WHAT IS CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION?

“Contemplative Education” is a new branch in the field of Education that considers the philosophies and applies the practices included in the emerging field of Contemplative Studies and in the various wisdom traditions.

This approach leads to the integration of research and a range of contemplative, creative, and embodied practices that enhance individual awareness and support collective learning.

Contemplative Education aims to foster transformative personal growth by cultivating attentional focus, sustained inquiry, and a broader perspective on the various contexts in which one is embedded, including family, schools, communities, society, and nature. 

Studies suggest that these approaches encourage an increased curiosity for learning and foster other-regarding virtues, including humaneness, compassion, and kindness.

 The network is committed to advancing Contemplative Education (CE) through a multidisciplinary, inclusive, and collaborative approach, with the following key aims:

• establishing a collaborative network aspiring to build a community;
• promoting the cross-fertilization of scientific and humanistic approaches to CE across all educational levels, from pre-school to post-secondary settings;
• advancing CE scholarship and research;
• creating a consistent meeting space to forge international exchanges and collaborations;
• organizing models, standards, and manuals for programs at various levels related to Contemplative Studies and CE;
• fostering scientific documentation on the societal impact of CE, with the aim of presenting it to decision-making bodies for support.

It’s an emerging academic field that studies human contemplative experience across culture and across time from humanistic, scientific, and artistic perspectives, as well as the particular type of knowledge and the specific transformations it produces in the subject and the community.

We study the full range of contemplative experiences including not only those that are deliberately cultivated in many wisdom traditions but also those that human beings spontaneously experience.

We approach the study from four epistemological perspectives: 

– third-person (“objective”) found in research and scholarship; 

– second-person (intersubjective); 

– first-person (subjective); and 

– no person (nondualistic). 

Programs in Contemplative Studies have been established at many leading institutions of higher education including Brown University, the University of Michigan, Syracuse University, Oregon State University, Rice University, the University of Padova (Italy) and many others. 

The International Society for Contemplative Research was created in 2022 to serve as a professional association for independent and collaborative work of scholars, scientists, clinicians, and practitioners in the field.

Prior Contemplative Educational efforts associated with Mind and Life Institute, Mind and Life Europe, the Garrison Institute, and Contemplative Mind in Society all had previously afforded venues for those interested in education to meet. However, those efforts are now dormant and the need for a consistent meeting place to gather and share ideas, scholarship and research was a primary reason for germinating the idea of a new Contemplative Education Network. 

It began in seed form at the in Padua, Italy, in June 2024. At that meeting, a pre-conference headed by Chiara Mascarello, Josipa Mihić, Robert W. Roeser, and Harold D. Roth brought together practitioners, scholars and scientists from across the world and across the developmental spectrum of education (e.g., pre-primary, primary, secondary, post-secondary education) to discuss issues at the intersection of contemplation and education. A post conference on contemplative education was also held, and it was at that meeting that it was decided a new international forum would be created in the coming month. 

Beginning in July of 2024, the four members of the pre/post-conference events at Padua, and Gábor Karsai, began to meet to outline the aims of such a network, to form a preliminary steering committee, and to setup a website. Surveying of participant interest has occurred several times to begin to think about how and what the network should focus on. 

As of the 2nd April 2025 we have 467 people on our mailing list, coming from 27 countries around the world.

● Gábor Karsai - Mind & Life Europe, Switzerland; Dharma Gate Buddhist College, Hungary

● Chiara Mascarello - Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Italian Buddhist Union Research Center, Italy; University of Padua, Post-graduate Program in Contemplative Studies, Italy

● Josipa Mihić - University of Zagreb, PrevLab, Croatia

● Harold D. Roth - Brown University, Contemplative Studies program, USA