Business and projects: 1. Special Issue Projects at Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

• In Event: Groundbreaking Venue to Publish Your Manuscripts: Introduction of the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education (JCHE)

Abstract

JCHE has thus far published five issues (two issues per year). The inaugural was issue titled “Contemplative and Holistic Education as Inside-Out Work for Healing, Peace, Justice, and Equity.” The issue was comprised of a collection that sent important messages from the editorial team to the world. The first message was that “our world is made up of relationships; that building and cultivating good—meaning, non-harming and supportive of mutual flourishing—relationships is what education is foremostly about; and that there are manifold dimensions of relationship: self-to-self, self-to-other beings, and self-to-the larger systems.” The first piece, “The Reconstructed Interview,” is an interview that introduces the reader to our entire editorial team, in which each member collectively shares and discusses their hopes and prospects for the journal. The second message was that “plurality and diversity exemplify a healthy ecology for any system, including thought systems.” We are aware of but do not often practice epistemological diversity. Hence colleagues who come from diverse research fields, disciplines, and methodological orientations were invited to liberate all knowledge systems. The third message is that “contemplative and holistic education is vastly encompassing.” Contemplative and holistic education cultivates ethical beings harmonized with the world and able to feel and recognize pains as well as joys of others.
The second special issue is titled “Contemplative Classrooms (K-12) for Wisdom and Peace: Theories, Curricula, Pedagogies, and Practices.” The call for papers is out, and fifteen manuscripts are currently in the review process. With respect to the SI theme, studies report the potential benefits of integrating contemplative practice into childhood education to foster development. Yet many contemplative education programs and research is done at the university level or within extracurricular programs. Thus, we have called for submissions that address contemplative K – 12 classroom pedagogies and practices that can encourage and support students to become wise human beings, and have invited experts to capture the realities, challenges, practices, and possibilities of K-12 CE classrooms.
The third special issue titled “The Complementary Convergence of Science and Spirituality: Expanding the Spectrum of Education in Theory and Practice” is guest edited. Hundreds of studies on meditation and mindfulness have influenced the fields of consciousness research, the neurosciences, psychology, and philosophy, and science is understanding that transcendent experiences are the products of our “transcendent brain.” The guest editors have opened an inquiry in the dialogue between objective knowledge (science) and subjective knowledge (spiritual insight) to generate new understandings about such ultimate questions.
Finally, the fourth special issue is entitled “Pursuing Peace through Education: Student voices focused on holistic, arts-based, and/or contemplative education.” In an MA program in the Graduate School for International Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the presenter collected various voices of students who have researched holistic, contemplative, and action-oriented methods of inquiry. I believe that these special issues set the tone and show the direction of the future of JCHE.

Author

• Hyeyoung Bang, Bowling Green State University