Handout for Faculty Workshop

Here is the handout that goes with the previous post. 🙂

_______

Karolyn Kinane, Associate Professor

Department of English

Plymouth State University

November 2012

Frost Faculty Workshops on Contemplative Pedagogy

Contemplative pedagogies can

1. Help students acquire information (focus and retention)
2. Help students use information in creative and critical ways (application of knowledge)
3. Help students manage stress and make healthy choices (personal wellness)
4. Help students serve (ethical action)

Questions for reflection:

What kinds of things do people in your discipline do?

Why do you do what you do? Why do you do it that way?

Why do you think it’s important for others to do this?

What meanings do you explore in the teaching and research in your discipline(s)? In what service do you see your disciplinary content, skills, and methodologies, working? (Biology seeks to…. History seeks to…. Criminal Justice seeks to…. Business seeks to…. )

How can your discipline, your course, your assignment, help students engage this line of questioning? What’s attractive, appealing, useful, and interesting to you about the what-why- how of your discipline? What makes your teaching in higher education meaningful to you and to society?

Karolyn’s take-away points:

“Disciplines are ways of making meaning and we should not confuse them with meaning itself.”

“If we can root our material in a parallel exploration of students’ answers to questions of meaning, we can provoke transformation. In fact, we do transformative learning when we use contemplation as a practice and teach ‘contemplative’ as a way of being in the world and with ourselves.”

Works cited and further reading:

“The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.” Home. Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <acmhe.org>.

Bush, Mirabai. “Contemplative Higher Education in Contemporary America.” Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, 2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://www.acmhe.org/assets/publications/mbush-contemplativehighereducation.pdf>.

Center for Mindfulness. “Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Healthcare, and Society.” History. University of Massachusetts Medical School, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/about/index.aspx>.

Hart, Tobin. “Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom,” Journal of Transformative Education 2004 2: 28 (2004). 25. Nov. 2012 < http://jtd.sagepub.com/content/2/1/28>

Langer, Ellen J. Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1989. Print.

— The Power of Mindful Learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997. Print.

“The Mindfulness in Education Network.” The Mindfulness in Education Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://www.mindfuled.org>.

O’Reilley, Mary Rose. Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1998. Print.

Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal : Transforming the Academy through Collegial Conversations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

Shapiro, Shauna, Kirk Warren Brown and John A. Austin, “Toward the Integration of Meditation into Higher Education: A Review of Research Evidence,” Teachers College Record 113:3 (2011), p. 493-528. Nov. 25, 2012 <http://www.tcrecord.org> ID Number: 16058.