Reflective Practice,Literature, and Critical Theory

In this article, I offer a case of the predicaments I encountered in conducting teacher education research at my own institution and re‐examine these predicaments using an ethic of mindfulness and compassion. I explore how this Buddhist perspective might help researchers navigate what can be a lonely, ethically complicated research journey among their own colleagues. Based on this analysis, I propose that an ethic of mindfulness and compassion holds potential for guiding teacher education research and challenging researchers to see differently. I argue that conducting teacher education research using the lenses of mindfulness and compassion might propel social change aimed at increasing educational and social opportunity for all people and, in doing so, further the hope for justice in our relationships, teaching, and research.     

Mindfulness meditation for future early childhood teachers in Japan

To prevent future burnout and turnover among early childhood education students, mindfulness training may hold promise as a measure. A lab-based pilot and classroom-based feasibility study was designed to investigate an effective way to introduce mindfulness meditation. Results suggested that two types of audio-guided mindfulness meditation, a sitting meditation and a compassion meditation reduced stress level, and that the compassion meditation was perceived as more comfortable than the sitting meditation. As a tentative conclusion, the compassion meditation may be introduced first before the sitting meditation. Additional studies should examine the effects of longer-term meditation practice on teaching career development.     

萧红创作中的孤独意识

20世纪80年代以后,对萧红的研究已成为现代文学研究的一个热点,不断有文章与论著问世。特别是随着诸如女性主义思潮等新批评观念的涌入,对她的研究也不断有新的角度切入。但在这些论著和文章中,对于这位有自己独特气质的女性作家,人们对她的特质、她的悲悯情怀,特别是她文本中爱情描写的缺失缺乏细致的分析,文章主要从孤独意识方面来解读萧红。     

Mindfulness‐Based Design Practice (MBDP): A Novel Learning Framework in Support of Designers within Twenty‐First‐Century Higher Education

While the interconnected and technological nature of the twenty‐first century can bring about many positive global connections, the importance of prioritising the development of the ‘inner world’ of designers is receiving less attention; similarly, time for contemplation, reflection and stillness is becoming scarcer. This article discusses mindfulness training from the Buddhist perspective, and how it can act as a pathway to personal introspection and as a supportive method for mental illnesses. With a special focus on design education, it discusses a novel framework, Mindfulness‐Based Design Practice (MBDP), and how it can potentially offer opportunities for design students to foster positive mind qualities such as mindfulness, compassion, resilience, and recognising the true nature of phenomena for becoming more ethical designers. Therefore, this article looks to bridge the gap between the significant lack of contemplative mindfulness‐based methods within the higher design education sector and the increasing mental health crisis within that sector. Thus, the primary concern of the MBDP is to advance both the individual and the collective development of the contemporary designer’s mind. Referring to the mind of the designer as the ‘inner designer’, this article forms an unfolding dialogue of the novel framework MBDP in support of mindful learning within twenty‐first‐century design education.     

Mindfulness and discussing “thorny” issues in the classroom

Being in the moment, showing compassion, being non-judgmental, acknowledging deep emotional challenges without getting stuck: these are mindfulness characteristics important to us as teachers, yet not often included in teacher preparation. These concerns become magnified when we focus on difficult knowledge and thorny issues, like topics related to gender and race. Using a sociocultural framework, we address how mindfulness, heuristics, and other contemplative practices can be adopted to create safe, supporting, and healing spaces for such complex, often emotionally painful discussions. Participant narratives are used extensively to provide a voice to those marginalized or hurt. Drawing from these narratives and their experience in discussing thorny issues, we put forth possible solutions and interventions that can create spaces that encourage and support critical discourse through mindful practices. The development of a heuristic for discussing thorny issues whose characteristics can be adopted by interested teachers and educators to help frame and mediate this type of difficult discussion is an outcome of this research.     

The Role of Mindfulness,Self‐Compassion,and Emotion Regulation in Eating Disorder Symptoms Among College Students

Eating disorders often emerge, resurface, or worsen in individuals during college (National Eating Disorders Association, 2013), substantiating the need to identify protective factors. The relationship between mindfulness, self‐compassion, and emotion regulation and disordered eating was examined in a sample of 100 university students. Results of a path analysis indicated significant direct and indirect effects. Clinical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

When Teachers Must Let Education Hurt: Rousseau and Nietzsche on Compassion and the Educational Value of Suffering

Avi Mintz (2008) has recently argued that Anglo-American educators have a tendency to alleviate student suffering in the classroom. According to Mintz, this tendency can be detrimental because certain kinds of suffering actually enhance student learning. While Mintz compellingly describes the effects of educator's desires to alleviate suffering in students, he does not examine one of the roots of the desire: the feeling of compassion or pity (used as synonyms here). Compassion leads many teachers to unreflectively alleviate student struggles. While there are certainly times when compassion is necessary to help students learn, there are other times when it must be overcome. Compassion in the classroom is a two-edged sword that must be carefully employed; and yet it is often assumed that it is an unequivocal good that ought to trump all other impulses. In this article I hope to raise awareness concerning the promises and pitfalls of compassion in education by examining the theories of two historical figures who famously emphasised compassion in their philosophical writings: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rousseau and Nietzsche argue that compassion is a powerful educational force but that it must be properly employed. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, compassion is necessary to develop self-mastery in human beings—the ultimate goal of education—but it is a compassion that must hurt in order to help. My hope is that Rousseau's and Nietzsche's ideas on compassion will encourage thoughtful reflection on the uses and abuses of compassion in education.     

Rousseau and the Education of Compassion

In this paper I examine Rousseau's strategy for teaching compassion in Book Four of Emile. In particular, I look at the three maxims on compassion that help to organise Rousseau's discussion, and the precise strategy that Emile's tutor uses to instil compassion while avoiding other passions, such as anger, fear and pride. The very idea of an education in compassion is an important one: Rousseau's discussion remains relevant, and he has correctly understood the significance of compassion for modern life. But in linking compassion to self-interest, he creates a tension between Emile's natural sentiments, including compassion, as a way of bringing him into the social order. The Buddhist and Christian views of compassion help to clarify some of the difficulties with Rousseau's account.     

Rethinking the Concept of Mindfulness: A Neo‐Confucian Approach

This article expounds on a neo‐Confucian approach to mindfulness by drawing upon the writings of Zhu Xi. I argue that Zhu Xi's notion of mindfulness is encapsulated in the concept of ‘jing’ that refers to the single‐minded and reverential attention to self‐cultivation through ‘gewu’ (investigation of things). The desired outcome of mindfulness is the attainment of perfect goodness where one responds with sagely ease to affairs in everyday life. In contrast to the dominant focus on the self, present‐state awareness and non‐evaluation in Chan Buddhism, Zhu Xi's construal of mindfulness stresses interdependent relationships, social contribution and ethical purpose. Such a conception motivates learners to seek continuous self‐improvement and focused engagement with others. A major critique of Zhu Xi's formulation of mindfulness is that it entails a whole‐school approach and lifelong pursuit which are difficult to achieve in contemporary schooling conditions.     

"正念型"领导:西方教育管理的新理论

"正念"是一种静思的实践,即常说的"活在当下",不受过去经历和对未来想象的困扰.以"正念"理念和实践为核心的"正念型"领导,通过静思实践、存而不论、富于同情等服务于领导者和学校组织成员.传统领导理论将教育领导者描述为积极地忙于各项事务的人;"正念型"领导者则表现得像暂停的人、倾听的人以及全神贯注地观察着学校的人."正念型"领导以一种"存在"的方式,而不是"做"的方式,缓解着学校领导者的冲突和焦虑."关注当下""经验的感受性""对问题的倾向性""培植同情心""智慧地回应"是"正念型"领导的组织原则."正念"可以帮助学校领导者更好地履行信息角色、人际角色、决策角色和道德领导角色.     

School-Based Mindfulness Training and the Economisation of Attention: A Stieglerian View

Educational theorists may be right to suggest that providing mindfulness training in schools can challenge oppressive pedagogies and overcome Western dualism. Before concluding that this training is liberatory, however, one must go beyond pedagogy and consider schooling’s role in enacting the educational neurofuture envisioned by mindfulness discourse. Mindfulness training, this article argues, is a biopolitical human enhancement strategy. Its goal is to insulate youth from pathologies that stem from digital capitalism’s economisation of attention. I use Bernard Stiegler’s Platonic depiction of the ambiguousness of all attention channelling mechanisms as pharmaka—containing both poison and cure—to suggest that this training is a double-edged sword. Does the inculcation of mindfulness in schoolchildren empower them; or is it merely an exercise in pathology-proofing them in their capacity as the next generation of unpaid digital labourers? The answer, I maintain, depends on whether young people can use the Internet’s political potentialities to mitigate the exploitation of their unpaid online labour time. That is, on whether the exploitative ‘digital pharmakon’—the capitalistic Web—can at the same time be socio-politically curative.     

Affinity and interpretation in oral histories of art education

In the pursuit of my doctoral research on the institutional history of the art department at Central Technical School (CTS) in Toronto, Canada, I amassed a collection of oral histories from 20 current and former CTS art instructors and students, recorded across the country. As an instructor in the CTS art department in addition to being its historian, I set out to produce a comprehensive and multifocal account of the history of this transgenerational community of which I am a part. The following article focuses on one research participant in particular: Sue Shintani, a former student and long-time program volunteer, whose recollections of the CTS art department helped to form an interwoven narrative of the men and women who taught at or attended this hybrid location of applied and fine art education. Sue's insights stretch over 60 years, from her experience as a high school student in the 1950s, to her time as adult student in the 1990s, to her role as a school volunteer up to the present day. In this reflective examination, I ask whether it can be claimed that the quality of oral history research correlates with the depth of the interpersonal relationship between interviewer and interviewee.     

In response to David Greenwood’s ‘Place mobility and faculty life: mindfulness through change’ through the lens of science teacher education programs

In writing this review, I draw on the experience of David Greenwood (Cult Stud Sci Educ 10:5–16, 2015) whose ethnographic study sheds light on his growth as a faculty member who has taught in various settings that are quite different from the culture that he grew up with. I extend his thoughts on ecological mindfulness to encompass a culturally aware method of teaching based on place sensitized more to the needs of science teacher preparation programs. The methods used in writing the review included literature searches for articles that incorporate ecological mindfulness and culturally responsive teaching in science teacher preparation programs and reflected ideas voiced in Greenwood’s article. Although he seems that he is primarily addressing other faculty members, his experiences can be used as lifelong lessons for preservice teachers entering a primarily homogeneous workforce expected to teach an increasingly diverse student population. His humor, use of Haiku, poetry and mindfulness as a way of becoming one with a culture that he is not accustomed has many lessons that prove useful in training more culturally responsive teachers. In light of an increasingly diverse US student population versus a stagnantly homogeneous teaching workforce, his reflective practice will prove useful to teachers who are expected to teach students with cultures different from their own.     

Naturalized compassion: a critique of Nussbaum on literature as education for compassionate citizenry

Martha Nussbaum and others claim that the study of literature can make a significant contribution to political education by nurturing empathic capacities. In Nussbaum's reading of the situation, the need to promote the creation of bonds of compassion‐based solidarity between co‐citizens provides material for an argument to restore the study of novels, in particular the realist social novel, to its former place near the centre of the curriculum in higher education. This paper argues that the unrivalled educational value that Nussbaum ascribes to the study of novels in this regard is compelling only when one fails to appreciate that rich imaginative involvement in another's aversive state is only one of many other psychological routes to compassion. The paper begins by sketching out Nussbaum's curricular proposal. After explaining how it presupposes what is labelled the perspective‐taking/compassion hypothesis, I go on to catalogue the various psychological processes which are recognized in social psychology as playing a mediating role in the experience of compassion. In closing, I argue that the educational imperative of building up of bonds compassion‐based solidarity between co‐citizens calls for a curricular response more varied than Nussbaum's.     

大学生诚信意识的作用与教育

大学生诚信意识在其成长中,具有思想品德的立身作用,专业学习的基石作用,人际交往的沟通作用,求职就业的促成作用。高校要重视大学生诚信意识的教育,引导他们深入认识诚信功能,创设诚信实践体验的情境,建立诚信为荣的氛围,完善诚信的制度规约,构建校园诚信的示范机制。     

Responsibility for nurturing a child’s wellbeing: teachers teaching mindfulness with children

ABSTRACT

A thriving and evolving pool of research and commentary is emerging in relation to the integration of mindfulness techniques in school and out-of-school settings. In the current study the author explored how experienced mindbody wellness instructors make sense of teaching children mindfulness. The methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to interview eight teachers teaching mindfulness with children from the United States and Australia. Four thematic categories emerged from the analysis and in this article the author discusses findings related to the theme of, Responsibility for Nurturing a Child’s Wellbeing. It was discovered that having a holistic-wellness-orientated vision was an important aspect of how teachers made sense of mindfulness instruction. The findings showed that teaching children mindfulness has the capacity to raise academic performance while synergistically enhancing a child’s spiritual, environmental, emotional, social, creative and physical wellbeing. It is recommended that mindfulness teacher training programs be established in universities to better prepare students to meet the demands of 21^st Century education.     

Stories of learning,identity, navigations and boundary crossings in STEM in non-dominant communities: new imaginaries for research and action

Marta Civil’s paper “STEM learning research through a funds of knowledge lens” can be read as a story about her trajectory as a researcher of everyday and school mathematics over time, grounded in sociocultural historical theory. Building on her work, I explore three issues. First, I address the grounding of STEM research in studies of learning and show what this may imply in the context of multilingualism and transculturism. Second, I explore how funds of knowledge can put into question what counts as science. Third, I discuss some of the methodological challenges the article raises. I conclude with some comments to think with for the future of the STEM field and equitable science.     

Jane Butler Kahle: passion,determination, and vision

In this article, I describe how Jane Butler Kahle’s intellectual curiosity, commitment to equity and her ability to use various research approaches, to establish research and networking groups comprised of scholars from diverse backgrounds, theoretical perspectives and geographic locations, to disseminate research outcomes and findings through scholarly publications, service on policy committees and mentoring of other scholars framed a career in science education that has impacted students, teachers, and researchers. Jane synergistically and tirelessly combined her research, teaching, and service to identify, challenge and reduce inequities in science education in the US and throughout the world because for her it was important that all students have access to quality science education.     

No space for girliness in physics: understanding and overcoming the masculinity of physics

Allison Gonsalves’ article on “women doctoral students’ positioning around discourses of gender and competence in physics” explores narratives of Canadian women physicists concerning their strategies to gain recognition as physicists. In my response to her rewarding and inspiring analysis I will reflect on her findings and arguments and put them into a broader context of research in gender and physics. In addition to her promising strategies to make physics attractive and welcoming to all genders I want to stress two more aspects of the tricky problem: diversity and contextuality of physics.     

Mathematical biography and key rhetoric

The intention of this article is to consider the use of narrative and rhetorical inquiry as research methods. I construct a mathematical biography of one elementary teacher trainee, Sirpa, who had performed well in her advanced mathematics course in upper secondary school. I describe her development as a mathematics teacher during teacher education from her second-year methods course and teaching practice to fourth-year teaching practice. Narrative inquiry is more than a case study: Sirpa’s mathematical biography is a story that describes how she constructs her mathematical identity. I also analysed the key rhetoric that Sirpa used in her talk, key rhetoric here referring to the strategy by which she constructed continuity and coherence.