Abstract
Being in the moment, showing compassion, being non-judgmental, acknowledging deep emotional challenges without getting stuck: these are mindfulness characteristics important to us as teachers, yet not often included in teacher preparation. These concerns become magnified when we focus on difficult knowledge and thorny issues, like topics related to gender and race. Using a sociocultural framework, we address how mindfulness, heuristics, and other contemplative practices can be adopted to create safe, supporting, and healing spaces for such complex, often emotionally painful discussions. Participant narratives are used extensively to provide a voice to those marginalized or hurt. Drawing from these narratives and their experience in discussing thorny issues, we put forth possible solutions and interventions that can create spaces that encourage and support critical discourse through mindful practices. The development of a heuristic for discussing thorny issues whose characteristics can be adopted by interested teachers and educators to help frame and mediate this type of difficult discussion is an outcome of this research.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexakos, K. (2015). Being a teacher|researcher: A primer on doing authentic inquiry research on teaching and learning. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Bakhtin, M. M., Voloshinov, V. N., Medvedev, P. N., & Morris, P. (1994). The Bakhtin reader: Selected writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov. New York: E. Arnold.
Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (2001). Self-efficacy beliefs as shapers of children’s aspirations and career trajectories. Child Development, 72(1), 187–206.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: The Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Britzman, D. P. (2000). Teacher education in the confusion of our times. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 200–205.
Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. New York: Verso.
Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When is life grievable?. New York: Verso.
Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299. doi:10.2307/1229039.
Davidson, R. J., & Begley, S. (2012). The emotional life of your brain: How its unique patterns affect the way you think, feel, and live—and how you can change them. New York: Hudson Street Press.
Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87, 2411–2441. doi:10.2307/1289308.
Grusky, D. B., & Szelenyi, S. (2011). The stories about inequality that we love to tell. In D. B. Grusky (Ed.), The inequality reader: Contemporary and foundational readings in race, class, and gender (pp. 2–16). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Kincheloe, J. L. (2011). Critical ontology and indigenous ways of being. In K. Hayes, S. Steinberg, & K. Tobin (Eds.), Key works in critical pedagogy (Vol. 32, pp. 333–349). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Kincheloe, J. L. (2015). Foreword: Pearls of wisdom. In K. Tobin & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Doing educational research (2nd ed., pp. ix–xxxviii). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Powietrzynska, M., Tobin, K., & Alexakos, K. (2015). Facing the grand challenges through heuristics and mindfulness. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10, 65–81. doi:10.1007/s11422-014-9588-x.
Rivera Maulucci, M. S., & Mensah, F. M. (2015). Naming ourselves and others. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(1), 1–5. doi:10.1002/tea.21196.
Roberts, S. (2011). A case that put a system on trial (p. 1). New York: New York Times.
Sewell, W. H. (1999). The concept(s) of culture. In V. E. Bonnell, L. A. Hunt & R. Biernacki (Eds.), Beyond the cultural turn: New directions in the study of society and culture (pp. xi, 350). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Sewell, W. H. (2005). Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Singleton, G. E. (2014). Courageous conversations about race: A field guide for achieving equity in schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. New York: WW Norton.
Steele, C. M., Spencer, S. J., & Aronson, J. (2002). Contending with group image: The psychology of stereotype and social identity threat. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 379–440). San Diego: Elsevier, Academic Press.
Tobin, K. (2009). Tuning into others’ voices: Radical listening, learning from difference, and escaping oppression. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 4, 505–511. doi:10.1007/s11422-009-9218-1.
Tobin, K. (2011). Learning from a good mate. In K. Hayes, S. R. Steinberg, & K. Tobin (Eds.), Key works in critical pedagogy: Joe L. Kincheloe (pp. xv–xxiv). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Tobin, K. (2012). Sociocultural perspectives on science education. In B. J. Fraser, K. Tobin, & C. J. McRobbie (Eds.), Second international handbook of science education (pp. 3–17). New York: Springer.
Tobin, K. (2014). Using collaborative inquiry to better understand teaching and learning. In L. Bencze & S. Alsop (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (Vol. 9, pp. 127–147). New York: Springer.
Tobin, K., & Alexakos, K. (2013). Coteaching heuristic: I|other (white paper). New York: The City University of New York.
Tobin, K., Alexakos, K., & Powietrzynska, M. (2015). Mindfully speaking & mindfully listening heuristics (white paper). New York: The City University of New York.
Tobin, K., & Roth, W.-M. (2005). Chapter 3: Coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing in an urban science teacher preparation program (pp. 59–77). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Turner, J. H. (2002). Face to face: Toward a sociological theory of interpersonal behavior. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Twain, M. (1899). Pudd’nhead Wilson. New York: Harper.
Wolff, C. (1989). Youths rape and beat Central Park jogger (p. B1). New York: New York Times.
Zembylas, M. (2014a). Making sense of the complex entanglement between emotion and pedagogy: Contributions of the affective turn. Cultural Studies of Science Education,. doi:10.1007/s11422-014-9623-y.
Zembylas, M. (2014b). Theorizing “difficult knowledge” in the aftermath of the “affective turn”: Implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. Curriculum Inquiry, 44, 390–412. doi:10.1111/curi.12051.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Lead Editor: S. Ritchie and K. Tobin.
This article is part of the Special Issue on Research on Emotions of Science Education.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Alexakos, K., Pride, L.D., Amat, A. et al. Mindfulness and discussing “thorny” issues in the classroom. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 11, 741–769 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-015-9718-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-015-9718-0