Contemplative Education Commons^™

9th Gsep Research Symposium - 2025

GSEP Research Symposium

The Ninth Annual GSEP Research Symposium, themed "Building Bridges to Elevate Humanity: Innovations and Insights in Education and Psychology", was hosted by the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP) on June 19–20, 2025, at the historic Château d’Hauteville in Switzerland and virtually via Zoom.

This hybrid symposium convened a vibrant global community of students, alumni, faculty, and scholars to share research that addresses real-world challenges, advances scholarly inquiry, and builds pathways for inclusive collaboration and leadership. Spanning a wide array of topics—from artificial intelligence and mental health to trauma-informed practices, educational equity, social justice, and cross-cultural leadership—the …

Empowering Writers: Integrating Digital Prewriting Tools In The Research Writing Process, Heather A. Rundo

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This practitioner article explores the integration of digital prewriting tools, specifically MindMeister and VoiceThread, in a high school sophomore honors English class during a research writing unit. The author, a classroom teacher, discusses the challenges students face in research writing and seeks to enhance their confidence and organization skills. Drawing insights from student and teacher perspectives on writing strengths and weaknesses, the article delves into the significance of prewriting as a fundamental component of the writing process.

Extracting From The Extracurriculum: Using Extracurricular Composition Practices To Bring Purpose, Voice, And Engagement Back To The English Classroom, Grace N. Ellis

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores how principles and practices from extracurricular literacy spaces and the extracurriculum as a whole can inform and revitalize the secondary English classroom. In response to growing student disengagement, apathy, and disconnection, particularly within highly standardized and product-focused classrooms, this argument investigates how programs such as the Nebraska Writers Collective’s All Writes Reserved program and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Young Writer Camp model authentic engagement, identity exploration and development, and rhetorical agency through creative, student-centered writing practices. Drawing from composition theory, educational research, and experiential data from Nebraska-based writing initiatives, the thesis argues that incorporating choice, safe-risk taking, …

How A Garden Hoe Changed My Literacy Life: A Story Of Teaching, Coaching, And Becoming, Kelsey J. Walker

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

In this dissertation, I explore how personal practical experiences teaching reading intervention impacted my own understanding of the role of a secondary literacy coach. Drawing on the concepts of dialogism and adult learning theory, I leveraged learning conversations to grow my own body of knowledge. The methodology of this study was done using narrative inquiry and autoethnography. This methodological blend allowed me to closely study myself as the primary participant with a unique positionality as a scholarly practitioner. I unpack the complexities, contradictions, and tensions of my lived experience through stories and vignettes set in a rural midwestern public school …

We Speak Life Into Their Language: Black Educators’ Approaches To Linguistic Justice In Urban Secondary Ela Classrooms, Lakeisha A. Davis

Dissertations

This study explores how Black educators navigate linguistic justice, deficit thinking, and stereotypes in urban secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, it examines how teachers affirm Black Language (BL) while balancing the demands of White Mainstream English (WME) in academic spaces. Findings reveal that although educators employ culturally affirming strategies, they face challenges from restrictive language policies and standardized assessments. To counteract these barriers, they adopt negotiation practices that support students’ linguistic and cultural identities. From these findings, the study proposes Dynamic Linguistic Uplift (DLU)—a new theoretical framework that illustrates how Black educators sustain BL …

Welcome Back: A New Beginning For The Intersections Journal, Mary F. Rice

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

In good faith, we are proud to publish this very short issue this month, containing this editorial explanation and with an invitation to submit articles, essays, artistic works, book reviews, and more. It would also be excellent for those who are interested in this project aimed at continuing to make space for critical social justice work to sign up to review and provide feedback and response to authors. The issue also has an excellent essay about language work and the revitalizing it through podcasting with Dr. David A. Wilson and a book review of This Will Not Be Generative by …

A Longitudinal Analysis Of Navigating Ethical Reflections Through The Evolution Of Information Profession Dreams, Rahmi Rahmi, Rusdan Kamil

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This study presents a longitudinal analysis of the ethical reflections and evolving professional aspirations of students in the Information Profession course at Universitas Indonesia. Through reflective writing exercises, 192 students explored their future career goals and addressed ethical challenges related to professional documentation, focusing on issues such as privacy, integrity, and responsibility. Using corpus analysis tools like AntConc, the research tracked changes in ethical concerns as students progressed in their studies, revealing an increasing awareness of ethical complexities, particularly in roles like archivist and data analyst. These findings offer valuable insights for developing profession-specific ethical guidelines for information professionals.

A Qualitative Study Of Iranian Efl Teachers’ Perceptions Of A Digital Diversified Education, Seyed Mohammad Reza Marvasti Zadeh, Azizollah Dabaghi Varnosfadrani Advarnosfadrani, Mohammad Amiryousefi

The Qualitative Report

Because Iran is a country of learners of diverse languages, socio-economic classes, genders, and ages, digital diversified education seems appropriate to address needs in English language education. However, there is a notable gap in research on teachers’ perceptions about this type of education. To fill this gap, this study aimed to investigate the perspectives of Iranian teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) regarding a diverse digital education. Data were collected via an open-ended survey with 30 EFL teachers, both male and female, who were selected through convenience sampling. Analysis revealed several key themes, including the utilization of diverse …

Your Story, Your Life, Your Learning: Autobiography Reveals Basis For Supporting Personalized, Holistic Pedagogy, Michael Maser

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Each person ongoingly experiences the world uniquely through vital processes shaping their subjectivity, personhood and sense of self. Learning, an innate characteristic or modality of each human life, of living, likewise arises subjectively or idiosyncratically. In this paper, a phenomenological lens is applied to auto/biographical excerpts concerned with various learning experiences to help reveal essential, subjective characteristics of emergent learning. The insights help establish a basis for challenging the primacy of objectivist learning evaluations. The insights also confirm the importance of personalizing learning as a pedagogical gesture nurturing and enfranchising student learning in significant ways beyond conventional educational approaches …

A Science Teacher’S Experiences When Fostering Intercultural Competence Among Students In Multilingual Classrooms: A Narrative Study, Uma Ganesan, Amanda R. Morales

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Increased globalization of the world economy, growth in human migration, and rapid devel-opments in science and technology have required people to develop intercultural commu-nication skills. Teachers play a crucial role in developing intercultural competence among students in our globalized, multilingual classrooms. The need for fostering collaborative discourse among students with diverse cultural and linguistic repertoires and building in-tercultural competence among students is a common blind spot in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics teacher praxis. This can inhibit efforts to cultivate safe and supportive learning environments for all students and can ultimately threaten multilingual student success. As part of a larger …

Letter From The Editor In Chief, Jeffrey Lee

Transform

The TRANSFORM journal is a space for leaders, mentors, researchers, and practitioners of transformational leadership to be seen, heard, and valued; it is a place for making connections. Relationship-building is central to transformational leadership at all levels of an organization; this fundamental truth is a trending topic in literature. Otherwise, however, leadership can be an isolating experience.

As an ethnographer, I believe the best way to launch an academic, peer-reviewed journal is to do what I do best: storytelling. I want to share my thoughts on transformational leadership through a story in the form of a letter to my younger …

Introduction To A Universal Performance Improvement Method (Chigen-Iku), Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

This brief article introduces a universal performance improvement method called Chigen-iku, which has been developed carefully and extensively over more than 25 years through more than 100 individual and group projects based on the principles that were selected through my doctorial study in the field of Instructional Psychology and Technology.