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Current approaches to sustainability science and education focus on (assessing and addressing) the external world of ecosystems, wider socio-economic structures, technology and governance dynamics. A major shortcoming of such approaches is the neglect of inner dimensions and capacities (which constrains education for sustainability as an end), and a limited capacity to facilitate reflection on the cognitive and socio-emotional processes underpinning people’s learning, everyday life choices and decision-taking (which constrains education for sustainability as a means). More integral approaches and pedagogies are urgently needed. The purpose of this paper is to advance related knowledge.

This paper provides a reflexive case study of the development of an innovative course on “Sustainability and Inner Transformation” and associated interventions in the form of a practice lab and weekly councils.

The paper elaborates on the connections between sustainability and inner transformation in education, offers insights into the process of adapting contemplative interventions to sustainability education and concludes with some reflections on challenges, lessons learnt and future work needed to support more integral approaches. The findings show that inner dimensions and transformation can be a vehicle for critical, improved education for sustainability and how this can be achieved in practice.

It is only recently that the concept of the inner or personal (sphere of) transformation has received growing attention in sustainability science and education. Despite this interest, such new conceptualizations and heuristics have, to date, not been systematically connected to education for sustainability (neither as an end nor means). The paper presents a critical, reflexive case, which advances related knowledge. It sets a precedent, which other universities/training institutions could follow or learn from.

The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesise research evidence and propose a theoretical model suggesting that school-based yoga programs may be an effective way to promote social-emotional learning (SEL) and positive student outcomes.

This paper is a literature review focusing on: the current state of research on school-based yoga interventions; a preliminary theoretical model outlining the potential mechanisms and effects of school-based yoga; similarities, differences and possibilities for integrating school-based SEL, yoga and meditation; practical implications for researching and implementing yoga in schools.

Research suggests that providing yoga within the school curriculum may be an effective way to help students develop self-regulation, mind-body awareness and physical fitness, which may, in turn, foster additional SEL competencies and positive student outcomes such as improved behaviours, mental state, health and performance.

Given that research on school-based yoga is in its infancy, most existing studies are preliminary and are of low to moderate methodological quality. It will be important for future research to employ more rigorous study designs.

It is possible, pending additional high-quality research, that yoga could become a well-accepted component of school curricula. It will be particularly important for future research to examine possibilities around integrating school-based yoga and meditation with SEL programs at the individual, group and school-wide levels.

This paper is the first to describe a theoretical model specifically focused on school-based yoga interventions, as well as a discussion of the similarities and differences between school-based yoga, SEL and meditation.

Americans increasingly feel a sense of wonder at the universe; meditation and yoga are on the rise; and a field known as Contemplative Studies has emerged. These indicators, among others, suggest a groundswell of interest in contemplative practice and contemplative experience and raise intriguing questions for information and Information Studies. Against this backdrop, this paper asks: How might Information Studies contribute to these developments? What is the relationship between information and contemplation? What can be explored on this research frontier?

This conceptual paper is based upon a synthesis of recent writings from the field of Contemplative Studies as well as conceptual analysis of selected papers and themes in Information Studies. It draws from discussion that occurred at a Session for Interaction and Engagement at the 2018 iConference, entitled “Contemplating Information in the Pleasurable and the Profound” (Latham et al., 2018). The authors' creative thinking and personal contemplative practices also infuse and fortify the work.

Popular and academic contemplative movements are afoot, and Information Studies has an opportunity to participate or be left behind. The field of Contemplative Studies has established the foundational concepts that can serve as contextual material for information research into contemplation. Upon closer inspection, Information Studies has already broached the topic of contemplation at various points in its history, theory, institutional practices, and information behavior research. The conceptual points of departure for a research frontier are articulated.

Beyond data, information, and knowledge are deeper and more profound aims, such as wisdom, which is related to contemplation. This paper supplies a rationale, scholarly community, conceptual resources, historical precedents, and guiding questions for bridging information and contemplation.

We explored the potential of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education as a tool for enhancing mindfulness, body awareness, and perceptions of transformational leadership capacities among college students. The intervention consisted of thirty-two, 1.25-hour long group sessions taught by a certified Feldenkrais instructor twice weekly to 21 undergraduates in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre of a southwestern state university. Students also were required to keep a journal in which they reflected on how they felt prior to and after each class, and then recorded three additional entries during the week with observations about their experiences with thinking, sensing, feeling, and moving. Repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to assess changes in levels of mindfulness, body awareness, and perceived leadership capacities using standardized scales administered at study baseline, midterm, and end of term. Over the semester, students evidenced significantly greater mindfulness, body awareness, and a domain of transformational leadership measuring empathy, controlling for their level of stress at the time of final exams. To meet the needs of today’s college students, our results suggest that the Feldenkrais Method shows promise as an intervention to promote mindfulness, body awareness, and empathic leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to make the case for bringing compassion to students in educational settings, preschool through graduate school (PK-20).

First, the author defines what is meant by “compassion” and differentiates it from the related constructs. Next, the author discusses the importance of bringing compassion into education, thinking specifically about preschool, K-12 (elementary and middle school/junior high/high school), college students, and graduate students (e.g. law, medical, nurses, counselors and therapists-in-training). The author then reviews the scant empirical literature on compassion in education and makes recommendations for future research. In the final section, the author makes specific and practical recommendations for the classroom (e.g. how to teach and evaluate compassion in PK-20).

While there is a fair amount of research on compassion with college students, and specifically regarding compassion for oneself, as the author reviews in this paper, the field is wide open in terms of empirical research with other students and examining other forms of compassion.

This is not a formal review or meta-analysis.

This paper will be a useful resource for teachers and those interested in PK-20 education.

This paper highlights the problems and opportunities for bringing compassion into education settings.

To date, no review of compassion in PK-20 exists.

This paper aims to argue for the curricular inclusion of youth-generated young adult literature (YAL) alongside canonical literature and adult-generated YAL. The authors support this argument with the results of a qualitative analysis of youth memoir published in The Best Teen Writing. They strive to inform the debate between educators who value memoir as part of the secondary curriculum and critics who question the ability of youth to write purposeful, meaningful narrative. Additionally, the authors also present memoir as a unique genre for youth to document and process adolescence, and for youth to speak to issues which they deem important.

Informed theoretically by the Youth Lens, which considers how texts reinforce and/or disrupt various figurations of adolescence and youth, this study uses a multistage qualitative analysis of 83 youth memoir published in nine volumes of the Best Teen Writing from 2010 to 2018. First, the authors conducted a Labovian plot analysis to consider what themes and topics were present as well as what this sample could teach us about youth. Next, they analyzed the sample for genre hallmarks specific to creative nonfiction and memoir to consider the question of quality of youth memoir.

The findings suggest that there is no typical adolescence and that youth are balancing complex, intersectional identities, which they write about skillfully through memoir. These findings directly contrast with critics of youth memoir. Rather than clichéd, the memoirs the authors analyzed show youth as intercultural, capable of thoughtful reflection, capturing the transitory state of their youth (knowing they are not children anymore and lightly speculating about their future), skillfully integrating memoir genre hallmarks, and recording important events and perspectives with appeal to a broader readership. Furthermore, these findings position youth memoir as worthy of curricular inclusion alongside adult-generated YAL.

If the critics of youth memoir are the loudest voices, youth memoir will be, at best, relegated as examples for writers rather than seen as valid additions to curricular canon. This work gives due credit to the quality of published youth memoir to showcase their potential for curricular and canonical addition. This study builds on smaller-scale case studies and personal accounts to make an argument for curricular inclusion of youth voices and youth memoir in the secondary canon.

In 2020, the education system was preliminary halted by the COVID-19 crisis and went through radical improvisation, and online-based distance learning was the only plausible initiative to continue educational activities ensuring health guidelines properly. However, in reality, such desperate measure in case of a lower-middle-income developing nation lacking proper structural capabilities raised some issues and concerns for both pupils and mentors, and this study aims to explore the practice of online-based distance learning in private universities of Bangladesh and the challenges associated with it.

This exploratory research is qualitative in nature. A total number of 89 undergraduate level university students from different private universities were divided into two main clusters and interviewed in depth.

The findings of this paper revealed that common developing country syndromes like improper technological infrastructure development, limitation to devices or internet accessibility and financial hindrances can disrupt the harmony of the online learning experience. Also, the lack of tech literacy has created a huge tension and psychological inertia among both the teachers and the students.

The coronavirus pandemic event, with its dreadful influence, is creating immense mental pressures for students to cope well with the online learning system. Comprehending the underlying challenges affiliated with online-based distance learning and enabling faculties or respected personnel with training and development programs to handle impediments better way, this learning initiative can ensure the best outcomes.

The significance of this study lies in comprehending the feasibility of online-based education regarding lower-middle-income developing nation context and the realism of such learning process's acceptability considering its actual effectiveness.

This paper aims to critically focus on the UK's People & Planet's “green league table” in order to explore to what extent such league tables contribute to the transitional and transdisciplinary challenge of ecological sustainability for universities.

By taking a narrative and metaphorical perspective, the paper endeavours to understand how the green league table impacts on university greening, particularly around the apparent disengagement of academic and non‐academic actors in their bio‐cultural connection.

The paper conceptualizes the ecological sustainability challenge for universities by arguing that current sustainability managerial agendas and narratives, promoted by league tables are underpinned by what is conceptualized as the primacy of the “greenwashing glass cage” organisational metaphor. This highlights the self‐serving nature of sustainability approaches by managerial technocrats, consisting of carbon officers, sustainability managers predominantly based in estates departments. Drawing on the immediacy and “common‐sense”, doomsday imperative and legitimacy of the climate change agenda rather than embracing the wider inherent social, environmental and economic stakeholder conflicts and systemic bio‐cultural engagement challenges of sustainability, this top‐down, punitive, self‐satisfied approach around carbon targets and performance measures self‐perpetuates the myth that sustainable universities contribute effectively to the wider ecological challenge.

This paper not only offers a critique and warning against the blind adherence to league tables within university but also proposes a new grounded bio‐cultural and defamiliarizing narrative for universities. This narrative represents a more inclusive, non‐instrumental, contextual, experiential approach to ecological sustainability.

This article aims to present the findings from data gathered from 1,160 individuals who participated over the course of five years in a series of workshops, university courses and business dialogue sessions on the subject of personal and professional excellence.

Data were gathered from dialogue sessions and workshops with LA‐based workforce members, and classroom sessions in higher business education. The shift from general management teaching to focused self‐management dialogues was explained, emerged themes from five years of data gathering were examined and the themes and keywords were visualized and results noted.

The paper finds that in today's rapidly changing world of work, people are seeking ways to reinvent themselves in order to become more resilient. The findings listed in this paper are not exhaustive but should rather be used as a pragmatic tool for further research on the topic.

The population used for data was large, yet geographically limited, as it consisted of members of the Los Angeles workforce and business and management students in Los Angeles. The themes to be formed could have been named differently, as the clustering process was done by the author and not the audience. It is suggested that future research should concentrate on applying this study among other geographical and cultural audiences for a greater foundation in findings and for capturing additional, possibly deviating, perspectives.

Four main themes are presented as a result of the analysis of the collected data: right action, right thinking, right mindfulness, and right connection, along with 20 keywords. Personal and professional excellence is not a one‐time achievement, but a continuous effort in which multiple aspects need to be addressed at the same time. It could be seen as an ongoing paradigm renewal.

The paper tailors a model for personal and professional excellence in the twenty‐first century AD to a model that was developed in the twenty‐fifth century BC.

The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative, research-based approach for stimulating self-awareness, reflection and intentional leadership development and address a call from the academic and business community to educate and prepare graduate students for leadership in contemporary complex workplaces. Building on previous research findings and recommendations, the authors suggest that leadership potential is understood and facilitated through leadership assessment, increased self-awareness and faculty coach-supported reflection and development planning by MBA students. Based on three key constructs in leadership development, a conceptual model depicts the approach to developing potential leaders at this juncture in their professional development.

New MBA students completed a leadership potential assessment instrument designed to target areas for focused leadership development throughout their MBA program and beyond. The assessment process is followed by faculty coach-supported reflection and development planning as an assignment during the students’ MBA orientation course. To explore the impact of this innovative approach to accelerating the development of leadership potential, reflection papers from students who completed the process were analyzed. Data analysis consisted of content coding with an inter-rater reliability of 0.99 to classify the responses into four key categories. Survey data were also collected from 504 MBA students who attended an on-campus orientation course to measure students’ increasing understanding and awareness of the value of the leadership development opportunity.

Quantitative and qualitative results provide initial support for this approach to developing leadership potential. Results suggest that the integrative model stimulates a process of awareness, reflection and intentional development, and supports the identification and pursuit of goal-directed learning opportunities throughout students’ MBA program.

Graduate business school students are at a leadership inflection point in their trajectory as leaders. Business colleges play a key role in closing the leadership gap during the development cycle of the students’ MBA program. The innovative approach in this paper, which facilitates self-awareness, reflection and intentional leadership development, offers a model for business colleges exploring how to foster these necessary leadership insights and capabilities.