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Using Neurofeedback and Mindfulness Pedagogies to Teach Open Listening
Computers and Composition
Format: Journal Article
Publication Date: Nov 30, 2017
Pages: 78 - 104
Sources ID: 81751
Notes: DOI 10.1016/j.compcom.2018.07.002; ISSN 8755-4615
Visibility: Public (group default)
Abstract: (Show)
Neurofeedback is a technology that allows users to observe, reflect, and learn from their brain wave activity. It is often used in conjunction with mindfulness to help people obtain a more open state of mind. While both neurofeedback and mindfulness have been employed in support of neoliberal goals, they can be used for more socially responsible ones. Specifically, when integrated with scholarship on listening, mindfulness and neurofeedback can enrich an open listening pedagogy. Open listening can be understood as a narrative fusion of horizons (Ivor Goodson & Scherto Gill, 2011). This fusion occurs when two people's narrative horizons, consisting of a set of narratives and standpoints, come together while preserving the multiplicity, fluidity, complexity, and intersectionality of each. Interdisciplinary scholarship, including neurological and biological perspectives, shows that a listener's embodied dynamics, specifically fear and attachment, contribute to closed listening, in which the listener tries to preserve the stability and fixity of their own narratives. An open listening pedagogy that incorporates mindfulness and neurofeedback responds to the need for interdisciplinary understandings of the body-social relationships that are part of closed listening. Neurofeedback and mindfulness further help students practice ways of relating to their bodies that are conducive to open listening.