Contemplative Education Commons^™

Managing The "Trauma Dump" In Personal Statement Writing, Faith Kurtyka, Amelia Harahap

Feminist Pedagogy

This critical commentary offers methods for helping students who may "trauma dump" in personal statements learn to write their stories for a wide audience in a way that preserves the writer's dignity.

Using Research-Focused Llms, David Farnsworth, Elizabeth Stone

Faculty Presentations on AI

This hands-on workshop introduces university faculty to practical AI tools that support the full academic research workflow, from initial discovery to synthesis and writing. Participants explore the “Big 5” research tools—Perplexity.ai, Scite.ai, Elicit.com, ResearchRabbit, and SciSpace.com—along with Google’s Gemini extensions and NotebookLM, a source-grounded AI designed to analyze uploaded documents while maintaining privacy and providing live citations. The session demonstrates how these tools can accelerate literature reviews, fact-checking, visual mapping of citations, and deep synthesis of complex sources. Faculty also learn strategies for integrating AI responsibly into teaching, including helping students manage bibliographies, using AI for rubric-based feedback, and creating …

Ai Strategies For Effective Teaching & Learning, Dr. Jared Johnston, Prof. Adrian Caraballo

Faculty Presentations on AI

This presentation discusses strategies for effectively integrating artificial intelligence into college classrooms, with a focus on developing AI literacy among students and faculty. Core principles highlight AI as a tool for augmentation rather than replacement, with faculty maintaining oversight while supporting learner preparation, clinical reasoning, and reflective practice. The session stresses the need to rethink course and activity design in the AI era, training students to strategically offload tasks without cognitively offloading thinking. Practical guidance includes questions for intentional integration, experiential learning approaches, and real-world classroom examples from operational leadership courses in which students apply AI within authentic educational leadership …

Ai In The Classroom, Dr. Adrian E. Hinkle, Dr. Amanda Wilson, Dr. Jan H. R. Wörner

Faculty Presentations on AI

This presentation examines how educators can thoughtfully integrate artificial intelligence into the classroom while upholding academic integrity, ethical engagement, and the core mission of education. It draws on historical parallels—from ancient concerns about writing to later fears surrounding typing—to frame AI as a double-edged sword that can offload routine cognitive tasks yet risks eroding the mental discipline and critical thinking essential for deep learning. Centered on the guiding question of what students truly need to learn and how technology can help them achieve it, the session offers practical assignment frameworks, such as designing an AI-supported ministry plan and developing a …

Ai In Scholarship, Dr. Tim Hart

Faculty Presentations on AI

This presentation explores the appropriate role of artificial intelligence in scholarly work, distinguishing between uses that support academic rigor and those that undermine intellectual responsibility. While cautioning against reliance on AI for original argumentation, unverified literature reviews, data interpretation, and normative judgments, it highlights practical applications across the research lifecycle, including ideation, literature exploration, argument refinement, structural analysis, reviewer simulation, and manuscript preparation.

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Additions To Nursing Education: Accommodating The Complexity Of Today’S Populations And Assuring Evidence-Based Pathways Of Patient-Centered Care, Jamie Anne Marcus, Bonnette Villalba Webb, Abigail Pauline Batin Villarroya

FDLA Journal

Predicted demographic changes in the rising older than 65 populations with possible declining mental and physical health mandate adaptations to new professional nursing roles that will incorporate technology, and changing policy environments. Nursing experience, knowledge, and skills will transition to new cognitive pathways to think and process information. Nurses will be supported by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and become information integrators, health coaches, and continue to be deliverers of human caring. New transition pathways in nursing education to meet the needs of these diverse populations, and patient complex presentations will transcend to synergizing and optimize digital-age healthcare environments and assure …

Introduction: Facing The Challenge Of Ai With Feminist Pedagogy, Margaret A. Murray

Feminist Pedagogy

This special issue truly faces the challenge of AI with feminist pedagogy. The introduction briefly summarizes the five critical commentaries, five original teaching activities and three book reviews that make up this issue on AI.

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 …

Slow Reading Course Evaluations: From Discomfort To Discovery, Brian Baldi, Colleen M. Kuusinen

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) help faculty to get feedback on their teaching, identify areas of strength and growth, and document their teaching effectiveness from the student perspective. While much has been written about whether or not student evaluations are biased (Benton & Cashin, 2012; Kogan, et al., 2010; Shorter, 2023), about the validity of student evaluations in measuring student learning (Uttl et al., 2017), and how to interpret data (Davis, 2009; Hoover-Dempsey n.d.; Lewis, 2001; Linse, 2017; Perlmutter, 2011; Petchers & Chow, 1988; Reibman, 2004), we offer a new, mindful approach to reading student evaluations that might help instructors …

Nurturing The Student Voice And Its Creative Power In Mathematics Teaching And Learning: Research With Students On Emotion, Imagination, And Understanding., Luis Adolfo Zambrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research in mathematics education explores the teaching and learning of mathematics at the high school and community college levels, integrating diverse research methods to examine how educators can cultivate a dynamic, collaborative, and responsive classroom climate. Framed by K. Tobin and K. Alexakos’s authentic inquiry education research framework (2020), the methodology actively engages students as co-researchers, valuing their insights and experiences as integral to the learning process. This approach fosters a meaningful dialogue on managing emotional and cognitive challenges faced by students of mathematics while identifying strategies to support and enhance students’ innate imaginative and creative capacities.

Grounded in …

Imagination: Bridging The Intended, Delivered, And Received Curricula, Vicki Boley Dr., Paul A. Michalec Dr.

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper explores the transformative potential of imagination in higher education, particularly its capacity to bridge the intended, delivered, and received curricula. Through a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews with graduate students, the research highlights how imagination fosters holistic, socially just, and humanizing educational experiences that transcend traditional instructional boundaries, encouraging student ownership and creative engagement in the higher education classroom and beyond.

Famílias Indigenas Entre Mundos: Standing In Pachakuti, Living In Chi’Xi Within The Constellation Of Their Comunidad De Saberes, Ymasumac Marañón Davis

Dissertations

To be Indigenous is to be la luz del mundo, to stand in your light and spread your sunrays, no matter winds or clouds of colonization that strive to dim you. This qualitative study explored ways Indigenous Latine families negotiate a sense of place within onto-epistemological realities and their home culture of learning and Western education. This research is desire-based (Eve Tuck, 2009), creating our own project of modernity, grounded in one Indigenous family’s experience within their Andean community. Drawing from Critical Latine Indigeneities Framework (Blackwell et al., 2017) and Chicana Feminist Epistemologies (Bernal, 1998), using an Entre Mundos methodology, …

Mindfulness 101: Integrating Mindfulness Into The First-Year College Curriculum, Shelley Linso

Mindfulness Studies Theses

The college experience offers young people unique opportunities for personal growth and academic development. However, it is widely recognized that college and university students suffer from unprecedented rates of anxiety and depression. Mindfulness, often defined as paying attention on purpose, moment-to-moment, without judgment, has the potential to not only reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression but also to promote flourishing. By integrating mindfulness into the first-year college curriculum, educators facilitate students’ abilities to a) better understand their emotional responses so that they might navigate stress, relationships, and challenges with greater ease, b) better recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and make …

The Laughing Buddha: The Education Of Compassionate Leaders Through Improvisational Play, Belinda Chiu

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

With an urgency to build a generative future, educational systems do not have a choice but to pay attention to how and what we train our future leaders. Yet there is still a gap as leadership studies are often relegated as a “soft” skill, rather than integrated as technical knowledge critical to the holistic effectiveness of a tertiary education. As a result, there is often a disconnect between students immersed in the idealistic bubble of the academy and graduates navigating life outside. Inquiry- and reflective-based methods of contemplative practices may be critical for leaders to avoid short-term, short-sighted decisions that …

Wondrous Uncertainty: Transforming Student Educational Experiences Using Restorative Practices, Zachary C. Schafer

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

One of the primary purposes of education is to help students make sense of their lived experiences. In the process of becoming, students navigate multiple relationships (school, peers, adults, and with self). These relationships often cause conditions of uncertainty which can be managed and transformed using restorative practices in tandem with the academic disciplines taught in school. Over the last decade this has been my inquiry puzzle, “As educators, how can we embrace uncertainty with students as a way of helping to empower them through their dignity, with the academic disciplines as a lens through which relational learning occurs in …

Teaching The Grateful Dead, Happenings, & Spontaneous Pedagogy, Ryan Slesinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

To teach a course on the Grateful Dead I developed a praxis I call “spontaneous pedagogy” that pairs academic rigor with flexible curriculum details to enable creativity and engagement among students in a truly studentcentered classroom. The pairing of spontaneous pedagogy with the Grateful Dead course worked well because the subject emphasizes improvisation, which initially inspired and—during the course—paralleled my praxis. I had developed this praxis previously, implementing it each semester from 2007 to2010 for one Composition II unit on definitional arguments entitled, “The Nature of Reality.” Students were asked to define what they consider as real and apply that …

"A Life Altering And Special Journey": The Lasting Impact Of Mindfulness On Semester-Long Study Abroad Participants, Ana Conboy, Kevin Clancy

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Education abroad is held up as a high-impact practice with the potential to engage college and university students in a transformative learning experience (Kuh, 2008). The Institute for International Education (IIE) reports that 347,099 U.S. students received academic credit for study abroad during the 2018-2019 academic school year (IIE). Extensive research into student learning gains abroad have demonstrated that developing student metacognition, or one’s ability to be intentionally self-reflective, is central to transformative learning in the study abroad experience (Vande Berg et al., 2012; Zull, 2012). Consequently, international educators are continually searching for pedagogies (praxis) to facilitate metacognitive learning within …

"A Life Altering And Special Journey": The Lasting Impact Of Mindfulness On Semester-Long Study Abroad Participants, Ana Conboy, Kevin Clancy

Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Education abroad is held up as a high-impact practice with the potential to engage college and university students in a transformative learning experience (Kuh, 2008). The Institute for International Education (IIE) reports that 347,099 U.S. students received academic credit for study abroad during the 2018-2019 academic school year (IIE). Extensive research into student learning gains abroad have demonstrated that developing student metacognition, or one’s ability to be intentionally self-reflective, is central to transformative learning in the study abroad experience (Vande Berg et al., 2012; Zull, 2012). Consequently, international educators are continually searching for pedagogies (praxis) to facilitate metacognitive learning within …

Room For Breathing: Mindfulness, Currere, And Contemplative Practices In Teacher Education, Hongyu Wang, Jo Flory

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper explores the intersections of using autobiographical (currere) writing and mindful meditations as two forms of contemplative practices in teacher education, from the perspectives of both a secondary classroom teacher and a teacher educator. An experientially-based conceptual inquiry, it is contextualized through first-person autobiographical narrations reconstructed from the authors’ currere writings and mindfulness practices, in order to draw connections between both through the theme of making room for breathing. The pedagogical contexts surrounding how students practice mindfulness and currere in teacher education are discussed, and the body, emotions, temporality, space, and relationality are analyzed as intersecting and complementary …

Post-Truth's Effect On The Brain And The Future Self: A Critical Communication Pedagogy Response, David H. Kahl Jr.

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The university was created for the critical examination of ideas to seek truth. However, the proliferation of post-truth messages has made this goal more difficult to reach, creating an important communication pedagogy problem. Hegemonic forces create post-truth messages to mislead people and play to their existing beliefs in order to maintain and advance power. Post-truth messages are particularly effective because they cause cognitive overload and temporal discounting. Critical communication pedagogy (CCP) is a means by which instructors and students can evaluate post-truth messages. CCP allows for dialogue to reduce the cognitive issues that post-truth messages cause and allow for the …

Implications Of A Community-Based Learning Faculty Fellows Program To Facilitate Teaching And Learning In The Jesuit Tradition, Debra Fetherman, Julie Schumacher Cohen, Ovidiu Cocieru, Gerard Dumancas, Brian Snee, Patricia Wisniewski

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

The University of Scranton is one of the 28 Jesuit institutions of higher education located in the United States. Committed to community engagement and the development of Ignatian educators, a Community-Based Learning (CBL) Faculty Fellows Program was implemented academic year 2022-2023. The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm and the Engagement of Hope framework were used as models to develop, implement, and assess a CBL faculty development program. Program activities were designed to build faculty skills, capacities, and their identity as community-engaged practitioners. Lessons learned through program assessment on the impact on faculty’s transformation to Ignatian educators and their ability to imagine new …

An Inquiry Into Hope And Imagination In Jesuit Education: Ignatian Design Thinking As A Lens For Exploration, Stacy Neier Beran, Patrick M. Green

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Hope and imagination are foundational to a Jesuit education, and as central tenets, inform teaching and learning through Ignatian pedagogy. The authors explore hope and imagination in the Jesuit context through the lens of scholar-practitioner inquiry, drawing from the local context and practice of an Ignatian design thinking course as a source of knowledge. This inquiry approach is rooted in practice-based research, and situates scholarly exploration through lines of inquiry and problems of practice, specifically exploring how design thinking fosters curiosity and creates space for teaching imagination and hope. The authors draw on their teaching experiences, course design, and professional …

Silence As An Educational Tool To Deconstruct Normative Societal Structures And Create Epistemic Trust, Milad Mohebali, Elmira Jangjou

Feminist Pedagogy

This article advances a teaching strategy to help students reflect on how they engage in class discussion by considering silence and silencing of voices in classroom discussions among peers as epistemic violence where a student’s capacity as a knower is questioned. We provide examples of silence(ing) we experienced as graduate international students from the Global South studying educational policy and leadership studies in the United States, to then share how we have used silence as a pedagogical tool to deconstruct the assumptions of the field and the society that keeps the silence as normative. We introduce third thinging as a …

Teaching To Develop Perspective, Skills, Confidence, And Identity As Problem-Solving Engineers, Russell Kirk Pirlo

Research and Reflection on Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

The “core” of an engineering degree program typically comprises the concepts, equations, and technical skills needed, as well as their practical application to common problems of the profession. This core is then divided into the “content” that must be covered in each course. It is widely recognized, however, that successful individuals do not thrive as professionals on content alone. Thus, there is significant and increasing emphasis across higher education to “educate the whole person.” These efforts aim to develop “deep” qualities like grit, critical thinking, perseverance, learning from failure, valuing diversity, teamwork, leadership, curiosity, recognizing opportunity, creating value, and acting …

How Doctoral Students In A Formal Leadership Program Conceptualize Followership: A Mixed-Methods Study, Katy J. Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

The purpose of this exploratory mixed-methods study was to determine how doctoral students in a formal leadership program conceptualize followership. The methods used to conduct this analysis included distributing a Qualtrics (released in August 2022) survey and conducting one-on-one interviews with a sample of degree-seeking doctoral students within a formal leadership program. The researcher collected quantitative and qualitative data addressing students’ followership style, leadership attitudes and beliefs, and perceptions of followership. These data were analyzed concurrently using a triangulation design. A total of 67 students completed the survey, and seven students were interviewed. The findings revealed that the participants employ …

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.

“Why You Always So Political?”: A Counterstory About Educational-Environmental Racism At A Predominantly White University, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using critical race counterstorytelling, I tell a story about the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at private, historically and predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, document analyses, and literature on race and space and racism in higher education, I argue that the racially hostile campus environment experienced by MMAX students at their respective university manifests itself as a form of educational-environmental racism. Through narrated dialogue, Aurora (a composite character) and I delve into a critical conversation about how educational-environmental racism is experienced by MMAX students through a racialized landscape in the …

Talking With Faculty About Cognitive Science And Learning, John Girash

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

When it comes to teaching, faculty at a research-intensive institution can be very much like our students in relation to their studies: very smart people whose primary interests lie elsewhere or, at least, whose expertise is not in this area. And we hear over and over again the common wisdom that faculty want research-based ideas on teaching. This implies that we can treat the teaching of teachers about research-supported aspects of learning in ways analogous to teaching students about other academic topics.

In introducing research-based ideas into the pedagogical discussion, it can be tough to find a balance between concepts …