Engaged Ethics: Becoming a Mindful Teacher

• In Event: 42.065 - Translating Eastern Ontologies Into the Classroom: Challenges and Openings for Equity Pedagogy

Abstract

Purposes:

Of current crucial needs for ethical, equitable, and nonconventional curriculum, how to translate epistemological inquires into everyday practices is particularly critical for developing equitable curriculum as lived, embodied, and enacted. Informed by mindfulness, Buddhist tradition wisdom, this paper is a reflection of my curricular practice centered on mindful being and embodiment. My teaching and student learning are transformed when we become mindful in our interactions with humans and nonhumans, with self and with others. Ethical practices in such pedagogy is not to prescribe rules, procedures, or a mere analysis, but to develop dispositions and mindful beings with guided attentions and equitable actions.

Mode of inquiry

My pedagogical practices provide opportunities for students to fully engage their sensorimotor and nonverbal capabilities in forming mindful relationship with a new object that they had paid little or no attention before. I gradually introduced mindfulness practice approaches from Buddhist tradition to my students but also provided ample space for them to develop their own in their weekly mindfulness practice for 10 weeks. From their beginning unconvinced and doubtful reactions to their later tuned-in mindfulness, my students have developed active attention, felt awareness, attention to inattention, and non-judgmental being-with/in relationship with their mindful object.

Perspectives and Findings

Mindfulness is steadily gaining attention in the field of psychology, counseling, and contemplative education in the West. It has been approved to be beneficial for social and emotional learning and well-being in educational practices (Jennings, 2015). Researchers also found its connections with neurobiology, physiology, and cognitive science in that mindfulness has direct impact brain activities, immune system, and cognition (Siegel 2007). This paper unfolds mindfulness from its Buddhism tradition, translating its epistemological meanings into embodied and everyday practices in and out of classroom. Buddhist emptiness and nonattachment approach toward self-understanding calls into question the stable and transcendental self, and there is only sunya of self. The notion of sunya is more of not dwelling in anywhere rather than a mere emptiness. Mindfulness is to develop lucid awareness of our markings of self and other, subject and object, and other dualistic relations.

Scholarly significance of the study or work

Mindful pedagogy has opened spaces for students to discuss sensitive topics, such as religion in the classroom. This cultivates a mindful being who is able to engage sensibilities and develop felt responsiveness to what is arising in the moment. Becoming mindful cannot be achieved by a shortcut method, but to become who they are not yet. Furthermore, our mindful practice challenges the dichotomy of self and other, and it shapes nondual relations. Mindfulness practice brings us into the moment: present, attentive, aware; it cultivates the mindful being who is alert and is ready for guided and ethical/equitable actions.

Reference:

Jennings, P. A. (2015). Mindfulness for teachers: Simple skills for peace and productivity in the classroom. New York: W.W. Norton
Siegel, D. J. (2007). The mindful brain: Reflection and attunement in the cultivation of well-being. New York: W.W. Norton

Author

• Mei W. Hoyt, University of North Texas