Contemplative pedagogy and practices spotlight: Megan Fitzgibbons

Despite the time constraints of her workshops on academic information research, Megan Fitzgibbons, Instructional Services Coordinator at Concordia University Library, has successfully enhanced her students’ learning experience by integrating simple contemplative practices. These exercises encourage students to focus on the emotional and embodied aspects of the research process, fostering a holistic perspective and working to alleviate the anxieties and self-doubts experienced by her students.

Context 

Megan leads workshops for students at the Concordia Library and is also invited as a guest lecturer in credited courses. Megan incorporates mindfulness and contemplative practices into her workshops, specifically in a workshop called "Advanced Information Search Strategies" for graduate students.

What motivated you to use contemplative and mindful practices in your teaching? 

Motivated by a desire to provide students with tools to ease the stress that is inherent in the research process, Megan has incorporated simple contemplative and mindful practices into her workshops. While these sessions help to familiarize students with library services and other resources for academic research, they also present a substantial amount of information in a short period of time, often leading to information overload. Acknowledging this challenge and recognizing that students often express self-doubt, Megan aims to alleviate these stresses by offering mindfulness strategies to re-center students and invite holistic perspectives during their research process.

Practices

Megan combines mindfulness and reflection exercises to enhance students' research skills and address the emotional and physical aspects involved in the research process, which are often overlooked when teaching research skills. Megan intentionally includes brief moments of silence into her workshops as to create space for centering and quiet reflection. She encourages students to spend 5-10 minutes in silence to draw or write down their thoughts in relation to their research. This exercise enables reflection on the challenges and barriers they may be facing, serving as a guide for the rest of the workshop. Illustrating their research process helps students internalize it and informs them about the next steps to take, addressing the overwhelming feelings caused by information overload. Towards the end of the workshops, Megan has students identify their emotions on a “Wheel of Emotions,” prompting them to recognize their emotional state in relation to their research process. These simple contemplative practices aim to teach students to acknowledge how worry and stress are embodied. Recognizing that research is typically cognitive and action-oriented, Megan emphasizes the importance of listening to our bodies to give us cues that signal that we are stressed, helping students to re-center and focus on one task at a time.

Benefits 

Incorporating contemplative and mindful practices into her workshops has personally benefited Megan, enabling her to view her students holistically in the research process. By attending to the emotional and embodied dimensions of research, Megan provides her students with simple practices that can help to quiet feelings of anxiety and self-doubt and address information overload. By merging cognitive and emotional aspects, these practices alleviate the burdens students feel during research, helping them position themselves as whole individuals and allowing them to have a more comprehensive understanding of the research process. Despite the brief duration of Megan’s workshops, student feedback suggests that they value these moments of reflection and re-centering. The practices she employs equip students with tools that reduce and deconstruct overwhelming feelings associated with academic research.

Challenges and limitations 

The time constraints in Megan’s workshops pose a challenge as she is unable to establish ongoing rapport with her students. Furthermore, given that she conducts workshops through library services rather than teaching full semester courses, Megan faces the challenge of being unable to gather assignments and grades. This limitation hinders her ability to assess the effectiveness of the practices throughout the semester. Integrating practices such as the Wheel of Emotions also proves challenging as Megan strives to make them seamlessly complement the workshops she conducts without feeling like she is adding an additional task amid the demands of the research process.

Advice on implementing these practices in your teaching 

Megan encourages instructors who are concerned about time limitations in integrating contemplative practices into course content to recognize the valuable benefits of these exercises. Engaging students in reflective writing and other mindful techniques can deepen their learning experience, complementing the content that needs to be covered. Megan acknowledges her newness to contemplative practices and found it useful to take advantage of available resources, such as workshops provided by the Centre for Teaching and Learning, to gain familiarity with them if considering incorporating them into your teaching. She emphasizes that one doesn’t need to be an expert but should focus on embracing simple practices. Megan also suggests that instructors invite feedback from their students to identify which practices resonate most with them.

Spotlighting Contemplative Practices at Concordia  

This is part of a blog series celebrating Concordia’s teaching excellence and pedagogical innovation. This series highlights how educators from various disciplines are integrating contemplative pedagogy and practices into their courses to enhance student learning, foster compassionate classroom environments, and support the well-being of both students and educators. 

 By intentionally using the learner-centered approaches that characterize contemplative pedagogy, these educators encourage students to cultivate inner stillness, focused attention, self-reflection and self-acceptance while nurturing peer connections and cultivating lifelong skills that are beneficial within and beyond the classroom. 

 Curious to learn more? Join us at the Contemplative Pedagogy Faculty Interest Group to connect with colleagues from across disciplines, explore the work of contemplative pedagogy scholars, and re-energize your relationship to teaching and learning.