Designing with Contemplative Pedagogies Online

Contemplative pedagogies are secularized forms of traditionally religious practices adapted for use as learning aids. These include meditation, silence, lectio divina, or beholding. Ergas (2013) asserted that, “The incorporation of contemplative practices in Western curricula is still a marginal phenomenon” because “we have not yet developed a rigorous conceptualization of contemplative practice as pedagogy” (p. 4). Deeper analysis of these “ancient sacred technologies” (Wiethaus, 2016) is needed to understand them from an instructional design perspective. Drawing on religious studies and anthropological perspectives, a framework for analysis is proposed that combines learning science with a contextual understanding of how contemplative practices are used in traditional religious pedagogy. With this understanding, it may be possible to utilize contemplative exercises as a form of direct instruction that can be mapped to learning outcomes for traditional higher education curricula, thus expanding their use beyond learning support to testable instructional strategies. The presentation will focus specifically on selecting appropriate contemplative pedagogies for use in online courses.