GoodWork Paper 6: Contemplation and Implications for GoodWork in Teaching (PDF)

Author(s): Laurinda Morway, Jeff Solomon, Mimi Michaelson, and Howard Gardner

Editor(s): Jeff Solomon, Series Editor

Media: PDF

Description: Teaching, like many other professions, has its own rewards. These include the excitement of engaging with growing minds, the chance to have an impact on young lives, and opportunities for creativity and inspiration. But, like most professions in this fast-paced, rapidly changing world, the world of education has its own set of pressures and challenges, including time constraints and competing demands from different constituencies. Given these challenges, when do teachers and administrators have the chance to gain perspective, “recharge their batteries,” and generate new ideas and creative solutions? What is to prevent burn-out and flight of talented people to other professions with greater material or personal rewards? Good Work and the Contemplative Mind is part of the larger study of how successful professionals in several fields—including journalism, genetics, higher education, and others—carry out high quality, creative work, despite pressures and challenges. This paper examines the role that contemplative and reflective practices play in enabling teachers to achieve their goals drawing on comparisons, where useful, with an earlier study of journalists.