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Home > HCAS > HCAS_PUBS > HCAS_JOURNALS > TQR Home > TQR > Vol. 29 > No. 11 (2024)

 

Abstract

Contemplation as a spiritual practice has taken various forms across different religious traditions and regions worldwide. Over the years, various contemplative practices have evolved and become popular even outside religious traditions to promote the well-being of all for inner and outer selves’ transformation. In education, many scholars worldwide have expounded on the benefits of contemplative practices in the classroom for students and teachers. Contemplative practices have penetrated research practices in the form of contemplative inquiry considering performative, philosophical, and artistic transformations, where researchers enter into a deep, thoughtful, and reflective introspective journey to see the connection between what is seen and unseen and how it affects their lives. In this article, we explore how autoethnographic action research as a contemplative inquiry can be considered a contemplative practice by delving into three crucial similarities between contemplation and autoethnographic action research. They are self-awareness, transformation, and connecting the personal with the social, connecting inner and outer selves. Looking into various literature on contemplation and contemplative practices, autoethnography, and action research, we explain how these three similarities are integral to both contemplative life and autoethnographic action research, and thus, how the latter can be considered as a contemplative practice. The article concludes by highlighting that understanding self-awareness, transformation, and the connection between personal and social aspects can encourage researchers to take the dimensions of the inner and outer selves more seriously.

Keywords

contemplative practice, contemplative inquiry, autoethnography, action research, self-awareness, transformation of inner and outer selves

Author Bio(s)

Jiju Varghese (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2967-221X) is a mathematics educator and currently a Ph.D. scholar in STEAM Education at Kathmandu University School of Education, Nepal. He holds an M.Phil. degree in Mathematics Education. He is passionate about relationship-responsible mathematics teaching-learning, where he wants to promote in his students' proper relationship with others, the cosmos/Mother Earth, the Divine/Sacred, and the self through the mathematics concepts they learn. He is a Jesuit priest who serves at St. Xavier’s College, Kathmandu, as a mathematics and research faculty member. Jiju may be contacted at jiju@sxc.edu.np.

Prof. Bal Chandra Luitel, Ph.D. (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5483-2385), has been working with several Nepali STEAM teachers and teacher educators to engage with a host of transformative research methods together with new analytics arising from dialectical, metaphorical, poetic, and narrative thinking and representation as a means for conceiving, expressing, and implementing visions of inclusive and life-affirming STEAM education in Nepal. He also serves as the Dean of the Kathmandu University School of Education, Lalitpur, Nepal. Prof. Luitel may be contacted at bcluitel@kusoed.edu.np.

Niroj Dahal, Ph.D. (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7646-1186) is a lecturer at the Department of STEAM Education, Kathmandu University School of Education, Nepal. He also serves as an editorial board member of TQR. His research interests include ICT in education, artificial intelligence (AI), generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), qualitative research—action research, participatory action research, appreciative inquiry, arts-based inquiry, autoethnography, narrative inquiry, case study, content analysis, critical ethnography, critical social theories inquiry, decolonizing methodologies, decolonizing autoethnography, thematic analysis, narrative analysis, and collaborative inquiry (among others), mathematics education, open, distance & e-learning, STEAM education, research and development, and ICT & e-Research. Dr. Dahal has been teaching graduate and undergraduate students for the past two decades. Dr. Dahal has also been continuously participating in and presenting his research and practices at more than five dozen national and international conferences, workshops, and seminars. So far, Dr. Dahal has published articles, research notes, commentaries, editorials, book reviews, books, and book chapters in various national and international journals and publication presses in ICT, qualitative research, education in general and mathematics education, and STEAM education. Likewise, Dr. Dahal has continuously contributed as an organizing committee member at national and international conferences, seminars, and workshops. Besides his regular work, he has been engaging with scholarly communities worldwide by offering his support in research, innovation, and publications. Dr. Dahal also serves as the managing editor of the Journal of Transformative Praxis (JrTP), published by Kathmandu University School of Education, Nepal. Dr. Dahal may be contacted by email at niroj@kusoed.edu.np.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Kathmandu University School of Education for providing a research-oriented environment. We also extend our thanks to the editorial team of The Qualitative Report for their support in improving the quality of this article. Additionally, we appreciate the Nepal Jesuit Society for supporting Jiju in conducting this research. Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Publication Date

1-6-2025

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2024.6983

ORCID ID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2967-221X

ResearcherID

KYP-4455-2024

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