Introducing interdisciplinary contemplative pedagogy: a case study of ‘The Art and Science of Meditation’

This study analyses the impacts and challenges of emergency remote teaching in Higher Education institutions in Porto due to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. We carried out an exploratory study of a qualitative nature to analyze the perceptions of teachers and students about the digitalisation of the teaching and learning process in Higher Education. Data were collected through semi-structured online, synchronous interviews with ten professors, who accepted to participate, and balances of the lived experience written and made available on the Moodle Platform by ten students. Subsequently, content analysis and triangulation were carried out with the support of the Nvivo Software. The study revealed that remote teaching in Higher Education had an impact on reinforcing the training of teachers and students in using new technologies and on changing pedagogical practices. In addition, it can contribute to researchers' reflections on online data collection in qualitative research.

This paper examined the emerging issues in curriculum and instruction during post–COVID–19 in Higher Education in Kenya. The paper ascertained the influence of post COVID 19 era teacher training in online pedagogy on curriculum and instruction in higher education in Kenya, established the influence of post COVID 19 era paradigm shift from emergency based online content delivery to full time online pedagogy on curriculum and instruction in higher education in Kenya, determined the influence of post COVID 19 era availability of online educational resources on curriculum and instruction in higher education in Kenya and, finally, investigated the influence of post COVID 19 era education policy changes on curriculum and instruction in higher education in Kenya. The study employed the Classical Liberal Theory of Equal Opportunities which was advanced by Sherman and Wood and cited by Njeru and Orodho in 2003. A descriptive survey research design was used in the study. 1 dean, 10 academic staff and 225 students, all from the school of education, South Eastern Kenya University were chosen as the sample size using census sampling, simple random sampling, and purposive sampling procedures respectively. 236 respondents’ responses were gathered using a questionnaire, interview schedule and checklist for the study. The instruments were piloted to test their validity and reliability. Both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data were performed. It was hoped that, this study would be important because it would advance our understanding and help to shape future transformative pedagogical approach policies for curriculum and instruction in higher education. The majority of lecturers in higher education, according to the research, are untrained in online content delivery. The primary impediments to a shift to distance online learning during and post COVID-19, according to the findings, are technical resources and unequal access to education. As an alternative method of learning, online learning or e-learning mode, has been widely accepted and is proven to be an opportunity and a challenge as there is still unknown that is not giving the desired output in the teaching and learning process. The study also found that there were no defined educational policies in place to deal with crises like COVID 19, which might have an impact on how higher education institutions engage in the teaching and learning process. The study suggested that higher education institutions should invest in technology-use training so that teachers can better prepare students to use technology, especially in the context of new assessments, higher education institutions should secure more resources from a variety of sources, and universities should study policies to mitigate the effects of a diverse student body.

Higher education is a sector that can be slow to change, yet there are significant pressures on universities and other providers to change. Learning and teaching are central to what higher education does, and pressures, such as the switch to remote learning during the pandemic and the increasing use of generative AI, are causing a reconsideration about good learning and teaching. This essay provides a futures framework to explore best and next practices in learning and teaching in higher education. Four important and influential papers and reviews are used to consider past and current views of good teaching and learning in higher education. From these, six evidence-informed teaching practices are described as examples of current best-practice views, and then these are developed into possible, plausible, probable, and preferred next practices. This essay provides a stimulus for practitioners and researchers to adopt a futures mindset for thinking about the development of teaching and learning in higher education.

Higher education has a global structure including the influence of international trends. Such international composition naturally enrich diversity in universities. No doubt, generating diversified leadership team can help to establish scholarly environment in universities. Within this environment, scholarship of teaching and learning could be one of hot topic to empower international programmes. To this end, English language programmes expectedly gain importance to train students for global business sectors. In this issue of HEGP studies on different topics are covered. The first article, titled “English Language Teacher Education Programs at Turkish Universities: A Statistical Overview” by Asmalı analyzed the key characteristics of English Language Teacher Education programs in Türkiye. Asmalı stated that the decrease in the demand for English Language Teacher Education programs is a major challenge of these programs. Asmalı indicated that English Language Teacher Education in Türkiye needs careful planning in terms of academic employment and student quotas. The second article, titled “Striving for Diversity of Leadership: Governance in UK Higher Education Institutions” by Shafi, Clarke, Norman, and Andrews investigated the scholarship on developing the diversity of UK university boards and developed a practical toolkit to ensure board diversity in higher education. The study documented the barriers to achieving diversity in the UK higher education institutions boards. The third article of the journal, titled “Linking Sustainability and Spirituality: The University with a Soul” by Razak and Moten elaborated on key values that higher education needs to convey to link sustainability and spirituality. The fourth article of this issue, titled “Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education” by Ertem and Aypay documented the results of a bibliometric analysis on research of teaching and learning in higher education. The study documented the influential outlets, topical foci, and key references in research on teaching and learning in higher education.

Endorsing the role of Universities as caregiving organisations and following an initial report on contemplative practices (CP) in Higher Education by the Institute of Theological Partnerships (2016) and the Mindful Nation UK (2015), a Contemplative Pedagogy Working Group (CPWG) was convened to explore the possibilities to implement contemplative pedagogy and practices at the University. CP such as Buddhist meditation have direct bearings in developing and cultivating compassion. With the intention to foster a culture of gentleness within the University, a survey was administered to 301 students to: 1- probe their attitudes toward the introduction of CP at the University and 2- to collect information on their use of technology. Results indicate that 79% of students will be favourable to the introduction of CP at the University on a voluntary basis and 58% will be keen to engage with the practice. However, if short time practices were to be introduced in classes, 44% will be self-conscious and admit it will affect their practice. Seventy percent admit difficulty with their attention during lectures and exam revisions and 58% are distracted by mobile technologies used in classes, report of distractibility is more marked among the youngest. 
 The survey’s result highlights student’s tendency to consider learning about CP in relation to the mind and emotions should be part of their education. This awareness is indicative of a change in students’ expectation and support the CPWG initiatives in offering regular Zen meditation practices and building up a Cosmic Garden within the University premises. Challenges in fostering a compassionate learning and teaching environment and concerns related to the pervasive use of technology in classes, in particular the correlation between the variety of online multitasking and the worry of feeling self-conscious during CP will be discussed.

Research Objective: There is a growing literature about contemplative pedagogy in higher education, an approach to learning which prioritizes experiential, reflective practices meant to promote autonomy in learning. This essay will explore how Ignatian pedagogy, rooted in the 475-year tradition of Jesuit education, promotes a form of contemplative pedagogy especially apt for what this journal describes as the VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity). Research Problem and Methods: The essay addresses questions particularly relevant in the wake of the global pandemic: how can education promote greater self-care and self-knowledge? How can it promote greater compassion and care for others, especially the marginalized? How can it encourage people, especially the young, to develop practices that promote lifelong learning, flourishing, and responsibility? Process of Argumentation: The essay will review some of the burgeoning literature on contemplative pedagogy, and draw from the extensive literature about Ignatian pedagogy and especially the latter’s strong emphasis on processes of reflection for the sake of just action. Research Results: The essay will show that there is a rich well of resources in the Ignatian spiritual and pedagogical traditions that promote contemplative pedagogy, and that application of these resources in contemporary educational and formational contexts will help promote lifelong learning, flourishing, and responsibility towards others. Conclusions, Innovations, and Recommendations: Educators are encouraged to introduce or develop contemplative practices such as journaling, guided meditations, focused conversations among peers, reflective critical writing, and others.

Purpose:This tutorial introduces communication sciences and disorders (CSD) educators to contemplative pedagogy (sometimes called mindfulness in the classroom). While contemplative pedagogy has considerable overlap with evidence-based teaching and learning, and aligns with values in the CSD discipline, there are few published reports investigating the role of contemplative pedagogy in CSD education. This tutorial outlines the potential benefits of contemplative pedagogy to CSD education and offers suggestions on how to create mindful educators and classrooms. Specific contemplative practices are described. Basic instructions, along with ideas and examples of how practices can be modified and contextualized in CSD classrooms, are provided.Conclusions:Educators can bring contemplative practices into CSD classrooms in many ways. Educators can cultivate a contemplative disposition through a personal practice that can enhance the development of self-awareness. Self-awareness can then inform critical reflection of teaching. Educators can select and design contemplative practices that integrate students' first-, second-, and third-person ways of knowing. As an addition to the pedagogical toolbox, contemplative pedagogy offers opportunities for educators and students to connect their own values and experiences with the process of teaching and learning.

With the growth of online programs in higher education, students are more likely to experience various barriers and challenges while taking online courses, such as social isolation, low motivation, distraction, and mental health issues. Mindfulness-informed pedagogy, such as contemplative pedagogy, showed its promise in decreasing students’ negative emotions and increasing their self-awareness and concentration on learning environments and materials. However, limited research is available to discuss the integration of contemplative pedagogy to promote student engagement from online course design and delivery perspectives. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss the benefits of contemplative pedagogy and encourage educators’ use of mindfulness-informed teaching practices in online instruction in higher education. Some effective strategies to adopt contemplative pedagogy into online course design and delivery include: the integration of mindfulness exercises, the reduction of cognitive overload, the importance of reflective learning activities, and the inclusion of socially supportive features.

This Work-in-Progress Innovative Practice paper introduces contemplative practices as a way of creating compassionate and empathetic learning spaces in engineering education. Contemplation refers to thoughtful observation, reflection, consideration, or intention, sometimes associated with deeper awareness and sense of presence. As such, contemplative practices – both individual and communal, internal, and external – allow for an emergence of deeper meaning of self and the world through the development of compassion, empathy, connectedness, and creativity. Newly emerging in higher education, contemplative pedagogies bring students’ authentic selves into the learning process, fostering a personal and collective sense of belonging, inclusion, and engagement of all student’s diverse ways of knowing and being. This is particularly important in today’s engineering education where the disinclination to include diverse students’ senses of self as they uncompassionately learn to build the technology of the future is harmful for that same future they attempt to build. This paper presents an Innovative Practice that brings together a plethora of contemplative pedagogies in two undergraduate engineering courses – a Physics Foundation and an intermediate-level Social Science courses. To assess the effectiveness of this innovation, we use students’ weekly reflective assignments that demonstrate an emerging sense of trust and belonging. We also find that contemplative pedagogies create a scaffolding for students’ development of compassion, self-compassion, and empathy – educational outcomes that are otherwise absent in their engineering education. Students report a sense of palpable personal growth and self-discovery as well as an opportunity to reexamine science and engineering through the lenses of their diverse ways of knowing and being. Many reflect on a sense of integration of one’s sense of self into an otherwise sterile engineering education devoid of subjective, caring, and heart.

The article argues for a particular view of teaching and learning in higher education. A relational perspective links the improvement of the professional practice of teaching with research into student learning. It offers an alternative to paradigms which reduce the complex relations between students, subject content, and teaching to characteristics of instruction and of students, and whose findings and prescriptions often appear distant from everyday teaching problems. Learning in institutional settings is bound up with content and context; isolating general mechanisms that ‘good learners˚s use to learn any subject matter may be less than helpful. A relational perspective conceptualises the teaching and learning process holistically. It involves inquiry into and reflection on how students learn specific subject matter in particular contexts. The results are used to amend teaching and assessment. The perspective has far-reaching implications for staff development and the quality of teaching in higher education.

What is contemplative pedagogy and how is it practiced in Religious Studies classrooms? Contemplative pedagogy cultivates inner awareness through first‐person investigations, often called “contemplative practices.” Contemplative teaching practices range widely: silent sitting meditation, compassion practices, walking meditation, deep listening, mindfulness, yoga, calligraphy, chant, guided meditations, nature observation, self‐inquiry, and many others. Since narrative is a mode of instruction prevalent in contemplative literature, the article includes first‐hand reflections from students and a narrative account of how an initially skeptical professor came to incorporate contemplative teaching methods into her courses. It expands from the personal narratives to highlight the work of many contemplative professors in the field. These real‐life examples are put into the context of recent publications on shifts in higher education and meditation research. The article seeks to demonstrate the power of contemplative teaching to fulfill many hopes for liberal arts learning. Of particular importance is its emphasis on interior qualities of lifelong impact, such as self‐knowledge and ethical cultivation.

The Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILT) was launched in 1999 as a result of the recommendations of the Dearing committee. It is the only national body in the world which promotes the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. This book has four purposes:* to provide the background story to the evolution and establishment of the ILT* to document the central role of the assessment of prior learning (APL)* to support the institutions and individuals who are moving to engage with the ILT and in particular take the APL route for the first time* to speculate on the possible consequences of the ILT itself and APL within it. The ILT is a professional membership organisation which is open to all institutions and academics. This book will be of interest to all those who teach and support learning in higher education.

Increased interest in teaching has been evident in recent decades, accompanied by heightened activity in promoting teaching quality. Programs about teaching and learning in higher education are one strategy adopted for this purpose. This article is concerned with reflecting upon, and theorising, the experience of teaching in one such accredited program for academics across the disciplines. Selected ideas are canvassed from Heidegger and Irigaray in exploring and articulating the experience of teaching in this program. Despite differences in their philosophies, Heidegger and Irigaray share some common concerns, with implications for pedagogy. Moreover, both have written about education, highlighting an ontological dimension concerned with how we are learning to be. This has resonance with the program explored in this article and aligns with an ‘ontological turn’ occurring in higher education. An ontological dimension has been taken up in the program through making the familiar unfamiliar in experiencing anew our teaching, as well as the learning by and with our students. This article makes an original and timely contribution to re-thinking teaching through exploring, both conceptually and in practice, what an ontological turn means for teaching in higher education.

Introducing peer review of teaching in any Faculty can be a complex and challenging endeavour at the best of times (Harris et al., Peer review of teaching in Australian higher education: A handbook to support institutions in developing and embedding effective policies and practices, 2008a), but challenges can multiply in online and distance teaching environments. Although new Australian research is providing much needed resources and framework, the implementation and exploration of online peer observation is still in its infancy (Harris et al., Peer review of teaching in Australian higher education: A handbook to support institutions in developing and embedding effective policies and practices, 2008 and Harris et al., Peer review of teaching in Australian higher education: Resources to support institutions in developing and embedding effective policies and practices (Final Project Report), 2008; Wood et al., Peer review of online learning and teaching, 2009; Bennett and Barp, Teaching in Higher Education, 2008, p. 559–570). One Australian Higher Education Provider is exploring initiatives in both online and distance peer review with positive outcomes. Within a selection of Think Education Group’s online offerings, two formative, developmental peer review programs have been introduced to support educators as they share ideas about their respective teaching practices. This paper reports on the different processes, outcomes and lessons learnt from these case studies.

Sylvia Ashton and Rachel Stone have written a truly brilliant, holistic, and creative resource for teaching and learning in Higher Education. In recent years, the Higher Education sector has embarked on a dramatic transformation, and with a greater diversity of learners and growing expectations amongst the student population, this has subsequently placed a new profound importance on ‘teaching excellence’ at the heart of academia. Viewed through a critical lens, this resource explores a wealth of themes offering innovative approaches and practical suggestions for teaching and learning in Higher Education. In addition to sharing nuggets of sound teaching experience, this book also incorporates current pedagogical evidence and reflective dialogues to engage the reader throughout. This text is an essential read for anyone seeking to enhance their teaching practice and support student learning in Higher Education, from those individuals pursuing professional accreditation or early career teachers, to advanced experienced practitioners.