Incorporating Critical, Contemplative, and Transformative Learning Into a Graduate Course Tackling Environmental Destruction and Climate Change

• In Event: Tackling Climate Change Through Critical, Contemplative, and Transformative Experiential Teaching and Learning

Abstract

I am the instructor of the course on Global Climate Change and Education. In my presentation, I will first critique the root causes that have led us to devastating climate change and species extinction. I am is critical of capitalism, human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and scientific positivist paradigm. I will share how I build critical thinking into the course with contemplative practice to “reanimate nature” (Bai et al., 2009) and to engender body-kinesthetic connection with nature, emotional intimacy and relational love with nature. Contemplative practices outlined in many scholarships (Barbezat & Bush, 2014; Lin, Culham & Edwards, 2019; Miller, 2014) are integrated through the course to provide holistic, embodied, experiential, engaged and activist learning. Emphasizing first, second and third person learning gives students a balance of perspectives (Roth, 2006). Deep love arising from the holistic pedagogies toward nature leads to transformative actions by the whole class to take part in an action to give voices to a wood that is in danger of being cut down.

The data of the paper will be the course syllabi, personal reflections on the pedagogies and actions, and analysis of students’ work. The significance of the paper is that we illustrate how powerful changes can take place through a course in higher education if we put in our body, heart, mind, and spirit into the learning process.

References:
Bai, H., Scott, C., Donald B. (2009). Contemplative pedagogy and revitalization of teacher
education. Alberta Journal of Educational Research 55 (3), 319-334.

Barbezat, D. & Bush, M. (2014). Contemplative practices in higher education: Powerful methods to transform teaching and learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lin, J., Culham, T., and Edwards, S. (Eds.). (2019). Contemplative Pedagogies for Transformative Teaching, Learning, and Being. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.Miller, John P. (2014). The Contemplative Practitioner: Meditation in Education and the Workplace. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Miller, John P. (2014). The Contemplative Practitioner: Meditation in Education and the Workplace. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Roth, Harold. (2006). Contemplative Studies: Prospect for a New Field. Teachers College Record, Volume 108, Number 9, September 2006, pp. 1787–1815.

Author

• Jing Lin, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author