Cultivating contemplative pedagogies: The OER and summit from the student perspective

From July to December 2025, I have had the privilege of working with the Centre for Teaching & Learning on the Contemplative Pedagogies Open Education Resource (CP OER) and Contemplative Practices Summit projects as a research assistant and student partner. This experience provided me with many opportunities to collaborate with staff and faculty from Concordia and beyond in the spirit of community and care. I was nervous at first, unsure of where I fit into things – was I there strictly as an employee? Did being a student mean I would always have to listen, follow, and obey? Nothing could be further from the truth! I was brought in and very quickly made to feel welcome and equal in true partnership. 

As educators of all kinds, and as learners of all kinds, it is one thing to add new facts to our infinite capacity for knowledge. We are capable of banking information. But the wisdom and insight that comes from contemplation is what humanizes that knowledge and makes it something authentically applicable to our lives and our world. I have been practicing different types of meditation for over fifteen years – long before I began my university studies in Adult Education – and have always appreciated the perspective and peace of mind it has left me with. Before joining this team, my experience with contemplative pedagogy was on the receiving end, as a student in classes with contemplative educators. Getting to work on this project allowed me to get a deeper understanding of how the practices that have helped me, personally, could be applied in the classroom. As someone who researches teaching and learning higher education, and a prospective university educator myself, I believe that contemplative pedagogies are useful, if not necessary, parts of university teaching across disciplines because they create the space to integrate oneself into their learning, work, and contribution to the world.

What is the CP OER? What is the CP Summit?

The CP OER is a collection of insights, testimonials, and practices intended to highlight different contemplative practices and explore how they can be applied in the classroom. Contributions were made by were members of the CP Faculty Interest Group at Concordia who shared their experiences as contemplative practitioners and educators. The development process involved many months of research, co-writing, and gatherings to discuss how to include everyone’s pieces. While this did take time, I did not find it particularly difficult. Everyone allowed room for their colleagues to contribute in ways that made sense for them, be it a written piece, a talk, or a practice demonstration. This form of radical inclusion, where all types of pieces were valued contributions, resulted in a resource that is now widely applicable to a variety of readers.

In conjunction with writing the CP OER, we were also able to host the Contemplative Practices Summit. This semester-long workshop series invited speakers from across Turtle Island to teach us how they incorporate contemplative practices into their teaching. The series highlighted the intersections between culturally-relevant pedagogies, trauma-informed pedagogies, mindfulness, and community-building – along with the ways these include, in fact characterize, contemplative pedagogies.

Through doing research, working with the CP OER contributors, and attending the Summit workshops, I learned that the partnership I have felt working with this team is part of what makes contemplative pedagogy such an amazing way of teaching and learning. It’s about connection – with others, with nature, and with all parts of the self. It’s about making sense of our vast array of diverse knowledges to complete what is missing from simply memorizing content and performing tasks.

Process of creating the CP OER

I was brought on board midway through the development process of the CP OER. Prior to my hiring, there had already been co-writing sessions and meetings focused on the overall content and structure of the CP OER. When I arrived, the contributors knew which topics they intended to focus on, but it was in this meeting that we discussed different modes of contributing. In order to reflect everyone’s diverse skillsets, styles, and preferences, the idea of making an education resource in the style of quilting and collage fit nicely. It was very important to us that the CP OER was not a disconnected how-to, tips & tricks, module that could be extracted from, but a genuine collection of diverse approaches. Not only are the insights, testimonies, and practices in the CP OER informative, but the way the document is designed – as a quilt or collage – also exists to model what this looks and feels like to our readers.

The multi-disciplinarity of the CP OER team has allowed us to create something open to educators of all kinds who exist within university spaces. Contemplative pedagogies enhance all fields and types of classrooms – there is not really a type of course or subject matter that could not benefit from becoming more contemplative. I hope that everyone can take something away from the CP OER, and furthermore that they can reciprocate with insights of their own and by sharing these practices in their classrooms. The CP OER is a living document, and the more perspectives that are added to this quilt, the fuller it becomes.

My first task as part of the CP OER team was to conduct an environmental scan of the literature on contemplative pedagogies. In doing so, I found that contemplative pedagogies – regardless of the specific practice, or the type of course they are used in – share particular characteristics which can be found in the Seeds of Contemplative Pedagogies section. 

Another one of my main tasks was coordinating the feedback for our contributors and offering suggestions and edits to their piece based on peer reviews. This experience was extremely rewarding! It allowed me to become very familiar with any contributions to the OER and connect with different kinds of educators within the university space. Because of the egalitarian nature of the project, I was not remotely stressed by these communications. It did not matter how long someone had been teaching, or whether they were faculty or educational support staff, there was a consistent mutual respect throughout the process. 

What you will read in the CP OER may involve some contradictions or different views of an approach or practice – this is by design to show how to include these diverse views into one collective project rooted in the spirit of community. We intentionally did not want a unified, cookie-cutter set of chapters that could only be read in a specific sequence. Instead, we developed a more wiki-style, highly linked network of pieces to allow the reader to go on their own contemplative ‘walk’ guided by their innate interests and indulge their curiosity. Contemplative practices (and pedagogies by extension) really emphasize understanding, and although it may not necessarily be the easiest to understand the self, our selves are always present with us and introspection is always available as a contemplative focus.

Key learnings from the CP Summit

Attending the workshops in the CP Summit series was a wonderful opportunity to hear from so many different contemplative educators. Not only did they share a variety of approaches to contemplative practices, but there was a lot to learn about incorporating these into the classroom as contemplative pedagogies.

A key theme throughout the CP summit was connection. If contemplative pedagogy can be described as teaching and learning in the spaces between, then it is not about who or what is at either end, but how that space was made and cared for – that intentional effort was made towards a connection. Whether we are talking about cultural appreciation, trauma-informed approaches, or the land, it is important to remember that we are all whole living beings. Students are not isolated from their educators, they work in constant relation – furthermore in relation to the histories of curriculum, power dynamics, and situatedness. When we emphasize the connection, it becomes less important whether a person is an educator, a student, a neighbour, a relative – people are viewed as whole and equal.

Another theme was resistance. Many spoke of real, perceived, or anticipated resistance to incorporating contemplative practices in their classrooms. Some spoke of feeling isolated in their educator communities, that their colleagues would not be supportive. In response, an invitation was extended to reach out across disciplinary borders to find connection with other faculty through an interest in contemplative pedagogies. Others expressed concern over student resistance in the classroom – how is it possible to get 30, 50, 100 or more people on board with a practice? How can educators do this in an online classroom? What does one do if a student has a negative response to contemplative pedagogy?

Pause, breathe, listen, respect, and accept.

Contemplative pedagogies are not about forcing everyone to ‘get on board’, but an ever-present, non-judgmental invitation to choose whether a practice speaks to someone in that moment. Allow those who are resistant to resist, encourage attending to one’s needs and agency, and model respect for those who choose to participate by providing non-disruptive alternatives. Furthermore, accept within yourself, as a contemplative educator, that you are also engaging in an act of resistance against the chaos and despair of a culture that rewards rushing ahead toward unending productivity without considering the cost to ourselves, others, and the natural world. The role of the contemplative pedagogue – particularly in a society which demands more from all of us, students and educators alike, with dwindling resources – is to create a time and space for the unknown so that generative thought, imagination, and hope can exist.

Reflecting on my relationship with contemplative pedagogies

I would argue that contemplative pedagogies do not necessarily (or exclusively) ‘build’ connections, but rather they unearth and bring to light the connections that have been buried under histories of violence, destruction, and separation. When we contemplate, we let our hands feel through the sand, unable to see them, but feeling around for what is hidden and finding treasures we could not see before we started to explore the unobservable. Contemplation also allows us to feel what connections are missing, or frayed, or broken, which helps guide us towards areas of our lives where we can begin to create, or recreate, more meaning – to heal.

As a student, I find it strange that contemplative practices and pedagogies are often misconceived as lacking rigour – that engaging in them would cause the classroom to lose integrity, or that students would miss out on some aspect of course content. Contemplative pedagogies allow both students and educators to exist more holistically in relationship to themselves, each other, the course content, and the world in which they will be applying it after graduation. In my view, this only adds to the integrity of academic study by constructing and maintaining more pillars and connections to serve as the foundation of a meaningful application of knowledge towards a fulfilled life. Classrooms that do not include contemplation, to me, look more like a lopsided house of cards – ungrounded and fragile, easy to knock over. Having a contemplative pedagogy, in addition to being a necessary humanizing practice, is also simply good instructional design and engineering. 

It can seem out of place, or tough to find the time, to engage in contemplative practices in the classroom. There may be resistance from students or colleagues, but there is also interest and support available both in the classroom and in spaces like the Centre for Teaching & Learning. As a student, I have always appreciated professors who integrate contemplation into their pedagogy. Not only does this provide spaces for my classmates and I to pause, de-stress, reflect, and become more insightful – that’s the direct benefit for me – but a professor who uses contemplative pedagogy lets me know that they really care about and understand their role in the system of education. There’s a sense of “Ah, you get it.” that allows me to see my professor as more than just a cog in the academic industrial machine, that instead they are someone I can converse with and care about. A contemplative pedagogue is, to me, a professor who is aware that learning goes beyond passing the class or getting the degree – that learning is for life.

Seeds are whole, and flowers are whole, but you do not get from a seed to a flower by grafting a stem and petals to it. Contemplation is the watering of the seed, the tending and care needed for growth, not mere acquisition.

It has been a pleasure to take part in a project that everyone has put so much love and care into. I encourage everyone, whether you are an experienced contemplative educator or a complete skeptic, to check out the CP OER. Take a moment to listen to the insights from contributors, including student testimonials, partake in some reflective practices, and check out some demos of contemplative practices that you can include in your classroom. Allow what you are looking for to find you.