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Call for Submissions and Guidelines for Authors and Reviewers

Call for Submissions

We are proud to introduce a new journal: the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education (JCHE). This is a peer-reviewed online journal featuring research articles, invited contributions, reviews, interviews as well as video/audio submissions and photo essays. JCHE is biannually published. Within the biannual framework, papers are published on a continuing basis, unless they are for special issues.

We embrace a range of submissions: we publish traditional peer-reviewed academic research articles and reviews, as well as non-traditional formats, such as arts-based and multimedia essays, interviews with practitioners and spiritual teachers, and reviews of educational practices and events. We welcome submissions in video and audio files (see below for details) that capture community voices, practitioner arts, and fieldnotes-based reflections.

The journal calls for papers and works that address and illustrate:

  1. Educational frameworks and approaches that center the integration of the learner’s mind, body, heart, and spirit through contemplative, creative, spiritual, and holistic ways.
  2. Philosophical, spiritual, pedagogical, and practice-oriented approaches for contemplative study of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and also for cultivating contemplative understandings of external realities.
  3. Examining diverse contemplative, spiritual, holistic education traditions, and practices for cultivating holistic well-being and wisdom.
  4. Theories of and practical approaches to somatic, cognitive, emotional, intuitive, creative, relational, ecological, ethical, and spiritual aspects of learning.
  5. Innovative pedagogies for inner growth and development, such as meditation, including mindfulness, qigong, tai chi, yoga, embodiment practices, Indigenous and land-based pedagogies, cultural rituals and ceremonies, music, dance and movement, storytelling, videography, the visual arts, and reflective writing (e.g., diaries, journals, essays, and poetry).
  6. Contemplative inquiry as a philosophical, spiritual, and educational approach and methodology to lead students, teachers, and researchers to a greater understanding of humanity’s oneness with each other and with Nature.
  7. The use of holistic education that encourages learners to become engaged in community and society, to be immersed in nature, and become a force for social changes and social and ecological justice.
  8. Works on contemplative, spiritual, embodied, and holistic research methods that are inclusive of Indigenous and Global South epistemologies, relational ethics, and reflexive autoethnographies.
  9. Works that incorporate new scientific discoveries into knowing about ourselves as spiritual beings as well as creative energies connected to all existence.
  10. Comparing educational systems in different parts of the world to assess place- and locality-based pathways and opportunities for growing contemplative and holistic educational communities of practice.
  11. The intersections amongst contemplative inquiry, holistic education, arts-based education, Indigenous education, ecological education, and social justice activism with the aims of equity, compassion, and peace.
  12. Creative and applied platforms to engage contemporary social-ecological concerns in educational scholarship, as well in the classrooms and beyond.

JCHE is committed to wisdom-based inquiry and education.

Submission Format

We look for innovative and explorative submissions that include but are not limited to the following formats. Please contact the Editor-in-Chief team (hbang@bgsu.edu) for further inquiries.

All types of submissions should be formatted using APA style (7th) including in-text citations and references.

Invited section (special issue editor reviewed)

  1. Invited reviews
  2. Commentaries (short commentary articles on previously published or invited articles)
  3. Short Reflective essays
  4. Invited Interviews (with scholars, artists, community leaders; approx. 3000 words)

Peer reviewed section

  1. Research articles (APA style; approx. 5000-8000 words)
  2. Reflective essays (approx. 2000-3000 words)
  3. Arts-based essays (including video, sound-based, and multimodal components)

Editorial reviewed section

  1. Book Reviews (500-1100 words)
  2. Commentaries (short commentary articles on published or invited articles, approx. 2000-3000 words.)
  3. Interviews with practitioners, spiritual teachers, students and youth, among others
  4. Voices and perspectives from community groups, organizers, activists, K-12 educators and practitioners (approx. 2000-3000 words)
  5. Field notes (observational, experiential and practitioner-based commentaries; written, visual and audio formats accommodated)
  6. Reviews of current educational practices and events (500-1100 words)
  7. Holistic education products and resources including exhibitions, graphic novels, children's books, websites, etc. (format: video or PDF file with captured photos). Please submit a short written description, approximately 500 words (2-3 paragraphs) that highlights the work, connection to literature, and some references if available for information sharing with our audience. Submit it in the "Abstract" section if you have video format. Otherwise, include the information in the introduction section.
  8. Creative expression: Creative writings (short stories, poetries, essays, etc.), exhibitions, projects, etc. (format: Word file, video, or PDF file with captured photos). Please submit a short written description in the "Abstract" section.
  9. Video and audio/sound-based submissions including performative inquiries (dance, drama, music, etc.) (Video format: 3GP, ASX, AVI, F4V, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPG/MPEG, WMV; Audio format: AAC, AC3, AIF/AIFF, FLAC, M4A, MP3, WAV, WMA). Please submit a short written description, approximately 500 words (2-3 paragraphs) that highlights the work, connection to literature, and some references if available for information sharing with our audience in the "Abstract" section.

Guidelines for Authors and Reviewers

NOTE that there are TWO CATEGORIES OF DOUBLE-BLIND PEER REVIEW: Arts-based Scholarship (ABS) and Discourse-based Scholarship (DBS). ABS includes reflective, somatic, and expressive arts-based work that promotes ideation and reflection on authentic experiences. DBS includes theoretical, empirical, and methodological papers that advance understanding in the field. Contributions in both categories serve to advance understanding in the field.

General Guidelines for Authors

All submissions are prescreened before the peer review process, which will take about 2-3 weeks. Please refer to this flowchart for details regarding the publication process as it pertains to authors.

Authors should address the following checklist before submitting their work.

  • Is your article a good fit for the journal? Have you read the About This Journal material on the journal website to ensure your article is a good fit?
  • Did the authors follow APA (7th edition) guidelines including citations and references?
  • If your manuscript reports on human studies, did the methods section include participant informed consent information (IRB or any type of written or verbal approval from the participants depending on the practice in your culture)?
  • Did the authors make sure that the manuscript is anonymized?
  • Have you followed the Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines (https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/jche/)?

    • Authors are advised to revise their submissions within 6 weeks, once the editors send notifications for revision requests. Please follow the steps to make revisions for resubmission.

    1. Explain in your response letter detailing what, how and why you revised. Please use numbers with each of reviewer’s comments.

    2. Highlight the changes (including spelling or punctuation) you made in one color.

    3. If there are requests you disagree with, please explain in your response letter.

    4. Be sure to check the formatting, reference, and citation style (APA), and any grammar and spelling errors.

    5. Resubmit your response letter and the revisions that are highlighted with changes.

    General Guidelines for Reviewers

    The JCHE readership represents cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity, not only in North America, but also internationally. In view of this, we at JCHE insist on manuscripts that are written in clear, readable, and engaging ways. For instance, care should have been exercised by the authors so that it does not take subject specialists to understand the manuscripts. Technical terms should be generally avoided, but if used, they should be explained clearly.

    In writing your review, please make sure that your review comes from the place of respect and appreciation towards the author and their work. Critical feedback comments need to come from this place of respect and appreciation and to help and support the author to improve and strengthen their paper.

    Following are lists of evaluation criteria by which reviewers may assess the submissions for the two categories of double-blind peer-review. Below, detailed criteria are enumerated: however, our intention is not that you apply every criterion in the list when you review. Hence, please keep in mind, as you review, this qualifying question: “Does the work being reviewed generally or overall meet the criteria?”

    Common Evaluation Criteria for both Arts-based Scholarship (ABS) and Discourse-based Scholarship (DBS)

    1. Is the manuscript situated in relevant field of research? Are the cited literature or referenced materials relevant, up-to-date, and of quality?
    2. Will the work be of high interest to a diverse readership? Will it make a significant and/or original contribution to the field and subfields of education? How?
    3. Is the writing of excellent quality wherein the language use exemplifies readability and compelling communication? Does the writing touch body, mind, heart, and spirit?
    4. Does the work advance the fields of contemplative and/or holistic education in reflective practice, curriculum development, pedagogy, and/or assessment practices?

    Specific Evaluation Criteria for Arts-based Scholarship (ABS)*

    1. Does the work exemplify, demonstrate, or enact in experiential, embodied, affective, and sensible ways and manners the themes, topics, and ideas it handles?
    2. Does the work demonstrate scholarly vigour and creativity along various lines of development: somatic, aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, relational, ethical, and spiritual?
    3. Does the work embrace, embody, and communicate a contemplative and holistic ethos?
    4. Does the work allow for or evokes a free play of aesthetics? Does it evoke a sense of beauty, wonder, or awe?
    5. Does the work advance arts-based thought and work, and scholarly practice, demonstrating awareness of movements, practices, practitioners that came before them?
    6. If a submitted piece is accompanied by artifacts (e.g., video, audio, or photo files), are these of artistic merits and in high quality of production?
    7. Does work emerge out of or appeal to the suprasensible?

    Specific Evaluation Criteria for Discourse-based Scholarship (DBS)

    1. Does the manuscript have a strong theoretical framework whereby the purpose, rationale, context, and positionality are explicated and argued for with rigor and vigor?
    2. Does the literature cited provide a compelling support for the work?
    3. For empirical studies, are the data collection, and analysis and interpretation provided, accurate, rich, complex, rigorous, pertinent, and novel?
    4. For philosophical or other non-empirical works, are theory-building and framing, argumentation or explication, and interpretation pertinent and generative?
    5. Is the writing of excellent quality wherein the language use exemplifies both clarity and nuanced complexity of conceptualization?
    6. Does the work use the referencing style correctly? Are there grammatical and formatting issues?

    ……………………………………………

    Rating

    Excellent

    Above average

    Average

    Below average

    Unacceptable

    ……………………………………………

    Recommendations categories:

    o Accept or accept with minor revisions: manuscript is in the range of excellent to above average.

    o Major revisions required: manuscript is in the range of average to below average.

    o Reject: the manuscript is below average or unacceptable.

    *ABS includes emotionally evocative expressions designed to highlight a broader range of human expression and that are reflective of methodological pluralism in research. Tom Barone and Eliot Eisner (2012), in their book Arts Based Research, note that: “Arts based research was—and is—an effort to utilize the forms of thinking and forms of representation that the arts provide as means through which the world can be better understood and through such understanding comes the enlargement of mind” (p. xi). They add “Arts based research is an effort to employ the expressive qualities of form in order to enable a reader of that research to participate in the experience of the author. Put even more simply is this: Arts based research is a process that uses the expressive qualities of form to convey meaning.” (p. xii) And they note that Arts based research “… is an effort to extend beyond the limiting constraints of discursive communications in order to extend beyond the limiting constraints of discursive communication in order to express meanings that otherwise would be ineffable.” (p. 1)

    Barone, T. & Eisner, E. (2012). Arts based research. Routledge.

    This version is completed on JULY 21, 2023