Offering an original application of the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina to the humanities, this book demonstrates the need for further emphasis on deep reading, reflection, and contemplation in contemporary university classrooms. Each chapter provides readers with an historical overview of the four movements of this monastic method: lectio (reading), meditatio (interpreting), oratio (responding), and contemplatio (experiencing wisdom), and suggests ways to incorporate these practices in humanites courses. Keator demonstrates that the lectio divina method is a viable pedagogical tool to guide students slowly and methodically through literary texts and into a subjective experience of wisdom and meaning.
Contemplative pedagogy is a way for instructors to: empower students to integrate their own experience into the theoretical material they are being taught in order to deepen their understanding; help students to develop sophisticated problem-solving skills; support students’ sense of connection to and compassion for others; and engender inquiries into students’ most profound questions. Contemplative practices are used in just about every discipline—from physics to economics to history—and are found in every type of institution. Each year more and more faculty, education reformers, and leaders of teaching and learning centers seek out best practices in contemplative teaching, and now can find them here, brought to you by two of the foremost leaders and innovators on the subject. This book presents background information and ideas for the practical application of contemplative practices across the academic curriculum from the physical sciences to the humanities and arts. Examples of contemplative techniques included in the book are mindfulness, meditation, yoga, deep listening, contemplative reading and writing, and pilgrimage, including site visits and field trips.
The Whole Person: Embodying Teaching and Learning through Lectio and Visio Divina offers readers a rich collection of voices from diverse settings that illustrates the ways in which lectio divina as a contemplative practice can transform teaching and learning.Growing from ancient roots, lectio divina as a contemplative practice and part of contemplative pedagogy, aligns with many efforts in the 21st century to investigate how whole persons can be engaged in learning and how they can develop into their best human selves.Lectio divina, a four-step process of deep reading and viewing, is aligned with the tenets of holistic education; it is an evolving tapestry of embodied learning, creating spaces that empower teachers and students to be rooted in their own meaning making and to develop as whole persons. Lectio divina holds power to help people develop agency and voice in troubling times, all the while understanding themselves as human beings in a hyper-complex world. Using lectio divina in the classroom educates the whole person evoking the mind, spirit and body in a transformative learning experience.
"This volume contributes to an understanding of the importance and implications of a contemplative grounding for higher education. It is the fourth in a series entitled Advances in Workplace Spirituality: Theory, Research and Application, which is intended to be an authoritative and comprehensive series in the field. The volume consists of chapters written by noted scholars from both Eastern and Western traditions that shed light on these questions"--
The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies provides the first authoritative overview of methodology in this growing field. Against the background of the pandemic and other global challenges, spirituality is expanding as an agreed term with which to discuss the efforts people make to be fully present to deeper, invisible dimensions of their personal identity and external reality, but until now there have been few resources exploring the different methodological approaches researchers take. This book explores the primary methodologies emerging: First Person, Second Person, and Third Person, and provides a systematisation of spirituality research in applied contexts for the first time. Comprising 33 chapters by a team of international contributors, the book is divided into seven parts: Foundations Approaches to Contemplative Research Contemplative Research in Education Contemplative Research in Work and Leadership Contemplative Research in Science, Health, and Healing Contemplative Research in Social Sciences Contemplative Research and the Way Forward The Handbook provides readers, practitioners, and policymakers with methods and approaches which can facilitate a spiritual and contemplative stance in research activities. It is an essential resource for researchers and students of Religion, Spirituality, and Research Methods.
Recasting burnout as a crucial phase of service, Building Resilience Through Contemplative Practice uses real-world case studies to teach professionals and volunteers unique skills for cultivating resilience. Viewing service and burnout as interdependent throughout phases of stability, collapse, reorganization, and exploitation, the book uniquely combines elements of adaptive resilience theory with contemplative practices and pedagogies. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience working at the intersection of service and contemplative practices, this is the first book to demonstrate how and why professionals and volunteers can reframe burnout as an opportunity for resilience-building service. User-friendly case studies provide tools, skills, and exercises for reconstructive next steps. Chapters address personal, group, and structural levels of service and burnout. Illuminating the link between adaptive resilience and burnout as a normal and useful phase of service, Building Resilience Through Contemplative Practice is a necessary resource for professionals and volunteers across a wide range of service settings.
bell hooks—feminist scholar, teacher, activist—implored instructors to see the classroom as a “radical space of possibility” where students and teachers work as partners in the pursuit of education as “collective liberation” from structures of domination. hooks’ call takes on more urgency today, as oppressive and dominant ideologies continue to perpetuate racial, economic, gender, and other social inequities both within the classroom and society at large. Through critical commentary reflections on classroom experiences and original teaching activities, the authors in bell hooks' Engaged Pedagogy for the 21st Century Classroom: Radical Spaces of Possibility provide inspiration for teachers with the will to learn and the courage to teach about intersecting systems of oppression in meaningful, radical ways. The goal of this collection is to carry forth hooks’ legacy of education as freedom and to serve as a guide that renews faith that “teaching to transgress” racist, sexist, and classist systems of oppression is not only possible, but is a first step in transforming the world.
The Soul of Learning is a groundbreaking book that bridges together cultural work, contemplative practices, and ancient scriptures. Inside each chapter, readers are challenged and inspired to come face-to-face with themselves as they encounter teachers in all forms—from spiritual sages to critical theorists, from prophets to poets, from hip-hop rappers to reggae artists. This book is multifaceted and multidisciplinary. It models the essence of education by offering multiple entry points into holistic learning: somatic, aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, ethical, relational, and spiritual. The Soul of Learning embodies a pedagogical disruption in pursuit of personal sovereignty. What process must we go through to reimagine ourselves in relation to each other and the world around us? This book offers a semblance of an answer. As a way to bring the sacred into schooling, Keator and Watson courageously connect spirituality, activism, and education through curated readings, guided activities, and intentional exercises. It’s a ready-to-go syllabus and hands-on workbook all in one! Altogether this book is revelatory and provides innovative ways to teach and learn, lead and live. The Soul of Learning documents a transformative journey, through the interiority of our being into a revolutionary call for collective belonging.
A teacher’s self-care guide for building resilience, boosting emotional strength, and finding hope in the face of daily stress and overwhelming challenges. If you’re an educator who works with children, you often face intense pressure in the classroom. This was true before the pandemic, but now you may be feeling it even more. You aren’t alone. From having to adapt to remote learning on the spot, to balancing the impacts of the pandemic on your personal life, many teachers are experiencing record levels of stress, trauma, and burnout. In addition, as an entire generation of students struggle to meet the academic and social emotional learning (SEL) challenges caused by a extended remote learning, you may be dealing with kids who are anxious, traumatized, and likely a year or two behind developmentally as they return to the classroom. It’s a lot to manage, and you may feel like you are at your breaking point. Written by an educational director at the Greater Good Science Center, Surviving Teacher Burnout is a 52-week self-care guide for teachers that features simple, low-lift strategies for increasing resilience and fostering greater well-being, confidence, and hope. Grounded in research-based positive psychology, the book offers tons of practical activities and journal-style prompts to help you cultivate feelings of gratitude, optimism, mindfulness, forgiveness, empathic joy, self-compassion, purpose, and curiosity—so you can return to your classroom each day with renewed energy and inspiration. You’ll also find doable strategies to share with other educators to help infuse more positive energy in classrooms and schools, and create more supportive systems that promote a sense of meaning, belonging, and connectedness among teachers and students. If you’re like many educators, you may feel you lack the time and energy to engage in self-care practices. This guide offers bite-sized insights and activities that are simple, approachable, and usable, so you can thrive in the classroom, in your community, and in life!
In our current systems of education, there is a trend toward compartmentalizing knowledge, standardizing assessments of learning, and focusing primarily on quantifiable and positivist forms of inquiry. Contemplative inquiry, on the other hand, takes us on a transformative pathway toward wisdom, morality, integrity, equanimity, and joy (Zajonc, 2009). These holistic learning practices are needed as a counterbalance to the over-emphasis on positivism that we see today. In addition to learning quantifiable information, we also need to learn to be calmer, wiser, kinder, and happier. This book aims to find and share various pathways leading to these ends. This book will describe educational endeavors in various settings that use contemplative pedagogies to enable students to achieve deep learning, peace, tranquility, equanimity, and wisdom to gain new understanding about self and life, and to grow holistically. Embodiment is a central concept in this book. We hope to highlight strategies for exploring internal wisdoms through engaging ourselves beyond simply the rational mind. Contemplative pedagogies such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, dance, arts, poetry, reflective writing and movements, can help students embody what they learn by integrating their body, heart, mind, and spirit.
