For our seventh annual Fall Faculty Book Club, we read Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation by Laura I. Rendón.
At our final meeting, we asked our participating faculty to jot down some thoughts. Here is what they wrote.
The book challenged traditional approaches to teaching and learning and challenged readers to embrace a holistic approach to teaching which brings together both mind and heart and embraces a social justice stance.
Very comforting to have so many others feel as I do. Important to remember that we are responsible for our own outcomes and we cannot really focus on how this pedagogical endeavor affects others even though you hope it will be positive. The potential latent value of sentipensante practices is also intriguing as is the collateral leaning component.
The book provided an interesting conversation about the nuts and bolts of implementing contemplative pedagogy in the classroom.
Useful discussion on how to sustain myself in my career — by building sustenance into my professional and personal life, blended.
Thought provoking! This book points out our society's disconnect with the whole self and emphasizes its obsession with reaching non-integrative goals and measures. My questions is, "How do we change this?"
The best practices are subversive. Love is subversive!
The book reinforced the idea that the goal of education is to develop well-rounded individuals who possess knowledge and wisdom. Professors need to design a relationship-centered classroom based on caring, support and validation. Tests and grades should not be used as punitive measures, but as feedback mechanisms that assist in determining where the student is at a particular point in time.
Laura Rendón describes how to incorporate sensing/thinking pedagogy. Although the author describes the process eloquently, at times the book is lengthy.
This was a good read in that it made me think about what I do and how I can be more effective. There are a lot of great ideas, but sometimes the narrative was so subjective that it did not seem scholarly.
Examples of involving/engaging students were wonderful and inspiring.
What repercussions will we face if we do not acknowledge the existence of the emotional and spiritual along with the intellectual? Woe unto humanity if we do not!
Sentipensante pedagogy is concerned with engagement strategies that are associated with a rational and contemplative education. Engaging sentipensante pedagogy can be transformative and liberating.
On the whole, I felt it was a bit idealistic, however it does bring up some important points. We should always remember to nurture the whole students. I thinnk depending on the class and enthusiasm of the instructor one could be successful with this strategy, and we should all strive to be.
A voice crying in the wilderness, but there are more and more voices!
For an in-depth review of the book, see Ann E. Austin's article in The Review of Higher Education.