Contemplative Practices and Antiracist Pedagogy: Navigating Resiliency

• In Event: Race, Resilience, and Higher Education

Abstract

Responding to calls reinforcing equity, diversity, and inclusion, this paper examines contemplative practices and antiracist pedagogy in three Faculties of Education. In post-pandemic contexts, contemplative practices can provide safe spaces to observe and to reflect on the self in local and place-based contexts, and within the larger scope of society. Introducing contemplative practices in courses with a focus on antiracist discourses could provide preservice and service teachers with pathways to cope with unsettling and provocative discussions about privilege and marginalization. Developing an open and calm receptivity along with a realistic attitude about long-held opinions, assumptions, and biases towards the self and others can create resiliency. Informed by calming practices, capacities of unlearning and re-learning can be fostered in novel ways.

Authors

• Karen Ragoonaden, University of British Columbia

• Heesoon Bai, Simon Fraser University

• Oren Ergas, Beit Berl College and Hebrew University

• Leslie P. Shayer, University of British Columbia - Okanagan