Nonviolence Education for teacher training: the experience of Chilean teachers building a more empathetic community through a contemplative framework

• In Event: Building Teacher Capacity for Peace-Oriented and Foundational Learning

Proposal

1. Introduction

There has been an increased interest from North America-based researchers in bringing non-violence strategies into colleges and teacher training programs, (see Lauricella, 2019 for a study in Canada, and Wang, 2013 and 2018, for research conducted in the United States) as well as prisons (McCarthy, 2014), along with an effort to integrate contemplative practices such as meditation, breathing exercises, journaling and self-reflection into the classroom ecosystem in order to facilitate at atmosphere of collective well-being that links to the ideas above concerning interconnectedness (Barbezat and Bush, 2014; Bolliger and Wang, 2013, Lin et al, 2019). These perspectives and approaches are currently missing in Chilean scholarship at a time when studies have begun to look into classroom violence and its causes (Becerra et al., 2019; Trucco and Inostroza, 2021; U. de Chile, 2022); as a consequence, there was a clear opportunity to address such instances of violence at a time when, as Lopez et al., (2021) indicate, Chilean teachers currently face the challenge of needing to be more dialogical and less punitive in their praxis, in a country where exclusionary and harsh disciplinary practices are and have historically been acceptable.

With this in mind, I embarked on a 6-month long research project to co-develop a pedagogy of nonviolence with Chilean trainee teachers. Nonviolence education has gained traction over the last decade, particularly through the work of Hongyu Wang and her advocacy for developing personhood and cultivating inner peace (Wang, 2024), the understanding of nonviolence as a social practice that seeks to promote equality (Butler, 2020), and finally the incorporation of contemplation and self-inquiry precisely as means to cultivate a sense of inner peace that can allow individuals to engage with each other through a more empathetic lens (Herrera Fuentes, 2021). Therefore, an integral part of this intervention was the use of contemplative practices in each of the 28 sessions we had together, guided by the question “Does the use of self-enquiry practices produce any change in the ways student-teachers view themselves and their relationship with their social world?”. This paper, which represents a smaller part of a larger research project, details the impact contemplative practices had in reshaping participants’ view of others, their relationship with them and their paradigms shifts concerning their engagement with their social world.


2. Methodology

Participants were 38 Chilean higher education students enrolled in an elective course titled “Radical Pedagogies, Nonviolence and Change”. The course was taught at two different universities, Universidad de O’Higgins (UOH), where 14 participants took part in the course during the first semester, and Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso (PUCV), where 24 students were enrolled during the second semester. Full ethics approval was given by both institutions, and informed consent was granted by those partaking in the course.
The course itself was organized as a series of 14 participatory workshops. each exploring a specific pedagogical approach to non-violence. The first four sessions were done online and did not include self-inquiry practices; the remaining ten were in person on university premises. The workshops were structured as follows:
1. A pre-session reading assignment that varied depending on the workshop’s topic. Such reading was accompanied of a reflection-type worksheet where participants were asked to record answers to specific questions.
2. The workshop itself began with 15 minutes devoted to a contemplative practice. Participants were asked if they desired to partake in this activity, and if they did, instruction was provided for the practice chosen on that day.
3. 30 minutes were devoted to share and discuss the questions from the pre-workshop reading tasks.
4. The remaining of the session was spent on what Kemmis et al., (2014, p.25) define as ‘communicative action’: an opportunity for collective dialogue to uncover the issues that needed to be addressed, and then reaching a consensus on how and if it could be addressed.
5. The last 10 minutes were devoted to finalize and deliver their reports by presenting them to other groups.

Contemplative exercises for the first seven sessions were chosen and guided by me. The remaining three sessions were devoted to peer-led teaching on nonviolence: groups of three or four students planned and taught an aspect of nonviolence pedagogy, and led their peer through a contemplative exercise of their own choice.

The guiding research question was “Does the use of self-enquiry practices produce any change in the ways student-teachers view themselves and their relationship with their social world?”. Prior to our last session, participants were sent a reflection-type worksheet to discuss the extent to which contemplative / self-inquiry practices had affected such a change, if it had. Data collected was analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2022).


3. Findings
The findings of this study show that the theories and practices implemented throughout the project had a transformative effect in the way the participants saw themselves, their students, their peers and their interpersonal relationships; this shift was reflected in a more empathetic and compassionate view of others; a willingness to engage with the world around them in a nonviolent manner; and an explicit desire to learn more about nonviolence, contemplative pedagogy and nonviolent action as a means to social justice. Although there were limitations to this project, this research succeeded in creating a collaborative space where participants were able to openly discuss their views on each of the themes presented, and more importantly, where they were capable of collectively strategizing ways to deal with educational inequalities.
Learning and using contemplative practices had a positive impact in helping participants feel more empathetic and compassionate towards one another; while the challenges of meditation were acknowledged and the feasibility of this specific practice in their own context questioned, other practices, such empathy and compassion development were well received and positively commented upon. Once again, these practices and exercises had previously been absent from the participants’ curriculum as HE student teachers and remain largely absent from classroom practices in Chilean schools.

Author

• Gaston Bacquet, University of Glasgow