Meditative inquiry for educators: Understanding the significance of spirituality, contextual and cultural awareness, and organic change

This conversational paper explores the concept and practice of meditative inquiry in the context of teacher education. Meditative inquiry is a holistic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living. Due to its strength and versatility, meditative inquiry has been taken up in a variety of educational settings (Kumar, 2022). By employing dialogical meditative inquiry (Kumar & Downey, 2018), which aims to delve deeper than a typical interview, the authors engage in a dialogue that probes into the significance of meditative inquiry for educators. Leaning into the authors’ experiences with secondary social studies and teacher education, this paper: 1) discusses philosophical and pedagogical aspects of mediative inquiry by examining the differences and similarities between critical reflection and meditative inquiry; 2) explores the significance of a spiritual perspective for social studies education; and 3) offer pointers on how teachers can adopt meditative inquiry in the context of classroom teaching.