As educators, we often want our students to focus better and engage with materials and each other more deeply – but how do we foster that? In our role as educational developers in the university’s teaching centre, this is the question that powers our work with faculty, sharing approaches such as active and experiential learning and inclusive pedagogies for instructors to consider or bolster in their own classrooms. Contemplative pedagogy offers another approach to this question by placing the rich experiences of student at the centre. Here, we’ll focus on the overlaps we see between goals of contemplative practices and pedagogy and common learning goals you may have for students in your courses.

To illustrate the kinds of objectives contemplative approaches can support in a more embodied and connected pathway of learning, we’ll draw on current research on contemplative practices highlighted by Barbezat & Bush’s book Contemplative Practices in Higher Education (2014). We’ve reordered the principles to progress towards deeper learning. This progression starts from personal meaning, to focused attention, to problem‑solving, to connection with peers and ultimately to deeper understanding.

Personal meaning

We begin with first-person inquiry before all else because when students find the course material to be relevant and relatable, they are more motivated to learn (Sousa, 2011). To achieve this, educators can start by fostering students’ self-awareness and develop their personal meaning, or, as Barbezat & Bush (2014) describe, “the intentional cultivation of personal inquiry” (p. 16).

By encouraging this first-person inquiry, students are invited to engage their curiosity and identify what is important for them in their learning. Contemplative practices and pedagogy can validate students’ experiences, their own sense of meaning, and personal values, creating opportunities for students to connect their inner world with the outer world, deepening their understanding of themselves and the material covered.

The often-introspective nature of contemplative practices and pedagogy is perfectly equipped for students to self-reflect. “Meditation and introspection provide effective means for students to become aware of their emotions and reactions while at the same time helping them clarify what is personally most important” (Barbezat & Bush, 2014, p.17).  For example, journalling practices such as Theodore’s In memoriam and letter from the future help students distill what is important to them. Barbezat & Bush posit even a simple breathing exercise can stimulate significant personal insights. When students are invited to turn inwards and reflect on what they are doing, this can lead to thinking about they want to do. Instructors can then connect this back to course content once deeper personal values are identified, thus positioning students more co-creators of their learning rather than passive receivers of knowledge.

Focused attention

Once we have clarified what matters, we can then focus on what matters. We often want our students to pay attention – to the lecture, to the activity, to their learning. In order to learn, they need to focus on what’s important and be able to filter out the distractions. This can be especially challenging in our current times, with technologies and outside events fighting for students’ attention. What if our students’ attention needs to be cultivated, rather than assumed as the default or forced? Lang (2020) explores this question deeper in his book Distracted: Why your students can’t focus and what you can do about it.

As noted in Donetta’s chapter on core principles of contemplative pedagogy, attention is a fundamental skill for learning. Hart (2004), in Opening the contemplative mind in the classroom, argues that a “student’s ability to direct and sustain his or her attention toward a task at hand has a direct impact on success.” (p. 32).

Contemplative practices and pedagogy can foster learning environments that value and nurture mindful, willing attention, inviting students to notice, (re)orient their focus to the place, people, task, or purpose at hand, and stay engaged with what makes learning meaningful to them. Contemplative practices can support effective learning by enhancing the “quality of attention brought to that [learning] task” (Barbezat & Bush, 2014 p. 35). For example, guided mindfulness practices can cultivate concentrated and focused attention because the instructor provides an object of focus and scaffolded steps on how and what to focus on. This scaffolding, typically provided through step-by-step instructions or a script, provide a way for students to train their focus especially when done in a repetitive way.

For more on how contemplative practices and pedagogy can develop an increased capacity for focus and attention, we recommend watching Joseph Siddiqi’s videos: What is mindfulness? and Two approaches to mindfulness.

In addition, there are practices in this resource that can help strengthen focus, attention and concentration, especially when done repeatedly:

• Arriving/breathing/focusing practice
• Movement meditation
• Breathing exercises: Box breathing, Xi-xi Hu breathing technique, Vagus nerve breathing.

Problem-solving

Focused attention is a crucial component in preparing students to solve complex problems you may present to your students in class (Barbezat & Bush, 2014, p. 12). At the same time, problem-solving also requires open-mindedness or the ability to listen to and accept new ideas, therefore being able to direct where your attention goes. Psychologists Murray and Byrne (2005) describe this as “the capacity to hold alternative possibilities along with the ability to switch their attention between them”.

This connects with the learning theory of cognitive development from Piaget (1968), in which students in post-secondary education generally move from seeing one worldview as “truth” into ultimately harnessing multiple worldviews simultaneously. In other words, they ideally shift away from a “black and white” view of the world towards adopting various frameworks and worldviews to analyze a problem from multiple angles. We ultimately want our students to leave our courses with a myriad of ways to look at things and know when to draw on the appropriate framework in order to be ready and resilient for an ever-changing world.

In order to foster this, Barbezat and Bush (2014) say that the student needs to discern when to hold onto an idea, and when to let it go. This is closely linked with the contemplative practice of mindful awareness – noticing where your attention goes and being more in control of where its directed. Sable’s (2024) mixed methods research showed that contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation, journal writing, deep listening, reflective inquiry, and dialogue used over a term enabled students to reflect on their thinking processes, become more aware of their mental habits, and engage with multiple perspectives and points of view, strengthening student’s dispositions for critical and reflective thinking.

Additionally, contemplative practices often have cultural or historical backgrounds from all over the globe – when brought into the classroom appropriately and respectfully with cultural humility, they can expose students to various epistemologies or ways of thinking than what is typically presented in the course material.

For more about mindful awareness, see Joseph Siddiqi’s talk and practice: Noticing the movement of attention.

Connection and compassion

In many of our disciplines, learning cannot happen alone– it must take place through meaning-making with others in the form of dialogue and collaboration. This is constructivist learning theory, where knowledge is co-constructed and cannot be formed in isolation. If we want our students to leave our courses more ready to listen and work with one another, we must create opportunities for them develop that capacity in a low-stakes environment like the classroom. Refer to this chapter on community building to read more about why building classroom community is important to support student learning.

In the introduction chapter, Donetta talks about how a common trait of contemplative practices is that they can reorient us to “those we are in relation with and the effect of our actions, and the community we are fostering together”. For example, the practices from Sable’s study (2004) were found to enable students to feel more connected and empathetic toward students with whom they disagreed than those with whom they easily agreed at a superficial level.

Furthermore, contemplative practices such as loving-kindness meditation can increase feelings of social connection and positive response toward strangers (Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008). These practices not only deepen social connection and relationships with others but also with ourselves by stimulating self-compassion (Barbezat & Bush, 2014).

Contemplative practices do not need to be done individually. In fact, when repeated over and over in a group setting, silence or stillness practices like breathing or noticing can become rituals for a class. In this resource, you can explore how collage arts and gratitude practices can deepen a sense of student-student connection and belonging. Additionally, Naj Sumar provides sample reflection exercises for students reflect on how their identity shapes their engagement in the course, but also encourages them to consider how they would connect with their peers in respectful and inclusive dialogue.

Deeper understanding

The above principles of personal meaning, focused attention, problem-solving, and connection with peers can all contribute to students’ deeper understanding of the content. In addition to this, the common traits of “allowing silence” and “reorienting time” principles core to contemplative pedagogy provide the necessary space for the learning to develop. The slowing down of contemplative pedagogy is often a resistance to the fast-paced world we live in, so creating space for this in the classroom is an invitation for students to revisit material to make the necessary connections and reflections. This reflection is also very common in the experiential learning process developed by Kolb (1984), in which students learn through doing, followed by reflection on that experience.

An example of deeper understanding Barbezat & Bush (2014) share is a practice known as lectio divina, which provides an opportunity for students to “sink into” the material, a rare opportunity amongst the amount of reading they are often assigned. With this practice, new interpretations can arise from each repeated reading, making it more meaningful and understandable.

Another example presented in the book is the branch of beholding practices (pg. 47). In this particular example, students were presented with a painting and given some time to interpret it through intuition while suspending what they rely on with descriptions of colour, medium, history, culture. With extra time spent focusing on the same artifact, students were able to come up with multiple perspectives and stories in a more nuanced way instead of being given the story at the outset.

In this resource, contributors share many stillness and ritual/cycle practices that can create this space for reflection:

• Aimless wandering
• Centering stillness

Conclusion

Contemplative practices and pedagogy can enhance students’ dispositions for focused attention and problem solving, deeper understanding of the course material, increase self-awareness, and strengthen a sense of connection and community (Barbezat & Bush, 2014; Sable 2014) to activate deep learning within our students. While contemplative practices allow students to reflect on both their inner experiences and the course material, and their connections to the outer world they are not intended to replace other effective means of learning. Instead, they offer valuable complements or additions for teaching and learning (p.19).

Although this chapter focused on goals for students’ learning, we want to echo our editors in their foreword that CP&P is as much about instructors as it is about students. In addition to benefiting students, contemplative practices can also nourish the instructor’s presence and support their ability to explore their own mind (Hart, 2004). As Barbezat and Bush (2014) note, the “teacher’s presence is the heart of teaching” (p. 91). Furthermore, contemplative practices support relational learning by cultivating both intra- and interpersonal skills. Through the shared exploration of contemplative practices in the classroom, the teacher-student dynamic can be strengthened enhancing the quality of the classroom experience (Hart, 2004).

This brings us to conclude with what Barbezat & Bush also end with – a word of caution. Contemplative practices and pedagogy are not a simple solution for all challenges faces by you and your students in the classroom. They can act as a complement to other effective teaching and learning strategies in your repertoire. Building on the insights from other contributions in this resource by Joseph, Ridge, Naj, and Clarissa, educators should have personal experience and competence with these practices before implementing them in their work with students. Additionally, they should be applied with a keen understanding of your own students and context – see the following chapter by Ridge on the importance of self-reflection before implementation – and aligned with your pedagogical goals such as your course learning outcomes.

References