Contemplative Practices and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Bridging the Disciplines - Paperback

by Greta Gaard (Editor), Bengü Ergüner-Tekinalp (Editor)

This volume explores mindfulness and other contemplative approaches as strategic tools for cultivating anti-oppressive pedagogies in higher education.

Research confirms that simply providing students with evidence and narratives of economic, social, and environmental injustices proves insufficient in developing awareness and eliciting responses of empathy, solidarity, and a desire to act for change. From the environmental humanities to the environmental sciences, legal studies, psychology, and counseling, educators from a range of geographical and disciplinary standpoints describe their research-based mindfulness pedagogies. Chapters explore how to interrupt and interrogate oppression through contemplative teaching tools, assignments, and strategies that create greater awareness and facilitate deeper engagement with learning contents, contexts, and communities.

Providing a framework that facilitates awareness of the links between historic and current oppression, self-identity, and trauma, and creating a transformative learning experience through mindfulness, this book is a must-read for faculty and educators interested in intersections of mindfulness, contemplative pedagogies, and anti-oppression.

Author Biography

Greta Gaard is Professor of English and Women/Gender/Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, USA.

Bengü Ergüner-Tekinalp is Professor of Counseling at Drake University, USA.