Mindfulness and Resistance: Mindfulness Practices of Critical Educators

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Sixteen
  In Roundtable Session: Communities Engaged in Racial and Social Justice (Table 7)

Abstract

Contemporary uses of mindfulness in schools, and the resulting research, tend to enforce the naturalization of stress and abstract it from its social context (Forbes, 2019). Schools operate within oppressive structures that operate as root causes of violence, with the U.S. specifically operating under settler colonialism. This study shifts the discourse of school mindfulness to a critical paradigm through working with educators as co-researchers on a critical participatory action research study seeking to answer: how do educators embody mindfulness within their critical pedagogy? Through documents generated during a “Mindfulness for Critical Educators” course and semi-structured interviews, co-researchers reveal they cultivate a mindfulness of resistance to settler colonialism, use mindfulness as resistance, and utilize mindfulness against resistance they face.

Author

• Patricia Benitez Hemans, University of California - San Diego
  Presenting Author