Look Before You Leap: Reconsidering Contemplative Pedagogy

Abstract

Abstract. This 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.

Towards a spirituality-based platform in tourism higher education

“…Miller (2002) argues that spirituality is an "inherent part of human existence and cannot be ignored in the educational setting" (p. 95). To teach students how to think critically about spirituality is to teach them how to engage with their lives (Fisher, 2017).…”

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