Reclaiming “self” in teachers' images of “education” through mindfulness as contemplative inquiry

ABSTRACT

Against the pressures of standardization, some argue for the need to expand teachers' awareness to their “teaching self” because teachers “teach who they are.” This article acknowledges the importance of this orientation; however, it is suggested that its implementation requires overcoming social reproduction. Teachers may have to liberate themselves from the image of “education” into which they were initiated as they themselves grew up in a system in which “self” has mostly become a null curriculum. In order to reclaim self in teaching and “education,” there may be a need for radical curricular-pedagogical approaches that address this problem directly. The article describes and demonstrates the implementation of such approach in a teacher education course in which mindfulness was proposed as a way for investigating self as an explicit curriculum. Based on interpreting students' final projects, the article depicts difficulties and insights evoked by this curricular-pedagogical approach and the course's possible contributions.

Notes

1. I am a certified senior yoga teacher and have also completed Bangore University's mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teacher training 1 course.

2. Kabat-Zinn (1994) grounded his rendition in certain Buddhist conceptions of practice as well as in evidence-based science.

3. Most commonly, formal practice is conducted while sitting. My experience with several contemplative practices, and with the teaching of this course, led to the preference of standing meditation.

4. For reasons of scope, this will not be described in the article.

5. For an elaborate description of the inner curriculum, see Ergas (2017a, b, c).