Fidelity to reason and adherence to reality with mindfulness practices: problematics and contemplative pedagogy in dialogue

Abstract

The current pandemic emergency has and continues to put the health of the whole human community at risk, radically modifying many aspects of our life, but has also underlined and amplified the fundamental need to reflect on and address issues that are of major importance in our fields of study. These include the right to peace, the right to education and care for our children and our young people, especially the most vulnerable, and the educational responsibility of all (institutions and families) towards the new generations. Therefore, starting from a re-reading, also in a critical key, of the use of the practices of self-reflection and self-awareness of the Eastern tradition in Western educational contexts (De Simone , 2018), we will try to investigate the possible dialogue with Bertinian “Problematicism” in order to explore its potential, especially in terms of the operational repercussions that go in the direction of an individual’s emancipation from all dogmatic knowledge as well as from the social and cultural constraints that contribute to a definition of their dispositional knowledge, rigidly oriented towards selfish and superficial closures. Specifically, we will try to investigate a mindfulness protocol, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes et al., 1999), which works on different dimensions – acceptance, cognitive defusion, self as context, contact with the present, contact with values, committed action –, dimensions that seem interesting to re-read in a Problematicist key.

Keywords

• problematicism
• contemplative pedagogy
• mindfulness
• critical reflexivity
• ethical awareness