Teachers as Wisdom Workers of Love: A Radical Reconceptualization of Teacher Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Spirituality as human connection

Abstract

This paper explores teacher education through the lens of love, wholeness, and interbeing. Drawing from the lived experiences of educators from China, Pakistan, the U.S., and Russia, we explore how teachers might be cultivated as “wisdom workers of love.” Using a co-envisioned and contemplative methodology rooted in heartfulness and spiritfulness, we weave our stories into a divergent narrative of healing, resistance, and transformation. We present a five-dimensional framework for transformative education that centers the sacred inner life, mutual witnessing, communal holding, embodied knowing, and institutional healing. This work contributes to scholarship on holistic education, contemplative pedagogy, and the spiritual formation of educators in a time of global educational and ecological crises.

Authors

• Anna Lytkina, University of Maryland

• Yueyue Wang, University of Maryland

• Maha Shoaib, University of Maryland

• Jing Lin, University of Maryland