What is Contemplative Pedagogy?
Contemplative education is an academic discipline originating in North America. In the UK, it is still a developing field of study, both in higher education and in children’s pedagogy.
At Abiding Heart, we designed our own unique contemplative pedagogy, where we encourage learners to engage fully as individuals. We emphasise self-awareness and recognising the importance of understanding one's internal life. Our unique approach integrates transformative arts and crafts, heritage, nature, contemplative movement, and inquiry thinking and discernment. We believe that life's complexities require wise responses, which are enhanced through introspective and meditative experiences, understanding history, philosophy, and sociocultural studies, fostering internal embodiment of knowledge and experience.
We bring together the exploration of lived experiences and how we make sense of the world with personal values that are aligned with universal ethics. Our contemplative pedagogy aims to foster richer, wiser relationships with the subject matter, oneself, and others, ultimately enabling us to engage with discernment, personal accountability and compassion with the world.
The aim is to build the capacity to transform oneself. We promote a shift in learning that emphasises embodied, personal engagement, encouraging learners to connect with their own meaning-making. This deepened self-awareness helps us connect with self-composure, empathy and wisdom (or beauty, goodness and truth), thereby nurturing a more authentic relationship with ourselves, others and the world around us.
At Abiding Heart’s contemplative pedagogy, we invite learners to bring their authentic selves, embracing the fullness of being human, with all its contradictions, uncertainties, and depth, while cultivating self-responsibility and genuine engagement. We encourage participants to show up as whole human beings, aware of their inner lives that is grounded in self-enquiry, discernment and a commitment to learning, growth, and service.
What makes Abiding Heart’s contemplative pedagogy unique is the integration of several essential elements into our approach:
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Transformative arts and crafts
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Heritage
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Nature and sense of place
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Contemplative movement
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Critical thinking and discernment
We recognise that the complexities of life—personal, social, cultural, geo-political, and environmental—demand wise and compassionate responses. These responses are nurtured through contemplative experiences. Therefore, our pedagogy includes studies in history, philosophy, and the various dimensions of human development and experience. Alongside these, we incorporate immersive engagement with nature, a connection to heritage and place, the arts, and crafts. Our focus is on cultivating experiential knowledge—insight that emerges through the integration of intellectual, emotional, physical, practical, artistic and meta awareness dimensions of learning. For more information about our personal development courses, please click here.
In our teacher education course, we interweave reflective, experiential and artistic practices that deepen self-awareness that is grounded in the belief that educators who engage with contemplative pedagogy must have a meaningful understanding of their inner lives. this. includes both the beauty and the discomfort that can arise from such enquiry. For more information about our teacher education courses, please click here.
