Contemplative Inquiry Research Articles

Writing as Resurgent Presencing: An Urban Coyote Curriculum

In this article, I contemplate the importance of writing to my wellbeing; I reflect on how urban Indigenous presence is enacted and theorized; and I consider an encounter with a coyote during a daily walk. These three narratives are brought together through a textual weaving or métissage. Through this interweaving, and by enacting place-based, relational storying, I undertake a curricular inquiry into presence and presencing. This contemplative inquiry emerges from a particular time and place: from deep in the second winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, from my positionality as an urban Indigenous person, and from my day-to-day existence as a scholar and human being.

Contemplative, holistic eco-justice pedagogies in higher education: from anthropocentrism to fostering deep love and respect for nature

ABSTRACT In this article, we directly address five of the six questions presented by Misiaszek & Rodrigues, including the definition of ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’ in higher education teaching, the politics of teaching, and the responsibilities of teachers within the institution of higher education. We argue for contemplative inquiry and storytelling as epistemology and pedagogy for eco-justice education. We introduce a course taught by an author of this paper, to illustrate our position on the possibilities of Justice-Based Ecological Pedagogies (JBES) as presented by Misiaszek & Rodrigues, as well as to frame our own position, and to offer practical, concrete examples of possible epistemologies and course pedagogies and activities grounded in an Anti-Anthropocentric pedagogical frame. We present a brief summary of student writing from this course, which we believe shows them meaningfully engaging with nature as a family member or friend, that is, a biocentric lens of love for nature.

Praxis-Oriented Research Toward a Liberatory Disability Politics: A Contemplative Inquiry Approach

Knowledge extraction and the absence of reciprocity between scholars and grassroots practitioners in mainstream disability research are topics of concern for scholar-activists committed to disability justice in cultural and social studies research. Critical methodologies such as praxis-oriented research and scholar-activism in disability studies have sought to decenter Euro-American notions of expertise and nondisabled expert knowledge by centering disabled grassroots knowledge and leadership in all aspects of the disability experience. Overall, the literature demonstrates that emancipatory methods such as scholar-activism and praxis-oriented research have had a liberatory effect on disability studies inquiry. It also suggests that nondisabled researchers in other areas have yet to critically examine their role in perpetuating systemic ableism in their research practices. This article builds upon and extends the existing literature by considering disability studies scholars’ methodological interventions in traditionally dominant fields such as anthropology and policy studies. To keep with a praxis-oriented approach to research, the article uses a contemplative inquiry approach to discuss these interventions. Concluding remarks discuss the political significance of praxis-oriented research and its role in subverting unbalanced power dynamics between academic researchers and disabled grassroots practitioners, thus enabling a move toward a liberatory disability politics.

Revisiting the Nature of Transformative Learning Experiences in Contemplative Higher Education

We are interested in the transformative potentials of intersubjectivity as it is enacted through second-person contemplative approaches. Our work here focuses on contemplative practice as a pedagogy that reveals and enacts intersubjectivity within postsecondary education. How might contemplative higher education practice as a pedagogy enable students to access these underlying intersubjective dimensions, thus creating conditions for a shift in the forms of transformative learning that affect the nature of the learner’s consciousness as well as their overall journey of transformation through the course of their studies? We review the theoretical and research literature on postsecondary contemplative education, particularly in its intersubjective dimensions, and then offer data from a qualitative study involving students enrolled in a graduate program in contemplative inquiry that offers evidence of the transformative potentials of these intersubjective, contemplative approaches to learning and inquiry.

A Creative Pedagogue's Inquiry through Images: Does it Have Wings?

In this photo essay, I enact how a creative pedagogue engages with artistic practice and contemplative inquiry. As a poet, at home in words, photography represents a creative risk. This vulnerability is felt in the sharing of the work through the lens of (re)search. Hence, I ask: Does it have wings? By delving in expressive forms toward the service of understanding my personal and pedagogical self, creative risk is rewarded in profound ways. I have discovered that my art practice is driven by intention, intuition and imagination. Thus, here is my creative pedagogy in action illuminating how an inquiry through images provokes learning and teaching. Both poetry and photography provide keen vision—a way of sensing and seeing Light.

Cogenerating insights into the dialectics of contemplative practices in educational and lifeworld settings.

Contemplative practices are used with increasing frequency across various fields of knowledge, and increasingly so within educational settings as a means of promoting wellness and wellbeing. In this paper, we draw on qualitative data derived from primary students’ experiences of meditative breathing and use them as a springboard to extrapolate meaning and cogenerate novel insights around contemplative practices. Theoretically framed within an authentic inquiry | contemplative inquiry dialectic, this approach seeks to situate the research team within the contemplative process, striving to make a difference for stakeholders. Intentionally acknowledging and drawing on our values, beliefs, and lifeworlds, this authentic inquiry | contemplative inquiry allows for the cogeneration of deep and meaningful insights. Insights coalesce around four emergent dialectics of contemplative practices: relaxed | stressed, attentive | distracted, still | energized and unbounded | constrained. Our co-constructed contemplative narrative argues that within the complex space of unbounded fields, contemplative practices have the potential to transform physical, mental, emotional, and social lifeworlds through a contagious individual and collective ripple effect.

Contemplative Inquiry

Contemplative inquiry is an introspective methodology that values first-person perspectives and diverse ways of knowing. This paper introduces contemplative inquiry as a promising methodology for information science research. The methodology is first contextualized within a discussion of research at the crossroads of information and contemplation and then elaborated utilizing examples from the author’s thesis research. Possible contributions of the methodology to information science are subsequently highlighted, as are potential future research applications. It is proposed that adoption of the methodology will offer information science researchers the techniques and tools necessary to explore fundamental questions regarding human contemplative experiences and growth.

COVID-19. The Call of Louisa Jordan

This article employs an innovative research methodology, evocative spiritual autoethnography, to capture the complex existential and pastoral experiences gathered during the formation of the spiritual care team at NHS Louisa Jordan, Glasgow. It is a snapshot in time and offers a rare glimpse into the humanity and vulnerability of the spiritual care team as they face this far from normal situation. Learnings identified through contemplative inquiry serve to expand the horizon of chaplaincy.

Body, Soul, and Spirit: An Explorative Qualitative Study of Anthroposophic Meditation and Spiritual Practice

This article presents the results of a qualitative study of Anthroposophic meditation, which arose in the German-speaking world in the early 20th Century focusing on cognition, self-development, and pro-social action. The objective was to explore this previously unstudied form of meditation. The current sample (N = 30) consists of long-term practitioners of Anthroposophic meditation. Semi-structured interviews, focusing on demographics, background, and phenomenology and interpretation, were conducted with these practitioners. The material gathered was investigated using thematic analysis. Seven main themes were found: Self, cognition, perception, affect, sleep, embodiment, and environment, and, among these, 32 subthemes. Potential avenues for further research are outlined. Some of these overlap with current approaches to meditation while others represent new areas of inquiry: Personal development with a focus on strengthening the self, introspection or contemplative inquiry, sensed presences, the experience of phenomenological atmospheres, consciousness in the sleep state, embodied aspects of meditation experience, the relationship between practice and daily life, and meditation challenges.

Coleridge and Contemplation ed. by Peter Cheyne, and: Wordsworth's Monastic Inheritance: Poetry, Place, and the Sense of Community by Jessica Fay

Reviewed by: Coleridge and Contemplation ed. by Peter Cheyne, and: Wordsworth's Monastic Inheritance: Poetry, Place, and the Sense of Community by Jessica Fay Michael Tomko (bio) Peter Cheyne, ed. Coleridge and Contemplation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xx + 332. 1 illustration. $93. Jessica Fay. Wordsworth's Monastic Inheritance: Poetry, Place, and the Sense of Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 238. $85. Despite a general questioning of critical assumptions about Romantic-era poets that are based on manifestos by those same poets, accounts persist of Romanticism's secularization and privatization of religious devotion that are derived from passages of Samuel Taylor Coleridge or William Wordsworth. For instance, M. H. Abrams's Wordsworthian Natural [End Page 261] Supernaturalism (1971), in which the Romantics make straight the way for Wallace Stevens, remains the starting point of Matthew Mutter's Restless Secularism: Modernism and the Religious Inheritance (2017). Yet this seems increasingly inadequate amid the growing recognition of the historical, cultural, and political import of Romantic-era religion in studies by, among others, Jasper Cragwall, Orianne Smith, or Daniel E. White; the expansion of the literary canon to include more writers, from Hannah More to Elizabeth Inchbald, who engaged with religion in their personal and public lives; and the critical nuancing of the keyword "secularization" itself, most prominently by Colin Jager in Unquiet Things: Secularism in the Romantic Age (2015). Indeed, even the Romantics' own paradigm-making statements no longer seem fully legible when framed by a simplified version of the secularization thesis. For example, at the close of the second book of the 1850 Prelude, Wordsworth gives thanks for the formative care of nature and asserts that Coleridge likewise served "in Nature's temple" (II.463)—or, in the more daring language of 1805, was "the most intense of nature's worshippers" (II.477). While this may seem to reduce piety to the imminent frame, Wordsworth also clearly describes how living with "God and nature communing" has saved him "in this time / Of dereliction and dismay" (II.430, 440–41), a theological wording found in 1850, 1805, and even 1799. He also consistently acknowledges Coleridge's particular role as seeking the "truth in solitude" to bring a "blessing to mankind" (II.461, 471). In other words, The Prelude seems to announce a shared spiritual journey while also delineating two distinct contemplative tasks: Wordsworth's quiet contemplation amid his beloved hills and Coleridge's contemplative inquiry into the workings of his own mind. For Jessica Fay's monograph, Wordsworth's Monastic Inheritance: Poetry, Place, and the Sense of Community, and Peter Cheyne's edited collection, Coleridge and Contemplation, the hard task of recounting the Lake poets' contemplative life is made harder by a contravening, post-Victorian critical history. Fay's focus is on the role of monasticism in Wordsworth's poetry, life, and thinking from his "middle years," about 1807 onwards. That may, at first, seem like a restricted topic, but her appendices map and chronicle forty British and European monasteries that Wordsworth visited or studied, with most referenced in his writing. As Fay's subtitle suggests, the meaning of these monastic sites—mostly naturalized ruins in the North—had significance beyond religion, becoming focal points for tradition, local and national identity, historical reflection, experimentation with literary genre, and, above all, the contemplative aesthetics of "quietness" (27). Wordsworth's "quietness" is the book's heartbeat. Fay's argument represents an attempt to restore a Wordsworth that was known and valued [End Page 262] during the late nineteenth century and thus extends Stephen Gill's account of the poet's spiritual legacy in Wordsworth and the Victorians (1998). But the power of the quiet Wordsworth became more difficult to see, or to hear, after Matthew Arnold's 1879 edition tilted reception toward the "Great Decade" of 1798–1808 and away from previously popular works such as The Excursion, The White Doe of Rylestone, The Tuft of Primroses, and The Ecclesiastical Sonnets—an alternative Wordsworthian canon that structures Fay's chapters. Likewise, in Coleridge and Contemplation, Philip Aherne's contribution attempts to restore a nineteenth-century "Coleridgean intellectual tradition" (116), founded on the omnispective texts of the Highgate Years (1816–34...

Examining learning in the course, “Inclusive Leadership for Sustainable Peace”

ABSTRACTThe undergraduate, introductory course, ‘Inclusive Leadership for Sustainable Peace’ aimed to cultivate sustainable peace leaders by inviting students to clarify their own core values and by examining: macro UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals and the Earth Charter; values and approaches of global sustainable peace leaders in their historic and community contexts; and local leadership in organizations committed to healthy ecosystems, society equity, and viable economies. Offered in the spring of 2017 and 2018 at a predominately white, Euro-American, and large master’s comprehensive university in the United States, the core pedagogy of the course involved a critical pedagogy of place, critical peace education for sustainability, a systems approach to leadership, and contemplative inquiry, aimed at promoting deep learning. The primary research question for this study is ‘What do students learn about themselves, others, and their ability to change the world from engaging in this course?’ This exploratory qualitative study involved 10 students. Findings indicate that participants gained personal value clarification, career clarification, and a deeper understanding of their power to make a difference. The article will contribute to the advancement of sustainable peace leadership education.

Creative Thinking in Qualitative Research and Analysis

I would like to present the possibility of broadening the traditional methodological and technical skills of researcher and analyst, but also the intellectual capacity of the researcher associated with combining data, categorizing, linking categories, as well as the interpretation of the causes and consequences of the emergence of certain social phenomena. Some methodologies, methods, and research techniques are more conducive to creative conceptual and interpretive solutions. Therefore, I describe the serendipity phenomenon in such methodologies as grounded theory, ethnography, phenomenological research, and contemplative inquiry. The problem of intuition in qualitative research will be also described in the paper. There will be presented also some suggestions how to be creative in qualitative research. From the review of issues of creativity in qualitative research we can derive the following conclusions: Creativity in qualitative research depends on the strength of a priori conceptualization and stiffness of the adapted methods of research and analysis. If the methodology is more flexible (as the methodology of grounded theory), the researcher can get to phenomena that he/she has not realized and which are still scantily explored in his/her field of expertise. The phenomenological and contemplative approaches allow the use of the investigator’s feelings and experience as they appear in the studied phenomena, which usually does not take place in objectifying and positivistic research. The investigator may therefore consciously use these methodologies and approaches that foster creativity. The researchers can improve their skills in thinking and creative action by doing some methodical exercises (journal writing, writing poetry as a summary of the collected data, the use of art as representation of the phenomenon, the use of meditation, observation of the body feelings, humor, etc.).

Walking Alongside my Relations

In this article, the author explores the multidimensional nature of relationality in its various complexities, vulnerabilities and possibilities through the lens of experience. By delving into the recollections of the unexpected events of an evening in July, the author ruminates on conditions that promote and hinder interconnectedness in society while also considering the significance of relational ways of knowing and being in present times. The author’s experience is theorized across the disciplines of contemplative inquiry, arts-based research and Indigenous epistemologies. In envisioning pathways forward to foster interconnectedness, a complementary art film is included wherein alternative responses to a ubiquitous question in society, “How are you?”, are offered. Given that interrelationality traverses a range of experience and emotionality, from wonder and joy to sorrow and grief, the article and art film contain sensitive and mature content.
 Art Film Abstract: 
 This art film is a five-minute breathing snapshot representing the author’s experience on July 10th. Through the modalities of embodied, poetic and performative inquiry, the author offers alternative responses to a ubiquitous question in society, “How are you?”, in the hopes of fostering interconnectedness.

Lectio Divina and meditation: Exploring identity through contemplative practices

Abstract Engaging in contemplative practices, such as breath and body awareness, meditation, silence and the arts, allows for engagement in the deep work of identity construction to uncover ‘the self who teaches’ (Palmer 1998: 7). Through Lectio Divina, an ancient Benedictine practice, the work of identity construction is deepened through examination of the way in which words and imagery strengthen and support the inner life of the teacher. Researching and engaging in contemplative inquiry and practices, as well as teaching these practices to pre-service teachers, weaves together a tapestry of my identities as an artist–teacher–researcher. These practices support embodied experiences of deep-thought and reflection that includes the cognitive, the affective and the spiritual.

Not all Who Wander are Lost: A/r/tographic Walking as Contemplative Inquiry

This essay explores the relationship between walking and writing, utilizing performative poetry as an a/r/tographic mode of contemplative inquiry.

Reclaiming “self” in teachers' images of “education” through mindfulness as contemplative inquiry

ABSTRACTAgainst the pressures of standardization, some argue for the need to expand teachers' awareness to their “teaching self” because teachers “teach who they are.” This article acknowledges the importance of this orientation; however, it is suggested that its implementation requires overcoming social reproduction. Teachers may have to liberate themselves from the image of “education” into which they were initiated as they themselves grew up in a system in which “self” has mostly become a null curriculum. In order to reclaim self in teaching and “education,” there may be a need for radical curricular-pedagogical approaches that address this problem directly. The article describes and demonstrates the implementation of such approach in a teacher education course in which mindfulness was proposed as a way for investigating self as an explicit curriculum. Based on interpreting students' final projects, the article depicts difficulties and insights evoked by this curricular-pedagogical approach and the course's possible contributions.

Look Before You Leap: Reconsidering Contemplative Pedagogy

AbstractThis paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as “contemplative pedagogy.” Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first‐person experience as an essential means of knowing that has historically been overshadowed and dismissed by an emphasis on analytical reasoning. In this essay, I examine four problematic claims that appear frequently in descriptions of contemplative pedagogy: (1) undergraduate students have a kind of spiritual hunger; (2) pedagogies focused on cognitive skills teach students only what, not how, to think; (3) self‐knowledge fosters empathy; and (4) education needs a new epistemology centered on spiritual and emotional, rather than intellectual, experience. I argue that these claims underestimate the diversity of undergraduate students, the complexity of what it means to think and know, the capacity for self‐knowledge to become self‐absorption, and the dangers of transgressing the boundaries between intellectual, psychological, and religious experiences. [See as well “Response to Kathleen Fisher's ‘Look Before You Leap,’” by Andrew O. Fort and Louis Komjathy, published in this issue of the journal.]

Book Review of "Mindful Teaching and Learning: Developing a Pedagogy of Well-Being"

Ragoonaden, Karen (Ed.) (2015). Mindful Teaching and Learning: Developing a Pedagogy of Well-Being. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Pages: 115. Price: $75 USD (hardcover).Karen Ragoonaden's edited volume Mindful Teaching and Learning: Developing a Pedagogy of Well-Being seeks to initiate exchanges about sustainable Mindfulness practices in (p. xii). To this end, slim volume provides an overview of empirical research pertaining to benefits of in an educational context, as well as exploring numerous research projects examining impact of on various actors within different levels of educational institutions, with a focus on higher educational context in both United States and Canada. The treatment of subject matter is at once extensive but concise: role of in lives and work of university faculty, university students, K-12 educational administrative staff, and prospective K-12 educators in both university and practicum contexts is explored in five chapters that follow a brief summary of empirical findings related to in each of these settings. The treatment of these contexts is at once theoretically driven but inherently practical. While reading this volume, one senses intent to compile a list of useful tools and techniques for use in these varied contexts.After Ragoonaden's detailed introduction to chapters included in collection, Elizabeth Mackenzie reviews evidence-based literature within field of contemplative science. Both Ragoonaden and Mackenzie make clear that their definition of in education is rooted in work of Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in 1980s and 90s (Kabat-Zinn, 2015; Kabat-Zinn et al., 1998), which has broadened into a more general concept of mindfulness training (MT). Mackenzie outlines outcomes of MT that have been supported empirically in research, for K-12 students and teachers as well as those in Higher Education (HE) settings. These outcomes include enhancement of: cognitive skills such as working memory capacity and attention; brain function, including cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes; immune system function; emotional regulation; resiliency; prosocial behavior; and mental health. These effects are typically larger in clinical populations than in general population, and may operate through other variables such as stress reduction and improved sleep quality. The transdisciplinary nature of evidence provides a convincing portrait of benefits of interventions.Karen Ragoonaden returns in second chapter with a self-study of experience of incorporating MT into her work as a faculty member. For purpose of this self-study, she defines as the human capacity for observation, participation, and acceptance of life's moments from a loving, compassionate stance and defines well-being as health in terms of maximizing one's potential (p. 17). Her self-study is consistent with findings from first chapter in terms of stress reduction and sleep quality in particular, and goes further in emphasizing benefit of compassionate interactions for both instructors and students. Kathryn Byrnes and Tom Bassarear, in their co-authored chapter, continue this theme by describing their university courses aimed at incorporating contemplative pedagogy and teaching within university context. They deconstruct their approach, which is rooted in Arthur Zajonc's seven stages of contemplative inquiry (respect, gentleness, intimacy, participation, vulnerability, transformation, and insight ( Zajonc, 2009)). An appendix of learning activities provides a toolkit for HE instructors to reference.The focus changes midway through collection, turning to Leaderful Mindsets, which emphasize role of in educational leadership. In this chapter, Sabre Cherkowski, Kelly Hansen, and Jennifer Kelly take a two-fold approach, exploring how leaders can discover strengths of others and build communities in educational contexts. …

Journey of the inner witness: A path of development

Abstract This article discusses how a conscious interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship to movement impulse, as an expression of creative self-emergence, serves transformative growth. It offers an overview of Janet Adler’s developmental perspective on and teaching of the Discipline of Authentic Movement. The author’s research, looking at the development of the inner witness in practitioners of Authentic Movement over a 30-year span of time, affirms and offers new insights into Adler’s model of a threephase development of human consciousness. The article also demonstrates how the research process itself integrates contemplative inquiry into an academic study, and notes the parallels between the practice of witness consciousness and the practice of phenomenological research.

The Identity Interview Project: Integrating Critical Thinking, Contemplative Inquiry, and the Curriculum of Modern Life

The Identity Interview Project: Integrating Critical Thinking, Contemplative Inquiry, and the Curriculum of Modern Life