Whole-Being Responses to Oppression: Toward Holistic-Contemplative Learning

• In Event: Understanding Holistic Education in a School System

Abstract

In responding to consequential education research calls for disrupting all forms of discrimination, this paper examines how graduate students in a cohort-based contemplative inquiry program in education responded to the calls in their work as educators in diverse settings. Data collected through focus groups and semi-structured interviews suggest that holistic-contemplative learning (HCL) builds the foundational capacity for ethically agentic citizenry that can counter and transform discrimination and resulting oppression. Research findings suggest that HCL introduced to the curricula and pedagogy in higher education can be positioned as consequential learning aimed at cultivating intersubjectivity as ethical agency, which can be applied to social and ecological activism. Students’ lived experience of intersubjectivity practices cultivated in HCL are highlighted for analysis and discussion.

Authors

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

• Heather Williams, Simon Fraser University
  Presenting Author

• Renata Cueto de Souza, Simon Fraser University
  Presenting Author

• Heesoon Bai, Simon Fraser University
  Presenting Author

• Karen Ragoonaden, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Oren Ergas, Beit Berl College and Hebrew University
  Non-Presenting Author