Look Before You Leap: Reconsidering Contemplative Pedagogy
This paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as "contemplative pedagogy." Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first-person experience as an essential means of knowing that has histo...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2017]
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| In: |
Teaching theology and religion
Year: 2017, Volume: 20, Issue: 1, Pages: 4-21 |
| RelBib Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality FB Theological education KBQ North America ZF Education |
| Further subjects: | B
Critical Thinking
B Spirituality B Therapy B Contemplative Pedagogy B Self-knowledge B Empathy |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Publisher) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as "contemplative pedagogy." Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first-person experience as an essential means of knowing that has historically been overshadowed and dismissed by an emphasis on analytical reasoning. In this essay, I examine four problematic claims that appear frequently in descriptions of contemplative pedagogy: (1) undergraduate students have a kind of spiritual hunger; (2) pedagogies focused on cognitive skills teach students only what, not how, to think; (3) self-knowledge fosters empathy; and (4) education needs a new epistemology centered on spiritual and emotional, rather than intellectual, experience. I argue that these claims underestimate the diversity of undergraduate students, the complexity of what it means to think and know, the capacity for self-knowledge to become self-absorption, and the dangers of transgressing the boundaries between intellectual, psychological, and religious experiences. [See as well "Response to Kathleen Fisher's "Look Before You Leap," by Andrew O. Fort and Louis Komjathy, published in this issue of the journal.] |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9647 |
| Reference: | Kritik in "Response to Kathleen Fisher's "Look Before You Leap" (2017)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Teaching theology and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/teth.12361 |
