Curriculum As Meditative Inquiry

2013 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Review Kumar asks in this volume: Since characteristic features of human consciousness - fear, conditioning, and fragmentation - work against the educational experience, how can we re-imagine curriculum as a space for meditative inquiry and allow it to provide transformative educational experiences to teachers and their students?

Kumar asks in this volume: Since characteristic features of human consciousness - fear, conditioning, and fragmentation - work against the educational experience, how can we re-imagine curriculum as a space for meditative inquiry and allow it to provide transformative educational experiences to teachers and their students?

This collection of multi/inter-disciplinary essays explores the transformative potential of Ashwani Kumar’s work on meditative inquiry – a holistic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living – in diverse educational contexts. Aspiring to awaken awareness, intelligence, compassion, collaboration, and aesthetic sensibility among students and their teachers through self-reflection, critique, dialogue, and creative exploration, this volume: Showcases unique ways in which scholars from diverse disciplinary, cultural, and geographic contexts have engaged with meditative inquiry in their own fields. Provides a space where African, Asian, Buddhist, Indigenous, and Western scholars engage with the idea of meditative inquiry from their own cultural, philosophical, and spiritual traditions, perspectives, and practices. Explores a variety of themes in relation to meditative inquiry including arts-based research, poetic inquiry, Africentricity, Indigenous thinking, martial arts, positive psychology, trauma, dispute resolution, and critical discourse analysis. Offers insights into how the principles of meditative inquiry can be incorporated in classrooms and, thereby, contributes to the growing interest in mindfulness, meditation, and other holistic approaches in schools and academia. The diverse and rich contributions contained in this volume offer valuable perspectives and practices for scholars, students, and educators interested in exploring and adopting the principles of meditative inquiry in their specific fields and contexts.

This book is an exposition of how political, cultural, historical, and economic structures and processes shape the nature and character of curriculum landscapes globally. By developing theoretical connections and providing contextual background, Kumar explores how colonialism and imperialism, state-led ideological control, and the wave of neoliberalism and capitalism insidiously impact the process of curriculum development in different parts of the world. Kumar also underscores how intellectual movements such as Marxism and postmodernism have shaped curriculum theory in varied political and economic settings. By emphasizing the connections between and among diverse cultural and political conceptualizations of curriculum, this volume contributes to the internationalization of curriculum studies discourses.

This volume highlights lived experiences, personal inspirations and motivations, which have generated scholarship, and influenced the research and teaching of scholars in the field of curriculum studies. Offering contributions from new, established and experienced scholars, chapters foreground the ways in which the authors have been influenced by the mentorship and work of others, by personal challenges, and by the contexts in which they live and work. Chapters also illustrate how scholars have engaged in variety of methodological and autobiographical processes including narrative and poetic inquiry, autoethnography and visual arts research. Through a range of contributions, the book clarifies the origins and legacy of contemporary curriculum studies and in doing so, provides inspiration for beginning scholars and academics as they continue to find their voices in academic communities. Offering rich insight into the experiences and scholarship of a wide range of scholars, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers with an interest in curriculum studies, as well as educational research and methodologies more broadly.

This introduction to meditation in education is written as a resource for class teachers and educators as a practical guide. Parents will also find it valuable, though its main focus is in using meditation in schools. The purpose of the book is to inspire and to provide concise, practical and general information, and techniques that can be considered and explored before introducing primary or secondary students to meditative experience.Meditation in schools covers such topics as:o information on schools where meditation is practiced, and the perceived resultso issues and concerns involved with introducing meditation in schoolso the relationship between mediation and other relaxation quieting techniqueso experiential learning and a holistic approach to educationThis essential guide is written from the contributors' personal and professional practice experience and emphasizes how meditation can contribute to the school environment and to the curriculum, as well as developing the positive potential of students' hearts and minds. It includes a useful section on further reading.

The Handbook of Dewey’s Educational Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive, accessible, richly theoretical yet practical guide to the educational theories, ideals, and pragmatic implications of the work of John Dewey, America’s preeminent philosopher of education.

A wide-ranging consideration of the emerging field of contemplative education. Contemplative approaches to higher education have been gaining in popularity and application across a wide range of disciplines. Spurring conferences, a growing body of literature, and several academic programs or centers, these approaches promise to contribute significantly to higher education in the years to come. This volume provides an overview of the current landscape of contemplative instruction, pedagogy, philosophy, and curriculum from the perspectives of leading researchers and scholar-practitioners. Contributors come from a variety of disciplines, including education, management and leadership studies, humanities, social sciences, the arts, and information science. Drawing on diverse contexts, the essays reveal the applicability of contemplative studies as a watershed field, capable of informing, enriching, and sustaining the many disciplines and instructional contexts that comprise higher education. Chapters discuss the theoretical aspects of the field; the details, experiences, and challenges of contemplative approaches; and the hopes and concerns for the future of this field. Olen Gunnlaugson is Assistant Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development at Université Laval, Canada, and the coeditor (with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens and Jonathan Reams) of Integral Education: New Directions for Higher Learning, also published by SUNY Press. Edward W. Sarath is Professor of Music and Director of the Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society, also published by SUNY Press. At Simon Fraser University, Canada, Charles Scott teaches Education and Heesoon Bai is Professor of Philosophy of Education. Bai is the coeditor (with Marcia McKenzie, Paul Hart, and Bob Jickling) of Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment and Education.