current Events

What Might Contemplation Offer at this Time in History: Education, Uncertainty, and Activism

Virtual Symposium

Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 3:30pm to 5pm Pacific Standard Time

This time in history is marked with uncertainties. While uncertainty is not limited to our current time, we can recognize a certain global instability emerging from climate change, violent conflicts, and changing relationships between what have been considered allied countries. These troubles can be seen to be rooted in violent ways of being in the world that have long been the subject of critique and forms of activism. What might this all mean for what we are doing in Canadian schools? What might contemplative practice offer?

In this webinar, we engage with Derek Rasmussen in dialogue with David Smith and Heesoon Bai as they engage in dialogue with each other and us about the possibilities for contemplative practice in education in our current time. Moderated by Dr. Jeannie Kerr.

To register contact Trang Pham at phamt8@myumanitoba.ca.

PAST EVENTS

Negotiating Contemplative Practices in Education: Understanding and Addressing Modernity’s Limiting Assumptions

Virtual Symposium

Wednesday, December 4th, 2024, 3:30 to 5pm Central Standard Time 

From preschool to university, the formalized settings wherein public education is enacted in Canada have been directed through the assumptions of Euro-Western modernity. The prescribed ways of knowing, being, and doing in public education have thus been heavily influenced by an emphasis on rationalist forms of thinking as the authorized way to know and make meaning, resulting in constraints on meaningful educational experience. Traditions of thoughts and practice that expand and challenge these dominant education norms and ways of doing/being through practices of embodiment, mindfulness, spiritual resonance, arts, etc. have the capacity to meaningfully redress dominant forms of education.

In this symposium, the Canadian Educational Network for Contemplative Engagement (CENCE) invites you to join us with presenters Frank Deer and Claudia Eppert and engage in dialogue to explore the limits, possibilities and opportunities to enrich forms of knowing, being, and doing in educational settings.

To register, contact Trang Pham at phamt8@myumanitoba.ca.