The affective domain of education: phenomenological and contemplative perspectives

Against the contemporary backdrop of a spiritual and mental health crisis among North American college students, a group of educators advocated for the integration of contemplative practices into higher education, arguing that the crisis is fundamentally an existential one precipitated by a lack of meaning. The contemplative discursive cluster of adaptations of clinical interventions for educational settings is informed by therapeutic, reductive views of self. The contemplative pedagogical discourse affirms its commitment to the reflective capacity of students and the restoration of wholeness and connection; however, dominant strands within the latter discourse resort to a learner-centered rhetoric that places the learner self at the center of education by turning students' attention primarily inwards. Issues in contemplative discourses become more apparent in encounters with North American educational theory and practice. Educational theorists have admitted the need for conceptual frameworks and language to articulate the fundamental relational aspects of pedagogy and the existential character of the educational task. I make the case for anthropological and phenomenological approaches and invite the European traditions into the dialogue. Underscored by non-reductive conceptions of self, German pedagogical anthropology investigates humans as educational, learning, teaching, forming, and social beings. Italian phenomenological pedagogy focuses on affectivity in educational intentionality. Educators affect students in their exemplarity and are tasked with awakening and directing students' capacity to affect and be affected by their selves, others, and the world on their formative path. To cultivate their affective quality of presence, educators need to bring their own affective involvement in teaching practices into inquiry. Consequently, reflection on one's affective life is constitutive of education: a requirement for students, teacher students, and educators alike. As for linguistic precision in the pedagogical domain, practices of self-study and self-inquiry that examine and cultivate affectivity seem preferable to 'contemplation' and 'inner work'.