Contemplative Practices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

An ACMHE Contemplative Education webinar with Patricia Owen-Smith Professor of Psychology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oxford College of Emory University Originally broadcast on Friday, August 31st, 2018 For the past several decades, The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has been the major venue for the scholarly study of teaching and learning in higher education. SoTL’s focus has continued to emphasize the production and understanding of teaching and student learning as scholarly work supported by articulated classroom goals and evidence. However, for the most part, there has been little attention given to the types of learning desired, specifically those that are focused on the interior-exterior union, and their associated venues for access. Consequently, this has resulted in a sense of impoverishment for those who are welcoming internal dimensions such as insight, imagination, attention, and spirituality into their classrooms and teaching lives. Access to a contemplative pedagogical perspective, one that unabashedly addresses such dimensions, has remained elusive or poorly defined. This webinar focuses on the place of contemplative knowing and contemplative practices within the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) framework. The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE) and SoTL share a commitment to improving the quality of teaching and learning, and both seek to transform higher education. While there is little doubt that SoTL and contemplative education have followed parallel, disconnected trajectories and that their emphases are dissimilar, they also share a striking relationship: specifically, an abiding interest in understanding internal processes and their relationship to learning. How is it then that the valuing of contemplative knowledge and practices continues to appear marginalized in our institutions of higher learning and in SoTL? We will explore a series of questions grounded in this paradox in an effort to create a bridge between contemplative practices in higher education and SoTL. If we might connect SoTL and contemplative education and if they are to intersect with one another, what might this look like and how might this offer the changes needed in the academy of the 21st century?