Thesis advisor: Hosffman Ospino / There is a pressing need to re-awaken in teaching the prophetic call to serve the liberation of children, whose complex humanity remains systemically marginalized. This proposal is grounded in a study of the Lasallian tradition of education, which originates from John Baptist de La Salle (1651-1719), founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in seventeenth century France and the patron saint for Christian teachers of the young. From a Lasallian perspective, the prophetic call to teach for children’s liberation is rooted contemplatively in a Christian mysticism of faith, which energizes an incarnational mission of education in zeal, shaped by a preferential option for children as the poor and marginalized. This preferential option for children is a hermeneutical key that reads the Lasallian mission of education forward into the twenty-first century. I develop this idea of a preferential option for children, locating it in an interpretive study that critically synthesizes a Lasallian theology of child with literature in childhood studies, spirituality, critical pedagogy and participatory action research. Building on the Lasallian imagination, this study contributes to a Christian spirituality of education as it examines how contemporary theological perspectives on children and childhood serve as a lens that deepens the interconnection between Christian mysticism, liberation, and child in teaching as a prophetic vocation. To teach for children’s liberation is to promote their flourishing as full human beings created in the image and likeness of God. It attends to conditions that protect children in their social marginalization while engaging and developing their social participation as responsible agents in our common belonging to God as God’s children and siblings-in-Christ. It demands just presence in teaching, which begins with listening as receptivity to the mystery of the child as graced irruption. The prophetic call to teach for children’s liberation is mystically rooted in contemplative wonder at the Incarnation. Such wonder must also open the teacher to being disturbed by the scandalizing action of God, who steps out of God-self not only to be with the poor, but also in the least as a human child in Jesus Christ. It is this recognition of God’s presence in each child and with children that calls forth the responsibility of teachers, making an ethical claim on them to be courageously present in ways that prioritize the human dignity of children in education. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

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Cette étude est consacrée à l’analyse de la coexistence de la réalité et de l’imaginaire dans l’œuvre d’Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Les modalités de rencontre et de croisement de ces deux dimensions dans un film ou entre des films sont éclaircies à travers des observations pratiques et détaillées. Partant de l’analyse de l’influence de deux cultures différentes – la sensibilité autochtone thaïlandaise et la tendance du cinéma expérimental occidental – nous envisageons d’une part les modalités de captation des scènes de la vie réelle et d’autre part la manière de découvrir et de révéler le côté invisible qui entoure ce champ visible. La narration filmique est représentée de manière diverse en déviant de la règle classique. Dans le processus de formation d’une histoire, des matières hétérogènes sont englobées et des textes divers sont connectés. Par ailleurs, l’univers flexible et libre de Weerasethakul présuppose toujours des temps multiples virtuels, caractéristique essentielle que l’on retrouve dans toutes ses œuvres, des courts-métrages aux installations en passant par les long-métrages. Par conséquent, la distinction entre la dimension réelle et la dimension irréelle/surréelle perd en clarté ; la ligne de distinction est quasiment annulée. Le réalisateur propose ainsi une autre vision du monde se basant sur la tradition bouddhique thaïlandaise qui pourrait sembler absurde du point de vue du rationalisme moderne de l’Occident. En traversant ainsi les discussions autour du monde hybride de Weerasethakul, cette étude a pour ambition de démontrer que son cinéma (re)trouve la beauté et la puissance de la réalité à travers l’imaginaire. / This study is about the analysis of the coexistence of reality and imagination in the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The modalities of encountering and crossing of these two dimensions in a film or between films are clarified through practical and detailed observations. On the basis of an analysis of the influence of two different cultures – the Thai indigenous sensibility and the tendency of Western experimental cinema –, we search on the one hand the modalities of capturing the scenes of real life, and on the other hand how to discover and reveal the invisible side that surrounds this visible field. The narrative of his films is represented in a diverse way by deviating from the classical rule. In the process of forming a narrative, heterogeneous materials are embraced and various texts are connected. Moreover, the flexible and free world of Weerasethakul always presupposes virtual multiple times, an essential characteristic that can be found in all his works, from short films to installations to the feature films. Therefore, the distinction between the real dimension and the unreal / surreal dimension loses clarity; the line of distinction is virtually canceled. The filmmaker thus proposes another view of the world based on the Thai Buddhist tradition that might seem absurd from the point of view of modern rationalism of the West. By crossing the discussions around the hybrid world of Weerasethakul, this study aims to demonstrate that his cinema (re)finds the beauty and power of reality through the imagination.

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In this thesis I explore writers and their writing practices as embodied, contingent, and affected by aesthetic environments and contemplative practices. I discuss contemplative practices as techniques for recognizing the co-dependent origination of the self/world, and as tools for disrupting the trifurcation of body, mind and word. I explore the written word’s role in the continuous production of new meaning, and as part of the continuous production of new “selves” for writers, and readers. I use narrative auto-ethnography to situate myself as a researcher, sensory ethnography and interviews to profile four practicing writers, and arts-informed Research-creation to document my own writing and contemplative practices. I also consider whether a post-pedagogy view of educational research might produce/allow space for more creative approaches to educational theorizing.

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to explore the experiences of school counselors who implement yoga into a comprehensive school counseling program. Over the past decade, yoga has gained popularity as a prevention and intervention tool in public school settings. Prior to this study, the role of the school counselor in this process has not been explored. This study investigated the lived experiences of 10 school counselors who integrate yoga into a comprehensive school counseling program. Through data analysis, five significant themes and subsequent subthemes emerged: 1) intentionality (personal experiences with yoga impacts professional intentions, yoga intentionally tied with comprehensive school counseling goal); 2) yoga integration (organic commonalities between school counseling and yoga, methods of yoga delivery, overlap of yoga philosophies and ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors standards); 3) logistics of yoga integration (accessibility of yoga, managing yoga myths and stereotypes, program supports); 4) perception of yoga impact, (overall impact on school, impact on student, examples of students taking yoga “off the mat”); and 5) impact of yoga integration on school counselor (yoga as a self-care strategy, yoga is a meaningful aspect of school counselor role). Findings from this study suggest that yoga is a viable and valuable tool to include in a comprehensive school counseling program. Moreover, as the yoga in schools movement continues to grow, school counselors should be regarded as essential stakeholders in the development, implementation, and evaluation process. Results from this study provide a foundation for future research concerning school counselors and yoga.

In this dissertation, I am in conversation with the following questions: How can individuals and communities teach and learn to engage more peacefully, nonviolently, and compassionately with each other? Further, how can one practice a style of communication that helps at least one person suffer less each day? In asking these questions, my goal has been to imagine as well as attempt to actualize a world where individuals and communities work together to create less suffering in each other's lives by first developing compassionate awareness of our interconnectedness, then "waking up" not only to our own divinity but also to that place in all of us where the entire universe dwells. In this dissertation, communication is situated as both a spiritual practice and as a practice of yoga. To illuminate this notion, I have sequenced this text as a yoga practice in and of itself, employing Shiva Rea's "wave methodology" to introduce and support the peak purpose of this text -communication as yoga - via svadhyaya, or self-study, as a path to expand relational awareness through everyday small acts or micropractices. Communication, thus, becomes an emergent process based in yoga philosophy and practice wherein one learns to acknowledge and take responsibility for one's interactions with others and other realities by recognizing one's shared vulnerability. To heighten this awareness, this text includes 108 asanas or micropractices, which serve to explore my guiding questions as well as exemplify communication as yoga - as an everyday practice.

The practice of contemplative silence, in its manifestation as a mode of capable being, is a self-consciously spiritual and ethical activity that aims at a transformation of reflexive consciousness. I assert that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being in which we have an awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being whereby we can constitute and create a shared world of meaning(s) through poetically presencing our being as being with others. The doubling and tripling of the term "awareness" refers to five contextual levels of awareness, which are analyzed, including immediate self-awareness, immediate objective awareness, reflective awareness, reflexive awareness, and contemplative awareness. The analysis culminates with the claim that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being, one which creates the conditions of the possibility for contemplative awareness. A hermeneutics of contemplative silence manifests a deeper level of awareness--contemplative awareness--as a poetics of presencing our human solidarity. Contemplative awareness includes both an experience and an understanding of the proper ordering of our relational realities. My claim is that contemplative awareness can and should accompany the practice of contemplative silence in order to appropriate the meaning of a silence embodied in the here and now, through the hermeneutical endeavor. Contemplative awareness elicits movement in thinking, and involves the ongoing exercise of rethinking our relational realities in and for the world. I join three moments in the hermeneutical process--description, explanation, and interpretation--with the three moments in the traditional religious journey to spiritual and ethical maturity--the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. I present a conceptual framework that opens to hermeneutics, and a way to think about ongoing appropriation of a mode of capable being as growth in the human capacity to make and carry meaning. The threefold way, as it is interpreted in this study, is a heuristic model of the invariant elements of the tradition of contemplative silence. There is reflexivity to the structure, because a study of the practice is an exemplification of the practice, which produces the very practice that it is talking about.

In order to understand the intricate processes involved in second language teacher development, in the last decade studies in second language teacher education (SLTE) have addressed the need to explore pre-service teachers’ beliefs and emotions jointly as they occur in their contexts of teaching. SLTE researchers have referred to the importance of helping pre-service teachers verbalize their beliefs and try to understand and regulate their emotions as they can serve to explain what, how, and why pre-service teachers do what they do during their practicum experience. In addition, considering future teachers will be passing on their beliefs, values, and ways of behaving and feeling to future generations, SLTE should offer pre-service teachers with models of teaching that will help form ethical, reflective, and emotionally intelligent professionals capable of transforming society. The clamor for peace in today’s world and the globalized nature of the English language emphasize the need to embrace practices in SLTE intended to foster peace. In Argentina (the context of the present study) such practices carry particular relevance, as it is expected from the Ministry of Education that the teaching of foreign languages at primary and high school level serve as tools to promote societal peace. Given the importance of exploring pre-service teachers’ beliefs together with emotions, and on the importance of providing them with holistic approaches to teaching aimed at expanding peace, this study examines pre-service teachers’ beliefs and emotions about an innovative intervention involving the language of peace throughout their practicum semester in an Argentine setting. More specifically, through multiple case studies and narrative approaches, this study investigates four pre-service teachers’ beliefs and emotions regarding peace and the implementation of multidimensional peace language activities (MPLAs) before, during, and after their Practicum I course. In addition, it aims at comparing participants’ beliefs and emotions with their actions as reflected in their lesson plans and in-school teaching experience. Finally, it traces pre-service teachers’ transformation of beliefs and emotions throughout the course, and examines the ways in which reflection facilitates teacher development. Multiple sources were used for data collection, including semi-structured interviews, journal entries, field-notes from classroom observations, lesson plans, and narrative frames. The thematic and content analysis of the data revealed that in general participants believed the MPLA intervention in the practicum (a) gave participants meaningful English exposure, (b) changed their understanding of peace and enhanced their ability to teach peace in EFL classrooms, and (c) led to a more transformative practicum experience. By embodying multidimensional peace the participants were able to become conscious of their beliefs, emotions, and actions regarding the inclusion of MPLAs and understand their teaching practices better, thereby allowing themselves to develop as teachers and peacebuilders. However, it was noted that two pre-service teachers were not able to include as many MPLAs as they had desired, due to contextual factors and previous learning experiences, among other aspects. Limitations of the study are addressed, as well as research and pedagogical implications for the field of SLTE that relate to the need to incorporate holistic, experiential, and contemplative approaches intended to cultivate multidimensional peace.