This paper explores a countermovement that is emerging within an educational climate that highlights accountability, standardization and performativity. This countermovement has become manifest in an exponential rise in the implementation and research of contemplative practices (e.g., mindfulness, yoga) across educational settings. The paper explores the unfolding of this curricular-pedagogical phenomenon, characterizes its core elements and explains why and how it can be viewed as a 'contemplative turn in education'. Based on a conceptual review of academic publications in the field, the paper demonstrates a progression from a pre-contemplative era to the current contemplative turn. As part of the review three curricular domains within this turn are described: mindfulness-based interventions, contemplative pedagogies and contemplative inquiry. Each domain offers a different perspective on the contemplative turn and contributes to epistemological changes in curricular-pedagogical practice. The paper also presents a critical discourse that challenges the contemplative turn's ethics, implementations and curricular orientations. The latter discourse has been developing alongside and as part of this turn.