Humane Education Commons^™

The Craft Store, David W. Jardine

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This poetic expression focuses on beingness, attention, and our creations and perceptions of beingness and the implications that flow from those perceptions, some of them having to do with how we relate to one another.

Dr. David W. Jardine is a retired University of Calgary Professor who spent years thinking, reading, teaching and writing about the kinships between ecological thinking, pedagogy and hermeneutics. His latest book is "Why Study for A Future We Won't Have?" Commiserations and Encouragement for Ecologically Sorrowful Times, and the forthcoming “[This Ain’t] No Nature Poetry: On Education, Scholarship, and Ecological Mirth.”

Maintaining Well-Being: Coping Strategies For Prolonged Traumatic Experiences From The Stories Of Ukrainian Educators During The Wartime, Natalya Rakevich

Educational Studies Dissertations

This qualitative, phenomenological study aimed to better understand how and whether educators can maintain well-being during prolonged trauma. This study examines the experiences of Ukrainian educators living in non-occupied territories during wartime. The following research questions guided the study: What coping strategies do educators use to take care of themselves? What coping strategies do educators use with their students? How do educators perceive mindfulness and storytelling? A conceptual framework was created to better understand the topics of stress, trauma, being, well-being, surviving, suffering, and coping mechanisms through a literature review. Data collection occurred in February and March 2024, two years …

Tales Of A Contemplative Academic: Lessons Learned From Integrating Meditation In The College Classroom, Steve Haberlin

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In this autoethnographical reflective essay, the author recounts his struggles and micro-victories with integrating brief meditation with undergraduates at a private college. The reflection offers three major insights for other faculty considering sharing meditation in higher education.

Labyrinthine Routes To Meditation: Contemplative Pedagogy And Instructor Self-Care, Natalie Mera Ford

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In the pandemic- and post-pandemic era, new as well as exacerbated work-life stressors have led academia to recognize the vital role wellness plays in teaching and learning. While most institutional and pedagogical response has understandably focused on students’ holistic health, this essay promotes increased instructor self-care as a necessary complement to supporting learners in higher education. By practicing meditative exercises drawn from contemplative pedagogy, faculty and instructional staff can create synergy between mindfulness strategies that we might invite students to try and our own attention to the whole self outside class. As the essay’s case study shows, labyrinth walking in …

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 …

Redefining Success: Insights From Lebanese Women Leaders In Higher Education, Lina H. Safa

Education Division Scholarship

This presentation explores how Lebanese women leaders in higher education define and measure success, emphasizing their innovative approaches and transformative impact. By examining personal narratives through a phenomenological lens, the study reveals how these leaders navigate cultural challenges, offering insights into leadership dynamics in a patriarchal society and contributing to global discussions on gender equity and academic leadership.

The Geography Of Care: Rural Versus Urban Caregiver Perspectives On Community Resources For Parkinson’S Disease Management, Rebecca Jones

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated the experiences and perceptions of caregivers for individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) in rural versus urban settings, with particular emphasis on their access to and utilization of community resources. Through semi-structured interviews with 30 caregivers, the research explored how geographical location impacts caregiving challenges, support systems, and resource accessibility. Using Andersen's Behavioral Model of Health Services Use as a theoretical framework, the study revealed both universal caregiving challenges and location-specific barriers. While all caregivers reported significant emotional burden and healthcare system navigation difficulties, rural caregivers faced distinct challenges related to resource accessibility and specialized care availability. …

Exploring The Curriculum Potential Of The Welsh Word Cynefin By Examining Its New Materialist And Contemplative Pedagogical Resonances, Dylan Adams

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Cynefin is a key word in the new curriculum for Wales. Yet it is a word that is difficult to define. It has no direct English translation and originates from Welsh hill farming where it was used by farmers to describe how sheep would form a mysterious attachment to different parts of common land. Subsequently, it has come to be associated with a person’s relationship to a place, where they feel at home. This article examines how the concept of cynefin potentially resonates with posthumanist and contemplative pedagogical perspectives. In doing so, it aims to answer the question, “how could …

Archetypal Energies And Global Mental Health, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

As a keynote speaker at the Global Mental Health Conference 2024, held at Sophia University, Costa Mesa, CA, in-person and virtually, August 16-18, 2024, my topic was "Archetypal Energies As A Framework for Self-Empowerment and Well Being". The theme of this 2024 global conference was: Enlightened Minds, Compassionate Hearts, and Embodied Wisdom. To supplement my keynote address, I wrote this blog article titled "Archetypal Energies and Global Mental Health".

Storywood: Collaborating With Opaque Unknowable Others Through Oil Painting, Tanya J. Behrisch

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper demonstrates the use of contemplation and arts-based research (ABR) to explore intersubjectivity between myself and other opaque beings. Through a walking meditation, I experience an affective encounter with a plywood board found lying on a beach. The board radiates agency and mysterious stories about its passage through the world. Drawing on philosopher Tim Lilburn’s concept of permeable attention and Bennett’s theory of vibrant matter, I discover the storied nature of the damaged board and resonances between its stories and my own. By practicing perceptual openness, I discern vitality shimmering beyond the visible surface of the board. During my …

"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 …

Emotional Capital And Compassionate Educational Space: Reflection On One Undergraduate Course, Katerina Bodovski

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In this essay, I reflect upon my experience of creating and teaching a new undergraduate course, Students, Parents, Schools. I look at the course content and process through the lens of emotional capital. While being one of the themes in the course, emotional capital is also developed for the students within the class itself. I identified four aspects of the course that can be linked to building emotional capital: bringing focus to oneself; encouraging students to capitalize on their own experiences; building meaningful connections; and creating a non-punitive environment. I discuss each of the aspects, illustrating them where appropriate …

"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 …

Book Review: Meditation In The College Classroom By Steve Haberlin, Jing Lin

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Book Review: Meditation in the College Classroom by Steve Haberlin

Reviewed by Jing Lin

Exploring Purpose, Practices, And Impacts Of Non-Formal Education In Egypt, Mariam Hussien Sayed Abdelhamid

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores non-formal education in Egypt, analyzing its alignment or divergence with prevalent human capital and modernization discourses. Using a narrative approach, the study explores the practices of four organizations that offer non-formal education opportunities in greater Cairo: San3a Tech, Wataneya Society, Alwan wa Awtar, and AlAthar Lina. The study explores the narration of 9 educators and 10 learners from these organizations to understand from educators’ perspectives how they design their experiences and its relation to the culture and needs of the targeted audience. It also looks at what kind of impact do these experiences have on the learners. …

Well-Being In Response To Gratitude Interventions: A Student Elicitation Approach, Erin A. Hopkins

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Various methods exist to invoke gratitude, such as gratitude lists, acts directed towards others, and gratitude contemplation (Rash, Matsuba, and Prkachin, 2011). This study, through student perception elicitation, examines a gratitude list intervention in a professional development undergraduate class which tests the gratitude and enhanced well-being connection theory.

Results suggest various reasons why students perceive a connection between gratitude lists and mental and physical well-being, although there was an overall belief among participants that gratitude lists help more with mental health than physical health. Also, the gratitude and enhanced well-being connection theory was not fully supported as overall respondent sentiment …

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 …

Transformative Visions Of Qualitative Inquiry: Performative, Philosophical, And Artistic Transformations, Niroj Dahal

The Qualitative Report

I am writing this review, Transformative Visions for Qualitative Inquiry, considering performative, philosophical, and artistic transformations as an essential reading for faculty and students—novice and veteran. It inspires readers, writers, and novice and veteran researchers in various social sciences disciplines and educational landscapes to envision innovative approaches to healing from crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and/or earthquakes. These processes encourage resisting, recovering, connecting, finding joy, and embracing life. Likewise, Transformative Visions for Qualitative Inquiry centers on the concept of transformation and its potential for the future of qualitative research amidst a world grappling with the multifaceted implications of COVID-19, …

From We To Me: Moving Towards An Examination Of Self Identity In An Online, Global, Collaborative, Learning Environment, Danielle P. Espino, Eric Hamilton, Kristina Lux, Seung B. Lee

Education Division Scholarship

This paper reflects on previous work using QE to examine patterns of discourse of adolescent learners in a virtual, global, collaborative informal learning setting. The collective impact of involvement in the project on participants’ experiences was observed in various reflective interviews over the last five years. The deep reflection of this work resulted in a research shift from the general impact on the participants to a shift towards examining how such experiences shape self-identity, such as recognizing identity congruence, relational self, and overcoming negative identity fostered by master narrative frameworks. An initial examination of pre-assessment interviews indicates that younger students …

“A Word For Nature”: A Reflection On A Contemplative Teacher-Training Course In The Desert, Netta Baryosef-Paz, Nirit Assaf

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper reflects on an interdisciplinary, environmental, and contemplative course the authors taught at Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel Aviv. Entitled “I am in Nature,” the course was co-taught by an ecologist and a literary scholar. It included a two-day base camping and hiking experience in the Negev Desert and three on-campus meetings. The students read Nature Writing and Ecopoetry, practiced guided mindfulness meditations in the field, and kept contemplative-writing journals. In this community voices piece, we offer an innovative pedagogy for higher education that centers on the integration of the learner’s mind, body, and heart through interdisciplinary, contemplative, …

Knowing The Unknowable: Visions Of Troubled Lands, Estella C. Kuchta

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper describes the author’s clairvoyant visions of war and personal experiences of transrational knowledges. It is an account of one Westerner coming to know outside of and despite Western episteme. Transrational knowing was modelled by companion dogs in the author’s childhood and literary figures in early adulthood, and was experienced as a means of self-protection. Western culture fosters skepticism about transrational knowledges, such as psychic visions and telepathic connections. This paper asserts that transrational knowing—whether between humans, other species, or humans and other species—is a valid and readily available form of knowing that exists outside of and in spite …

Philosophical Counselling Through Meditative Inquiry: Insights For Holistic And Contemplative Educators And Practitioners, Ashwani Kumar

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper explores how meditative inquiry can contribute to philosophical counselling, and how these two perspectives together can inform the work of holistic and contemplative educators and practitioners. After outlining the definition, goals, and practices related to meditative inquiry and pointing to its transformative potential, the author draws attention to how meditative inquiry and philosophical counselling share similar goals, such as engagement in authentic inner exploration of questions of deep existential significance, and highlights the benefits of processes related to meditative inquiry, such as developing attentive listening and observation, engaging in creative and aesthetic exploration, and connecting with nature. Rather …

There's Beauty In The Struggle: From Bantu Education Toward Decoloniality In Indigenous South African Education, Gayle Bartilow

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Apartheid-era Bantu Education was engineered to underdevelop Indigenous Black South Africans and keep them at the periphery of society. Nevertheless, demands to decolonize South African education existed during apartheid and are being made today. This research is a study into how Indigenous South Africans who received an apartheid-era education came to acquire a decolonized education. The research further explores how these Indigenous South Africans promote and practice a decolonized education. The most significant findings of this research are the resistance to Bantu Education in its many various forms, Indigenous South African student commitment to education, relocation and migration trends of …

Giving And Taking Care During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Secondary Teachers’ Experiences Of Social Emotional Learning, Janna Jobel, Rebecca J. Lloyd

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has been primarily researched in elementary schools, and within this context, SEL curriculum is often presented as an isolated, preplanned curriculum, with a list of curricular objectives to be delivered. A phenomenological inquiry was conducted to better understand the ways in which SEL and SEL curriculum are understood and experienced in a high school context. Data gathered from close phenomenological observations and interviews with three high school teachers in mathematics and physical education afforded the opportunity to orient, interpret, and describe the phenomenon of SEL-in-action. Rich descriptions of SEL as it is lived were generated and …

Restorative Justice: How Adult Practitioners Navigate Contested Learning Environments, Andrés Castañeda

Master's Theses

Restorative justice principles and practices have gained significant traction among educators in recent years, as they endeavor to establish school cultures that prioritize safety, student belonging, and humanizing relationships. However, existing literature indicates that schools who implement restorative justice frameworks tend to be obstructed by the historically punitive logics that govern them. As schools have become institutions that are highly racialized and influenced by neoliberal policies, it is important to continue to identify factors that can impede the work of racial equity and social justice within the schooling system. The purpose of this thesis is to conduct a qualitative study …

Editorial Introduction: Contemplative And Holistic Education As Inside-Out Work For Healing, Peace, Justice, And Equity, Heesoon Bai, Charles Scott, Cary L. Campbell, Jwalin Patel

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Inaugural Special Issue: EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

Meeting The Jche Team: A Reconstructed Interview, Heesoon Bai, Charles Scott, Cary L. Campbell, Jwalin Patel, Yifan Sun, Jing Lin, Hyeyoung Bang, Sachi Edwards, Deepa Srikantaiah, Yishin Khoo, Denise L. Mchugh

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This “reconstructed interview-conversation” involves the entire editorial team of the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education (JCHE). Together, the team dialogues around the shared visions, aspirations, motivations, and aims we have in creating this new journal platform. With this sharing, the team sends out a welcoming invitation to colleagues from around the world to get to know our new journal and to join our work to support and promote contemplative and holistic education. We at JCHE are committed to the ideal of education as transformative integration of mind-body-heart-spirit, which we ultimately understand as a decolonizing project. Through this interview, various …

Inner Work: Foundational To Contemplative And Holistic Education, Avraham Cohen, Thomas Falkenberg

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In this interview (conducted by Heesoon Bai), Avraham Cohen and Thomas Falkenberg speak about the origin and practice of their respective inner work and about the need for and ways of bringing more inner work into the world.

From Without To Within: Inner Transformation As A Pedagogy For Social Activism, Jinting Wu

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Change has become the urgency of our time, as the harrowing Anthropocene and ongoing socio-political crises are challenging the future of humanity and our planet. While systemic structural forces are often (and rightfully so) the target to blame, social activism is as much about our own path of inner change as it is about attempting to create a better world externally. This aspect of social activism can easily become misunderstood as inertia, while more traditional forms of resistance aimed at subverting macro-structures are favored. In this essay, I draw from literature on spirituality and consciousness, new biology, quantum sciences, as …

From Factory Schooling To Nai Taleem: A Paradigm Shift In Education, Manish Jain

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

The article invites readers to question and reflect on the purpose of modern education and narratives of a good life, success and happiness. Modern, capitalistic, industrialized, urbanized and colonial (and colonizing) ways of living and being have created numerous global challenges. In light of these challenges, we need to re-examine our educational systems. I explore the potential of nai taleem as a philosophy of learning, living, and being; one that decolonizes education, our monoculture mindsets, and our notions of a good life. In an increasingly globalized, albeit disconnected, world I call for nai taleem as a means for building meaningful …