Volume 21, Number 1, 2013 Contemplative Practice, Education, and Socio-Political Transformation (Part Two)

EN:

This article's main theme is the conceptualization of a 'body-oriented-pedagogy' that unfolds a possible account of 'how one learns from the body'. Based on B.K.S Iyengar's approach to yoga-posture practice, which is embedded in classical yoga's philosophy of 'mind', a 'body-oriented pedagogy' is depicted as a practice that seeks to incite 'embodied mindfulness'. The pedagogy trains one in turning 'body' into 'subject', thus quieting the 'thinking mind'. It is thus conceptualized as turning the Cartesian crowning of ‘mind’ over ‘body’ upside down. This pedagogy is suggested as yielding 'education towards and in presence'. Presence is characterized as a mode of perceiving experience prior to the grid of language and concepts, enhancing one's ability to choose one’s action. Applying the grounding of pedagogy in ‘body’, the article then contributes to the discourse involved in the incorporation of contemplative practice within schooling. 'Body-oriented pedagogy' is depicted as compatible with both 'spiritual' and 'non-spiritual' curriculum orientations.

EN:

This essay conveys an embodied, relational view of contemplative practice in education through my experience of a “Goddess puja.” I undertook this puja with two other women in the context of exploring and documenting the experiences of seven faculty and student alumni, myself included, within a Women’s Spirituality Master of Arts (WSMA) degree program located in the San Francisco Bay area. I highlight a holistic, ritual scope for considering “contemplative practices,” by engaging an embodied view of contemplative practice based from Women’s Spirituality education. The practice of Goddess puja or worship is a devotional, contemplative ritual offering of flowers and substances made to the deity in order to receive her blessing. The practice of supplicating Goddess impacts my work in midwifery and my lived philosophy, where ritual contemplation evokes further learning and inquiry about the nature of birth and birth-giving.

EN:

This article examines the implications of aspects of Buddhist philosophy for contemporary Global Citizenship Education. With primary reference to the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, it specifically considers Buddhist understandings of suffering, the doctrine of no-self, the notion of store-consciousness, and the law of karma. The article subsequently introduces a skillful global citizenship education that is built on three pillars; namely, skillful awareness of interdependence, skillful compassion, and skillful awareness of intention.

EN:

Critical thinking instructors are faced with an overwhelming number of textbooks to choose from for their courses. Many of these texts do not reflect an awareness of current scholarship in critical thinking and informal logic. I argue that instructors should only adopt textbooks that reflect a sound theoretical understanding of the topic by acknowledging the central role of critical thinking dispositions, offering a more nuanced approach to the teaching of fallacies and of inference, stressing dialectic and argument revision, focusing on the analysis and evaluation of real arguments, and broadening the scope of critical thinking beyond argument analysis and evaluation. To support instructors in this regard, I critique one popular textbook now in its sixth edition that does not satisfy many of these criteria, Munson and Black (2012), and applaud one new textbook that I find does succeed on many of these fronts, Bailin and Battersby (2010).