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Contemplative approaches to higher education have been gaining in popularity and application across a wide range of disciplines. Spurring conferences, a growing body of literature, and several academic programs or centers, these approaches promise to contribute significantly to higher education in the years to come. This volume provides an overview of the current landscape of contemplative instruction, pedagogy, philosophy, and curriculum from the perspectives of leading researchers and scholar-practitioners. Contributors come from a variety of disciplines, including education, management and leadership studies, humanities, social sciences, the arts, and information science. Drawing on diverse contexts, the essays reveal the applicability of contemplative studies as a watershed field, capable of informing, enriching, and sustaining the many disciplines and instructional contexts that comprise higher education. Chapters discuss the theoretical aspects of the field; the details, experiences, and challenges of contemplative approaches; and the hopes and concerns for the future of this field.
<p>From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools we’ve developed.<br />
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David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the “fast world” of high tech and the “slow world” of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced, and more effective, while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers watch themselves closely while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment with unplugging for a specified period. Never prescriptive, the book opens up new avenues for self-inquiry and will allow readers—in the workplace, in the classroom, and in the privacy of their homes—to make meaningful and powerful changes.</p>
This paper argues that the accelerating pace of life is reducing the time for thoughtful reflection, and in particular for contemplative scholarship, within the academy. It notes that the loss of time to think is occurring at exactly the moment when scholars, educators, and students have gained access to digital tools of great value to scholarship. It goes on to explore how and why both of these facts might be true, what it says about the nature of scholarship, and what might be done to address this state of affairs.