Journal Article
4 May 2026
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Featured Content
- Journal Article4 May 2026
Reimagining Masculinities through Australian Indigenous Pedagogies
In the face of intersecting ecological crises and persistent gender inequality, this paper explores how dominant norms of masculinity—marked by control, detachment, conquest, and other ideals rooted in Western, hegemonic paradigms—contribute to environmental degradation. Drawing on ecofeminist theory, Australian Indigenous pedagogies, and contemplative education, we examine how relational, place-based approaches may offer transformative alternatives for boys in schooling contexts. Central to this inquiry is the Learning from Country framework, which positions land as teacher and emphasizes practices of deep listening, reciprocity, and ethical engagement with the more-than-human world. We argue that this pedagogical approach challenges dominant masculinities by fostering care and interconnectedness. Through a classroom-based vignette from a Grade 1 setting in Metropolitan Sydney, which is situated on the ancestral lands of the Dharug People, we illustrate how subtle shifts in pedagogy—such as foraging for natural art materials and ritualized return to place—can create meaningful opportunities for boys to engage in relational learning. These moments are framed not only as ecologically responsive, but as spiritually and ethically significant, echoing recent calls for the cultivation of ecological virtues and interiority in education. By weaving together theoretical analysis and lived experience, this paper highlights how educators can play a critical role in supporting boys to resist masculinist norms and instead inhabit more relational and sustainable ways of being.
Current Articles
- Journal Article4 May 2026
Contemplative Classrooms for Ecological Wisdom: Reimagining K-12 Education in Pakistan, China, and Beyond
This paper explores the transformative potential of contemplative environmental education in addressing the growing disconnection between humans and the natural world, particularly within K-12 education systems shaped by anthropocentric and capitalist paradigms. Modern schooling often frames nature as an object of study, rather than a sacred, living presence, contributing to ecological alienation amid intensifying environmental crises. We propose a radical shift toward contemplative, holistic education that draws on spiritual, Indigenous, and ecological knowledge systems. Grounded in Daoist philosophy, Islamic teachings on stewardship, Hindu ethics, and Indigenous worldviews, we reimagine education as a relational and sacred engagement with the Earth. We argue that reconnecting learners with nature requires not only critical pedagogy but also practices that cultivate reverence, love, and embodied awareness. Contemplative approaches—including mindfulness, meditation, nature walks, journaling, and environmental activism—are presented as tools to deepen emotional, ethical, and intellectual relationships with the natural world. This form of learning encourages students to move beyond classrooms into natural spaces and communities, recognizing nature as teacher and co-participant. Ultimately, contemplative environmental education offers a path toward ecological healing by fostering inner and outer harmony, awakening ecological consciousness, and nurturing a deep, enduring love for life on Earth. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Reimagining Masculinities through Australian Indigenous Pedagogies
In the face of intersecting ecological crises and persistent gender inequality, this paper explores how dominant norms of masculinity—marked by control, detachment, conquest, and other ideals rooted in Western, hegemonic paradigms—contribute to environmental degradation. Drawing on ecofeminist theory, Australian Indigenous pedagogies, and contemplative education, we examine how relational, place-based approaches may offer transformative alternatives for boys in schooling contexts. Central to this inquiry is the Learning from Country framework, which positions land as teacher and emphasizes practices of deep listening, reciprocity, and ethical engagement with the more-than-human world. We argue that this pedagogical approach challenges dominant masculinities by fostering care and interconnectedness. Through a classroom-based vignette from a Grade 1 setting in Metropolitan Sydney, which is situated on the ancestral lands of the Dharug People, we illustrate how subtle shifts in pedagogy—such as foraging for natural art materials and ritualized return to place—can create meaningful opportunities for boys to engage in relational learning. These moments are framed not only as ecologically responsive, but as spiritually and ethically significant, echoing recent calls for the cultivation of ecological virtues and interiority in education. By weaving together theoretical analysis and lived experience, this paper highlights how educators can play a critical role in supporting boys to resist masculinist norms and instead inhabit more relational and sustainable ways of being. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Challenging STEM Learning Spaces: The Paradigm of Contemplative Traditions as the Bedrock of Creativity and Healing
As the post-pandemic classroom and pedagogy evolve to remedy oppressive norms, young people’s mental health and alienation has taken front stage (Rahmani & Zitouni, 2022). Traditional STEM learning spaces often teach inquiry as a linear, non-deviated approach to problems about self and nature (Hrisa & Psillos, 2022). Furthermore, because our classrooms often strip students and educators of their inherent creative abilities through constant assessments, improvement scales, and market-driven expectations, classrooms cease to become places of healing (Pandya, 2021). Eastern wisdom traditions and their associated philosophies provide a unique pedagogical lens that emphasizes a deep inquiry into self, empathy, and creativity (Pandya, 2023). This creative expression, an inherent feature of philosophies like Yoga, consequently provides the framework for classrooms as spaces of healing and coexistence with community and nature (Malaviya, 2021). Our study examined how this void of creativity is filled with a paradigm of healing, as inspired by the pedagogy and wisdom in traditions like Yoga, Vedanta, and Buddhist Mindfulness. At our STEAM IdeaLab makerspace, we introduced these practices and curricular approaches to K-12 educators through a workshop. The objective was not only to introduce practices, but also include a lens of wisdom when teaching inquiry, as it provides the foundation for creativity and thus healing (Ergas, 2018). Beyond the inclusion of meditation, journaling, nature exercises in the Skidmore North Woods, and creative making, our study sought to offer a novel pedagogical foundation to traditional K-12 STEM learning through an emphasis on creative artifacts as mediums of healing. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Journeys of two children from West to East: Notes of a Teacher-Parent
This essay, explores the transformative educational journeys of two children across five countries, viewed through the dual lens of a teacher and parent. Grounded in the principles of Contemplative Education (CE), it draws on over two decades of the author’s experience in global education, weaving personal and professional insights into a narrative that examines how context, culture, and pedagogy intersect in shaping young learners. The journey begins in the inquiry-rich, nature-based kindergartens of Germany and the nurturing early primary years of the United Kingdom, moves through the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary and Middle Years Programmes, and Big Picture education in Australia, navigates the high-stakes academic culture of South Korea, and culminates in the values-driven, mindfulness-infused approach of an IB school in Thailand. Along the way, the essay interrogates recurring themes of displacement and belonging, wisdom versus intelligence, linguistic and cultural transitions, and the dissonance between inner growth and external achievement. Through this lived experience, the essay reflects on how educational paradigms can either constrain or nurture the inner life of a child. It argues for a more expansive application of CE; one that moves beyond surface-level mindfulness practices to embrace a deeper integration of reflection, relational presence, and ethical awareness within educational ecosystems. By situating CE within culturally rooted, emotionally intelligent, and spiritually grounded practices, this essay offers a vision of education that supports not only academic development but also social and emotional growth. In doing so, it returns to the core promise of CE: to rehumanize education through attention, compassion, and care. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Wisdom and Contemplative Effort in Ikeda Daisaku's Philosophy of Human Education
This article introduces and examines Japanese philosopher Ikeda Daisaku's (1928–2023) perspectives on wisdom and contemplative effort, what Ikeda calls “human revolution,” at the heart of his practice of “human education.” Using bilingual and critical discourse analyses of the Ikeda corpus, the authors summarize Ikeda’s philosophy of human education, highlighting the role of human revolution as a contemplative practice in the cultivation of wisdom. Thereafter they outline the multiple ways Ikeda articulates wisdom in his philosophy, analyzing the various Sino-Japanese character compounds used to convey the concept and the respective meaning of each. As the original language reflects a depth and breadth of conceptual and ontological thought often missing in translation (and not always easily represented in Anglophone literature), explicating the Japanese terminology expands and deepens academic and epistemological horizons. The authors conclude by examining human revolution and wisdom within the four interlocking commitments and ideals of Ikeda’s philosophy of human education—dialogue, global citizenship, value creation, and creative coexistence. The authors present Ikeda’s perspectives on wisdom and human revolution as universal and worthwhile approaches for more humane curricula, pedagogy, and practice across the age span and cultural contexts. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Teachers as Wisdom Workers of Love: A Radical Reconceptualization of Teacher Education Centering Wholeness, Compassion, and Interbeing in a Fractured World
Amid global crises and rising teacher burnout, current teacher education often prioritizes technical skills and standardized competencies while neglecting the inner life, relational presence, and spiritual vitality essential for sustaining educators. This article reconceptualizes teacher preparation by envisioning teachers as “wisdom workers of love” -- healers, guides, and community nurturers grounded in wholeness, compassion, and interbeing. Drawing from Daoism, Ubuntu, contemplative pedagogy, and Indigenous epistemologies, this study employs collaborative autoethnography as contemplative inquiry, weaving narratives from educators in China, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States. Through mutual witnessing and collective reflection, we identify five interrelated dimensions for cultivating love-based education: grounding in sacred inner life, mutual witnessing and relational presence, communal holding, embodied knowing with expanded epistemologies, and institutional transformation. These dimensions offer a framework for reimagining teacher education as a sacred, relational, and systemic endeavor that nurtures both teacher and student well-being. By centering love as both method and ethos, this study provides philosophical grounding and practical pathways for transforming classrooms and institutions into sites of care, belonging, and shared human flourishing. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Walking Towards Wisdom and Wholeness: Contemplative Education and Punjabi Gang Narratives
In this article, I examine how contemplative approaches to education can address the fragmenting nature of the Eurocentric British Columbia (B.C.) K-12 education system and allow for the cultivation of wise and whole human beings. More specifically, I draw upon the experiences of B.C. Punjabi male students who have been subjected to deeply harmful and oppressive gang narratives that have been left unaddressed by current educational approaches. Bringing attention to this issue can allow for alternate paradigms to flourish through contemplative approaches to education that would not only support Punjabi males but also support other marginalized students who find themselves subjected to similar hegemonic discourses. This article proceeds in three parts. I begin by inviting you to walk alongside me as I share a vignette that is connected to my own positionality as a Punjabi male as well as the experiences of my Punjabi male students. This vignette is one that was written in the hope of creating new possibilities for students to become wise, whole, and flourish within the classroom through contemplative education. Next, this article uncovers the multidimensional aspects of Punjabi gang narratives and the ways in which our current education system inadequately addresses these narratives by preventing students from experiencing peace and healing while denying them opportunities to pursue wisdom and wholeness. The third section of this article focuses on the different ways in which contemplative education can support Punjabi male youth in resisting Punjabi gang narratives and becoming whole. It offers specific contemplative pedagogical approaches and classroom activities that can support all learners in their holistic growth. I conclude this article with a call to action for educators to recognize the need for contemplative education in contemporary schooling and to incorporate it in a way that not only supports Punjabi male youth but also advances equity and social justice for all learners. - Journal Article4 May 2026
A Remembrance Ritual in the Classroom--Death, Middle School, and Contemplative Education
Death is generally unspoken, ignored, and considered too difficult to bring forward into our classrooms. Bringing death to my contemplative pedagogy has been essential for me as a teacher and on behalf of my middle school students. The deepest and most reverential way that we do this in my classroom is through an annual remembrance ritual. On this day, we remember people and pets in our lives who have died. We do inner work through journaling and meditation. The heart of our ritual day involves naming, sharing stories, and deep listening. This reflective essay tells the story of developing this ritual, along with its impact on my students and our classroom community. I explore the mechanics of this contemplative practice, and how they are guided by views on child development, spiritual development, and holistic education. It is also an invitation to consider how trusting children in ritual is absent in nearly all modern educational spaces. As teachers, in what ways can we hold and frame space and time for this essential human need? I conclude with what I feel my students bring forward with them in their lives from participation in ritual as part of their contemplative education. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Reimagining Teacher-Student Relationships in Schools: What does Mencius say?
In some K-12 educational settings, it is often assumed that teachers are the ones who deliver and guide, while students are the ones who are delivered and guided. As a result, both in common perception and practical operations, teachers typically hold more power than students, acting as both the possessors and executers of authority. While this inherent power imbalance in traditional schools is understandable, it can create fundamental situations that remain unresolved, representing an ontological problem in education . These fundamental issues have persisted in causing trauma in educational settings (Frieze, 2015), and the need for healing for both students and teachers has become evident. Building on the work of those in critical pedagogy and contemplative education, we suggest the work of Confucian philosopher Mengzi (Mencius; 孟子) in cultivating moral virtues through the wise use of pedagogical power. Mengzi provides a means of empowering students, enabling them to cultivate moral virtues through contemplative pedagogies, and thus contributes to healing from both students and teachers, In many of his chapters, Mengzi explores the constraints and responsibilities of those in positions of power, as well as the self-cultivation of those in subordinate positions. This paper aims to present a bold reimagining of the conventional educator-student relationship by challenging existing power dynamics and envisioning a new form of educational interaction that enhances the humanity of both students and teachers, drawing from a pre-Qin Confucian perspective and offering a practical pedagogical model for the development of four particular virtues. - Journal Article4 May 2026
Beyond Coping in High School: An Emergent Mindfulness Practice Towards Embodied Wisdom
Mindfulness practice is trending in schools. Within secondary education, it is oftentimes introduced as meditation for present-moment awareness of the self to support academic concerns. However, mindfulness practice in its original conception is a holistic way of cultivating human well-being towards flourishing. It is a practice that aims for awareness to the entirety of human subjective and intersubjective experiencing as it is emerging. In doing so, mindfulness evolves from a coping tool into a rich contemplative practice. This paper will make the case that mindulness as a contemplative practice facilitates the cultivation of embodied wisdom and that such a practice is inherently compatible with the needs and aims of students, particularly fitting with the Canadian province of British Columbia’s K-12 core competencies. Furthermore, the paper introduces qualitative research that the author conducted online, which showcases what an emergent mindfulness practice moving towards embodied wisdom can look like. The constructionist multi-case study demonstrates how three secondary school students intra-act with a mindfulness practice underpinned by a contemplative framework. It captures how participants and the practice evolved in tandem, and how participants have grown in self-trust by grappling with core issues. The findings illuminate the practice’s potential to nurture personal transformation and contribute to schooling and mental health domains. - Editorial4 May 2026
The Wisdom-Centered Classroom: Contemplative Pathways to Healing, Interbeing, and Peace in K–12 Education
While contemporary educational goals often prioritize economic advancement and labor-market readiness, a profound need exists to re-center schools as environments that nurture the human spirit. Education should move beyond standardization, cultivating schools where students embrace their inherent worth, relate with empathy and kindness, and develop as compassionate citizens regardless of their background. At the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education (JCHE), we contend that the cultivation of wisdom must be a primary educational aim. This special issue explores contemplative K–12 pedagogies, inviting experts to examine the realities, possibilities, and systemic challenges of Contemplative Education (CE) from diverse global and Indigenous perspectives. The twelve papers featured herein reimagine the classroom not as a factory, but as a space for healing and the cultivation of wisdom. Through these contributions, we identify four transformative pillars of contemplative practice: the architecture of inner life; the healing power of identity; the role of teachers as wisdom workers; and the fostering of ecological and creative interbeing. By bridging the gap between contemplative theory and institutional reality, this issue offers five strategic action plans to integrate wisdom-centered learning into K–12 policy and practice. Ultimately, this collection advocates for a radical shift toward a holistic educational paradigm, ensuring that wisdom, resilience, and compassion remain at the core of the student experience. - Journal Article18 November 2025
Seeking Kairos: Creating Oases of Rest through Contemplative Practice in the Elementary Classroom
Seeking Kairos: Creating Oases of Rest through Contemplative Practice in the Elementary Classroom This article introduces rest and restfulness as contemplative practice in the context of elementary schooling. As a Canadian elementary teacher, I have been researching ways to introduce contemplative practices of education to support children in their well-being. Children struggle under the pressures of expectations to achieve and excel, to conform and perform, which just as well applies to their teachers. Schooling in a burnout society prioritizes achievement, productivity, and always doing something: “No time to waste” and “keep busy” are mandatory. Not incidentally, the etymological meaning of scholar, from Ancient Greek, σχολή [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%83%CF%87%CE%BF%CE%BB%CE%AE#Ancient_Greek] (skholḗ), has to do with leisure or free time: a far cry from the contemporary scene of school learning. Given all this, contemplativeness cannot even take root in the mind-body-hearts that are constantly pressured to strive, perform, and achieve. More than anything, children (and teachers, too) need rest and restfulness. However, inactivity does not automatically guarantee that rest is found. Hence, my current research explores ways to create space/spaciousness in which children can experience restfulness while engaging in curricular activities. To this extent, I propose rest and restfulness as contemplative practice. I inquire how to create or allow oases of rest in the classroom through activities that incorporate reflective practices as an extension of curriculum content. I use my own reflective journaling to analyze and show how reflective writing among other practices can be contemplative and result in an overall feeling of restfulness for students and teacher alike. - Journal Article15 October 2025
Stoic Wisdom for the Contemplative Teacher: Prosochê and Praemeditatio Malorum as Alternative Approaches to Mindfulness
In K-12 environments where teacher burnout and attrition are increasingly prevalent, where can educational professionals seek sustainable approaches to reduce exhaustion, emotional demands, and uncertainty? In this paper, I extend Christopher McCaw’s research on the direct and dynamic relationship between contemplative practices and who teachers are and are becoming. By examining the current debates around defining reflective and contemplative practitioners, I call for alternative definitions of mindfulness when considering teacher professional becoming and submit for consideration the perspectives of Greco-Roman philosophy which has hitherto been less explored apropos education. Using prosochê (attention) and the Stoic exercise of praemeditatio malorum to expand the conceptual framing of becoming a contemplative practitioner, I articulate the gifts of Hellenistic thinking and what it can offer K-12 teachers. With personal reflections as a beginning teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic, an exploration of the implications and limitations of philosophical premeditation implemented as a contemplative practice for educators are considered.
Most Popular Articles
- Journal Article2 May 2023
Holistic Learning Theory: More than a Philosophy
Abstract. An educational philosophy identifies and clarifies a set of values and understandings with respect to education that are based on a set of beliefs. A theory is a way to explain a set of facts and understand phenomena. Philosophies are conceptual. Theories are practical. Holistic education is a philosophy of education; however, it is also a robust theory of learning that should be included with the other theories of learning. This article describes holistic education as an educational theory. - Journal Article30 April 2023
Becoming the Imperfect Friend: Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Contemplative Pathways to Healing and Reconciliation in Higher Education
Throughout this reflective essay I explore Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Indigenous philosophy and contemplative education as ethical pathways to healing and reconciliation in higher education. I put forth the idea of becoming the imperfect friend in a world ethos of death by a thousand cuts as a response to the violence of colonialism perpetuated in academia. I reflect on the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh values of eslhélha7kwhiws and stélmexw as contemplative dispositions that lend themselves to the process of becoming the imperfect friend. I conclude by describing a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh -led program hosted by Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 2022-2023, named Moving Together In The Ways of The People. The program is captured in a documentary film following a dedicated group SFU educators, graduate students and staff endeavouring to take meaningful action towards reconciliation by embarking on a sacred learning journey led by Sḵwx̱wú7mesh elders and knowledge carriers on traditional, ancestral, unceded Coast Salish territories. - Journal Article4 January 2025
The Laughing Buddha: The Education of Compassionate Leaders through Improvisational Play
With an urgency to build a generative future, educational systems do not have a choice but to pay attention to how and what we train our future leaders. Yet there is still a gap as leadership studies are often relegated as a “soft” skill, rather than integrated as technical knowledge critical to the holistic effectiveness of a tertiary education. As a result, there is often a disconnect between students immersed in the idealistic bubble of the academy and graduates navigating life outside. Inquiry- and reflective-based methods of contemplative practices may be critical for leaders to avoid short-term, short-sighted decisions that ill prepare people and communities for continuous change and upheaval. With human, more than human, and planetary health at risk, the need for wise leadership is necessary to discern the paths forward for a more generative future. Fortunately, there has been increased attention of and call for leadership rooted in compassion as a strategic approach to leadership. Research around contemplative practices, such as gratitude and mindful meditation, offer evidence that they help strengthen the capacity to lead with and for compassion. This article explores another, often overlooked, contemplative practice: improvisational play and humor. Indeed, compassion and humor have been inextricably linked across many knowledge traditions. This article examines how the applied contemplative practice of improvisational play and humor offer an untapped opportunity for institutions of higher education to close the gap between theory and practice and to fulfill its responsibility of cultivating wise leaders of tomorrow. - Journal Article10 February 2024
Well-Being in Response to Gratitude Interventions: A Student Elicitation Approach
Various methods exist to invoke gratitude, such as gratitude lists, acts directed towards others, and gratitude contemplation (Rash, Matsuba, and Prkachin, 2011). This study, through student perception elicitation, examines a gratitude list intervention in a professional development undergraduate class which tests the gratitude and enhanced well-being connection theory. Results suggest various reasons why students perceive a connection between gratitude lists and mental and physical well-being, although there was an overall belief among participants that gratitude lists help more with mental health than physical health. Also, the gratitude and enhanced well-being connection theory was not fully supported as overall respondent sentiment shifted after the gratitude intervention with fewer respondents believing than beforre the intervention that a gratitude list can help with mental and physical well-being. While the current results show a lower frequency of the belief that gratitude lists can help with well-being, students overall still enjoyed the exercise and recommended more contemplative practices in the classroom. - Journal Article30 May 2025
Healing in Relation: Honoring Post-Graduate Grief as an Opportunity for Relational Scholarship
This paper is a three-way conversation about grief that follows a graduate program. We explore our experiences with post-graduate grief in community, attending to each other’s sense of loss following separation from supervisors, theses, and graduate programs. In committing to slow scholarship, processes—such as navigating feelings and living—have been valued over producing a manuscript quickly. Slowness, including long gaps between meetings, enabled us to follow the diverse contours of quiet alchemical processes such as grieving, opening up to emptiness, self-acceptance, being enough, and letting go. After years of compression and dialogic friction with her mentor, Tanya confronts feelings akin to postpartum depression, an anticlimactic melancholy accompanying the completion of her doctorate. Chris is haunted by his inability to recognize the authenticity of repeated invitations from his committee to engage following his Master’s degree, finally breaking his 16-year silence through narrative inquiry into losing what he never knew he had. Anna admits to filling emotional and intellectual gaps following her Master’s degree by pursuing her doctorate. She honors wholeness of herself that encompasses ruptures of grief, confusion, and her journey towards self-acceptance. Emerging from our collaboration is something entirely unexpected: healing. We share our private experiences of post-graduate mourning and re-emergence as an invitation to students to honor what comes unbidden following a graduate journey and an opportunity for relational scholarship. - Journal Article4 May 2023
From Without to Within: Inner Transformation as a Pedagogy for Social Activism
Change has become the urgency of our time, as the harrowing Anthropocene and ongoing socio-political crises are challenging the future of humanity and our planet. While systemic structural forces are often (and rightfully so) the target to blame, social activism is as much about our own path of inner change as it is about attempting to create a better world externally. This aspect of social activism can easily become misunderstood as inertia, while more traditional forms of resistance aimed at subverting macro-structures are favored. In this essay, I draw from literature on spirituality and consciousness, new biology, quantum sciences, as well as nature studies and education, to shed light on a new form of social activism that calls for each person to recognize our role in co-creating the world, and emphasizes spiritual awakening as the most vital feature of human flourishing. Social change in the external domain will not last unless we have done the inner work to weed out misconceptions, biases, and wrong thinking that led us to contemporary crises in the first place. The essay discussed the elevation of human consciousness through the aid of nature and yogic sciences as the need of the hour, and as the most crucial aspects of social activism in the new era.