Developing Indicators for What Matters Most in Your Teaching
A webinar with David Sable
Religious Studies, Saint Mary’s University
originally broadcast on Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 3:30-4:30pm EST
Sponsored by the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, an initiative of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
In this interactive presentation, participants will be introduced to a set of mindfulness-based reflective practices for the classroom that were the subject of mixed methods research with university students over five years. The practices apply basic mindfulness principles and guided instruction for individual contemplation, journal writing, listening, inquiry, and dialogue in a student-centered learning format.
Taken together, this set of practices becomes reflective interaction; however the elements are also useful individually or in any combination. These practices and the results of the research were described in the first issue of The Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, published by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
The same set of practices will be applied in this interactive webinar to help you develop indicators for what matters most in introducing any contemplative practices in your teaching. Participants will explore their intentions, including what matters most to them as the instructor, what matters most to their students, and how they can know if contemplative pedagogy is effective. Results will be shared online and documented by the recording.
About the Presenter
David Sable, PhD, has been teaching undergraduates at Saint Mary’s University in Canada for 15 years. In 2012 he completed five years of interdisciplinary doctoral research on the impacts of using mindfulness-based contemplative practices to support critical thinking and learning in the classroom. His thesis was nominated for Best Thesis in the Social Sciences at Dalhousie University and his work noted in the National Teaching and Learning Forum 2012 (21(4)). A distinct and unexpected impact was the reported sense of connectedness that was stronger between students who used reflective inquiry to explore disagreement than between students who found quick and easy agreement with little inquiry.
David has led numerous faculty development workshops on contemplative pedagogy and in July, 2014 co-led the first residential, graduate level practicum in Canada on contemplative education for K-12 teachers. David has also adapted his methods for online learning in various formats and contributed a chapter to Transformative Learning and Online Education (2010, Information Sciences Publishing). He is currently working on a book exploring the impacts and implications of contemplative practices for learning across language and cultural differences.
David was trained in meditation by the renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa and is a senior teacher in that tradition. He also works as a training and education consultant to industry and government agencies in the United States and Canada.