathing, open awareness, walking meditation, mindful yoga, and more (Ergas 2019b;Palalas, 2019b;Scida & Jones, 2017).
The foregoing discussion highlights the interplay of awareness and intention -key pillars of a mindful approach, alongside non-judgment -which facilitates conscious choices about what to pay attention to and when. If this is important in education as a whole, it is especially important in digital education. In online or blended spaces where our minds are agitated by competing stimuli, the ability to maintain our attentional balance is critical. We therefore need to develop the literacy, or skillset, to manage awareness and attention in such settings. More than a decade ago, Rheingold (2009) suggested that mindfulness can be a tool for developing "attention literacy", a notion that has been gaining traction of late: for Palalas (2018), mindfulness offers a pathway to the "solid digital literacy and 'attention literacy' skills" (p. 23) needed to navigate distractions, while attention literacy and critical literacy are likely to be mutually reinforcing (Palalas, 2019a); for Wenger (2019), mindfulness can help build students' "attention literacy", described as "the ability to consciously deploy and understand the impact of attention in our new media culture" (p. 55); and for Couros (2019), who likewise makes a link with mindfulness, "attention literacy" is critical to reclaiming our commodified, scarce attention.
At the intersection of work on digital literacies -including "attention literacy" as outlined above -and mindfulness, we propose the concept of attentional literacy, which we take to mean: the ability to intentionally direct one's attention, in the present moment, toward information originating from the self, others, and the environment (whether analogue, digital, or blended), and to sustain that attention by choice, while becoming aware of and remaining non-judgmental towards new perspectives, multiple viewpoints, and shifting contexts. Such attentional literacy results in an awareness of available choices and the capacity to intelligently select what, and what not, to focus attention on -a vital skillset within and beyond education in our era of digital disarray.

What Does Attentional Literacy Offer (Digital) Education?
The extent of the benefits which mindfulness offers education depends in part on the extent of its embeddedness within education. What Ergas (2019b) terms mindfulness in education typically entails discrete therapeutic interventions at the level of existing classes, while mindfulness as education suggests a holistic approach at the level of an institution, and mindfulness of education implies a radical-critical transformation at the level of the whole education system. Attentional literacy lends itself to introduction at the in level but has implications for the as and even of levels. What is clear is that mindfulness, and attentional literacy as a construct linking it to digital literacies, is broadly aligned with an education-as-empowerment as opposed to an education-as-control narrative (Pegrum, 2019b) or, in an alternative conceptualization, with education as a selfdevelopment path as opposed to education as an economic tool (Ergas, 2019a(Ergas, , 2019b. Mindfulness leads to a broadening of epistemology and what is considered as knowledge (Ergas, 2019a). Rejecting standardization and prepackaged information (Langer, 2000;Langer & Moldoveanu, 2000;Sherretz, 2011), it opens up space for the kind of reflective, first-person education mentioned earlier. While a detailed exploration of mindful pedagogy is beyond the scope of this paper, the published research is suggestive of a general alignment between mindfulness and (social) constructivism (e.g., Sherretz, 2011), learning that is contextualized within individuals' lives, situated in the here and now, and embodied (e.g., Berila, 2016;Ergas, 2019a;Langer, 2000), and critical and anti-oppression pedagogies (e.g., Berila, 2016;Helmer, 2014).
But it is when we are confronted with digital disarray, inside and outside the classroom, that attentional literacy may have the most to offer. It is widely accepted that mindfulness can help us deal with the distractions of digital and mobile environments (Berthon & Pitt, 2019;Palalas, 2019b) and the inefficient and ineffective multitasking behaviours they occasion (Page, 2019;Palalas, 2018); focused attention is, after all, precisely "non-multitasking" (Wallace, 2006, p. 38). Mobile learners, especially, may benefit from a strengthened learning focus, whether that entails closing out distracting information in location-independent tasks, or zooming in on relevant information in location-dependent tasks (Palalas, 2018). Attentional literacy can also contribute to addressing digital disorder, as students learn to determine their own informational needs (Palalas, 2018) while resisting being swept up in the mélange of misinformation and disinformation propagated by attention-hungry algorithms (Pegrum, 2019b).
Importantly, attentional literacy may help ameliorate digital disconnection. From a mindfulness perspective, a connection to the self and a connection to others are naturally interwoven (Barbezat & Bush, 2014;Bush, 2011;Tobin, 2018), as seen in the context of whole-person, or holistic, education (Berila, 2016;Ergas, 2019a;Palalas, 2019b) and SEL (Durlak et al., 2016). One of the strongest themes to emerge in research on mindfulness concerns its role in building non-judgmental awareness of multiple perspectives (Berila, 2016;Langer & Moldoveanu, 2000;Sherretz, 2011) regarding both the self and others: a mindful person benefits from an "awareness of the multiplicity of the ways in which she can engage with the contents of her own mind, and the multiplicity of ways she can engage with the world" (Moldoveanu, 2016, p. 26).
Where attentional literacy overlaps with intercultural and ethical literacy -notably in COILstudents may come to know themselves and others better in the process of engaging with difference in blended and online settings. Indeed, students may well encounter the limits of their own worldviews while learning to respect others' views grounded in different lived realities shaped by gender, sexuality, race, culture, and other forms of diversity (e.g., Tobin, 2018). Of central importance is not just an intellectual appreciation of multiple perspectives, but a sense of connection, empathy, and compassion (Barbezat & Bush 2014;Durlak et al., 2016;Goleman & Davidson, 2017;Owen-Smith, 2018). Notwithstanding design challenges in COIL (O'Dowd & Ritter, 2006;Ware, 2017), it can potentially serve as a vehicle for the development of attentional literacy, incorporating a mindful connection to the self and others, as students hone the intra-and interpersonal skills they need to become global (digital) citizens committed to building a more ethical and sustainable world in which they are ready to contribute to addressing today's planetary challenges (Barbezat & Bush, 2014;Owen-Smith, 2018;Tobin, 2018).

Conclusion: Future Directions in Attentional Literacy Research
This position paper has made an initial case for the educational value of attentional literacy, a construct which links digital literacies and mindfulness research, and which holds the potential to help address the effects of digital disarray -including digital distraction, digital disorder, and digital disconnection -both within education and in the wider world outside educational institutions.
It is of course vital to retain a critical lens, recognizing the risks of secularizing ancient mindfulness traditions (Forbes, 2019) or, conversely, proselytizing within secular education systems (Ergas, 2019a); the dangers of a hollowed-out 'McMindfulness' (Purser & Loy, 2013) that may be twisted to serve commercial (and even military) ends, helping to buttress neoliberal capitalism and offering apparently easy individual therapies for structural problems in society and education (Ergas, 2014;Forbes, 2019;Hyland, 2016); and, finally, the potential intrusiveness of expecting students' ready participation in personal mindfulness practices, given a number of documented cases of "dark night" or other adverse psychological experiences (Burrows, 2018;Goleman & Davidson, 2017).
Notwithstanding such unresolved issues, attentional literacy appears to offer some promise of ameliorating the effects of digital disarray and enriching education. Yet there is still much to be learned. From a practical perspective, future research needs to examine how best to operationalize attentional literacy (for instance, with the support of contemplative practices) within our learning designs, before implementing these designs and conducting empirical investigations of the outcomes. From a more philosophical perspective, future studies should consider its deeper implications relating to emotional and even, broadly, spiritual issues around intra-and interpersonal connections. In this paper we have sought to begin a conversation on attentional literacy, but there remains much more to be said.