{"id":398,"date":"2025-11-21T14:33:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbooks.concordia.ca\/contemplative-pedagogy\/?post_type=chapter&p=398"},"modified":"2026-03-23T15:42:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:42:49","slug":"design-principles-of-contemplative-pedagogy","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbooks.concordia.ca\/contemplative-pedagogy\/chapter\/design-principles-of-contemplative-pedagogy\/","title":{"raw":"Core principles of contemplative pedagogy","rendered":"Core principles of contemplative pedagogy"},"content":{"raw":"
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Donetta Hines<\/h4>\r\nIn her research proposal, Lela Mosemghvdlishvili (2022) posits five \u201cDesign Principles of Contemplative Pedagogy\u201d<\/a> to guide educators who are interested in integrating a contemplative practice or pedagogy in their work with students. These five design principles work synergistically to foster, nurture, and grow a contemplative learning environment and community. This chapter will discuss these five principles, whose names are derived but not exactly the same as the original, and connect them to the work of our faculty interest group contemplative pedagogy.\r\n\r\n \r\n

Mindfully attending<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nAlthough Mosemghvdlishvili presents these five principles unhierarchically, in a circle, I begin with \u201cmindfully attending\u201d because \u201c[a]ttention (mindfulness to the present moment) is the basic literacy needed to be nurtured continuously and an entrance competence to attend to introspective experiences\u201d (2022). To paraphrase Mosemghvdlishvili, attention is also a basic literacy for learning, requiring knowing where our attention is and (re)orienting to the place, people, task, and purpose at hand, and engaging in what makes learning meaningful for oneself, which is one of the other 5 design principles, \u201cFirst-person inquiry\u201d (see below).\r\n\r\nIn related contemplative research, mindfulness scholar Oren Ergas (whom Mosemghvdlishvili also references) adds a third necessary component, \u201cattitude,\u201d to this combination of attention with intention\/purpose (Ergas, 2019). This attention trio means that we not only know where our attention is and intentionally (re)direct it, but that we also bring attention to the attitude, emotion, feeling, or valence our words convey and evoke. For example, do I \u201cwant to write\u201d or \u201cneed to write,\u201d or \u201cforce myself to write\u201d? Do I tell myself \u201cI\u2019m never going to do well in this course\u201d or do I wonder \u201chmm, what could help me learn this concept better?\u201d In other words, attitudes of curiosity, openness, (self) compassion, resilience, kindness, and gentleness, as opposed to negativity-bias, absolutes (e.g. never, always) criticism and force, \u201cforcing\u201d oneself), are necessary for learning.\r\n\r\nThese shifts in attitude, or tenor, of the words and attitudes we use with ourselves and each other echo Carol Dweck\u2019s research (2006) on growth mindset and purpose in successful learning, and remind me of David Treleaven\u2019s trauma-informed embodied practice<\/a> with the fist: trying to pry one fist open with the fingers of the other hand only makes the muscles tense and the fist resist. But laying a gentle hand on top of the fist and even caressing it softens the muscles and the fist as it begins to release in response. Thus, the intention and the attitude we bring to mindfully attending make a difference, as do Mosemghvdlishvili\u2019s additional four principles.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Allowing silence<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nIn our busy worlds and lives, allowing and making time for silence gives an opportunity for reflection. Such reflection can begin outside of our bodies, with sounds, sights in our environment, visualizations of people and places. With continued\/repeated opportunity for silence, these external anchors eventually move inward, to our bodies, our hearts, and our minds, integrating them. The reflections can be metacognitive or sensory \u2013 body scan\/movement, (re)orienting in the space, auditory, visual, tactile, or gustatory. The silence allows us to mindfully attend to one thing, refocusing when necessary.\r\n\r\nSilence invites connecting with self and from self to external then back to self, with curiosity, openness, each person deciding their own attentional anchors and attractions, making meaning on their own. Silence also changes our habitual exposure to noise, be it aural, verbal, visual, corporal, mental, or cognitive. As the verb \u201callow\u201d evokes, most of us could benefit from intentionally dedicated silent time so that we \u201callow\u201d ourselves these opportunities for reflection. Thus, we can design our classrooms to offer or \u201callow\u201d a daily 1-3 minutes of silence, which segues us to Mosemghvdlishi\u2019s next principle.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Reorienting time<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nReorienting time involves slowing down and dedicating time for silence and mindfully attending in the classroom, which also makes space for a diversity of learners, learning styles, paces, and needs. In addition to inviting silence and reflection, reorienting time synergistically cultivates a process and sense of exploration and curiosity instead of the high stakes and urgency evoked by the habituated, perceived need for instant mastery, as well as the negative affect that arises when the instant mastery doesn\u2019t arrive quickly, or at all. Nevertheless, Mosemghvdlishi\u2019s verb \u201callow\u201d also applies to us, the instructors, who need to allow time and space for \u201creorienting time\u201d in our classrooms and lesson plans; contemplative scholar and practitioner, Daniel Siegel uses the term \u201ctime-in\u201d to posit the minute or more we can give ourselves in a day to mindfully dedicate to silence and reflection (2013, 112). Not only, Siegel writes, does it help disconnect us from the noise and \u201cendless stream of information\u201d and reconnect us with ourselves, our (self) empathy, insight, presence, and focus, but it also benefits our immune systems (2013, 112-4) spaces specifically. For teaching and learning contexts, Siegel encourages educational institutions to \u201ctak[e] a step back from routines and busy schedules and create[e] a new approach to education overall\u201d (2013, 115) whereby \u201c[t]eachers could expand their focus beyond the traditional three R\u2019s of reading, \u2018riting, and \u2018rithmetic to teach reflection, relationships, and resilience\u201d (2013, 114).\r\n\r\nSiegel posits that such a small yet consistent allotment of reflective time benefits teaching, learning, and life, including enhanced self knowledge\/awareness, better school relationships, and happier educational spaces (2013, 114-5), which is also supported in teaching and learning scholarship on creating self-regulated learners (e.g. Nilson 2013, p. 10).\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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First-person inquiry<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nFirst-person inquiry, then, emerges with<\/em> as much as from<\/em> mindfully attending, allowing silence, and reorienting time. By allowing space and time for reflection, students practice engaging their own curiosity, to what is meaningful for them, and they step into self-regulated learning. Such first-person inquiry is transformational rather than transactional, expeditious, or instant-mastery focused.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Perspective shifting<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nWith each of these principles, and as an ensemble, one can see how habitual and received perspectives shift. Normalizing time and space to mindfully attend and reflect shifts learning to emerge through first-person inquiry, grow through interaction with the others in the learning community, and leads to experiential meaningfulness and transformational education.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Themes from our faculty interest group<\/h1>\r\nWhen asked a similar question in a group meeting in November 2023, the members of our faculty interest group on contemplative pedagogies responded:\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_503\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"700\"]\"Screenshot Screenshot of a word cloud generated from the faculty interest group survey.\u00a0<\/em>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nFrom further discussions, the considerations that arose from the knowledge and expertise that will be covered in the resource will fall under the themes of:\r\n