2nd Edition
Sentipensante (Sensing / Thinking) Pedagogy Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice, and Liberation
“Challenging, inspiring, beautifully written, and unusual, this book calls readers to find ways to link mind and heart -- thinking and feeling -- to transform teaching and learning in higher education. Laura Rendón has illustrated how one can unite one's deep beliefs, values, and feelings, with one's keen analytical and intellectual abilities...an important, thought-provoking, and unique addition to the literature on teaching, learning, and the academic life.”—The Review of Higher Education on the first edition
This new and expanded edition of the acclaimed and successful book by nationally-recognized student advocate, activist scholar and contemplative educator, Laura I. Rendón, will surely find new audiences who are eager to create teaching and learning environments where the learner is fully present and engaged using the full capacities of mind, body and senses; and where the learning experience can be simultaneously subjective and objective, a view which challenges the privileged notion that only reason and objective modes of learning are valid.
While the pedagogy can be employed with all students, Rendón provides support for faculty who work with low-income, first-generation, and racially-minoritized learners. Sentipensante Pedagogy benefits all students through holistically meeting their emotional needs and quest for knowledge, and simultaneously fostering their civic sense, critical consciousness, and community engagement. Rendón offers an inspirational and contemplative pedagogy that leverages student assets and addresses the rhythmic balance and interconnection between intellectual, social, emotional, and inner-life skill development. The book blends academic discussions about pedagogy and diverse world views as it inspires a new generation of faculty and staff to develop blueprints for democratic, decolonial teaching and learning environments.The sensing / thinking approach has been successfully adopted and adapted in courses and seminars across many academic disciplines, including STEM, in two- and four-year colleges institutions. Several colleges and universities have created centers around contemplative studies and pedagogy with applications extending to the K-12 education arena. As with adopting any new pedagogical approach, planning and thought needs to be given on how to integrate its reflective and creative elements with course content.
This book offers inspiration and guidance for faculty who want to holistically address the needs, aspirations, and individual development of their students.
Foreword to the Second Edition
Norma Cantú
Foreword to the First Edition
Mark Nepo
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Second Edition
1. Prelude to a New Pedagogical Dream Field
2. Learning from Another’s Story
3. Refashioning the Dream. the Experience of Creating an Integrative, Consonant Pedagogy
4. Refashioning the Dream. the Experience of Employing an Integrative, Consonant Pedagogy Rooted in Social Justice
5. The Courage to Chart a Different Path
6. Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy
7. Sustaining the Soul that Embraces a Different Truth
8. When Sentipensante Pedagogy Meets the Theory and Praxis of Conocimiento
Appendix A. The Story of My Inquiry
Appendix B. Podcasts Featuring Laura I. Rendón
Appendix C. Video Descriptions and Links
References
Permissions
Index
Biography
Laura I. Rendón is Professor Emerita at the University of Texas-San Antonio. She is also an educational consultant and featured speaker at over 100 higher education institutions and conferences throughout the nation. Her presentations focus on topics such as student success, Latinx STEM students, and sensing/thinking deep learning experiences, as well as self-care and healing. Laura is a nationally-recognized student advocate, activist scholar and contemplative educator. She grew up in a low-income, single-parent household along the U.S. Mexico Border in Laredo, Texas where she learned to speak English in the first grade. Rendón is a passionate advocate for low-income, first-generation students who she feels have hopes and dreams but often do not know how to realize them especially without resources. She has held faculty and administrative appointments at a wide range of universities including the University of South Carolina, North Carolina State University, Arizona State University, California State University-Long Beach, and Iowa State University and the University of Texas-San Antonio.
"Laura Rendon’s Sentipensante 2e is a powerful call to action for educators everywhere. Drawing on such complex notions as nondualism, interconnectedness, self-reflection and agency, she provides concrete tools for integrating body and mind and provides hope for realizing interdependence at a time of widening division. Rendon puts 'wholeness, justice and equity' at the center of education. Especially excellent is the addition of a chapter devoted to the bridging of Rendon's sentipensante with Gloria Anzaldua’s praxis of conocimiento, a new addition to the field of contemplatives studies.."
Erin McCarthy, Professor Emerita, Research Fellow, Mind and Life Institute
"Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldua gave us the gift of theories to put our combined pain into action and to challenge an unjust society—especially in the realm of education: ‘Necesitamos teoriìas that will rewrite history using race, class, gender and ethnicity as categories of analysis, theories that cross borders, that blur boundaries’ In an era of extreme racism, nativism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia, Laura Rendoìn reiterates Anzalduìa’s call for theories to align with the experiences of marginalized individuals who navigate and resist intersectional systems of oppression. Rendoìn masterfully pens an interdisciplinary framework that provides a road map for fostering institutional opportunities and teaching the whole person toward liberatory social justice. Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy is a tour de force that helps define the heart and soul of tomorrow’s America—work that matters, que vale la pena!"
Gilberto Q. Conchas, The Wayne K. & Anita Woolfolk Hoy Endowed Chair of Education, The Pennsylvania State University
"Humanity, guidance, and courage is what we receive when we read Sentipensante Pedagogy. This beautiful and inspiring book extends a hand and invites us to walk together on a path of self-awareness, to embrace a new form of pedagogy that is contemplative and holistic. Changing beliefs and breaking away from tradition needs courage, and Laura Rendón has come to guide us on this journey of hope towards a caring and compassionate society."
Rosa Devés, President, Universidad de Chile
"I celebrate this new edition of Sentipensante, the groundbreaking classic that locates education in our embodied experience, cultural heritages, healing, and innate wisdom. More than ever, Laura Rendón has envisioned the way forward for a decolonized contemplative learning that restores genuine faith in what makes us most human—our intelligent hearts. She encourages us to risk joining our own hearts and minds as well as those of our students in culturally sensitive embodied learning. This is done through deeply listening and honoring inner wholeness. She is confident that while this may be challenging, the rewards are generous for both teacher and students and for our beleaguered institutions. This book is a spark of inspiration and promise in a dark and difficult time."
Judith Simmer-Brown, Naropa University, author of Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies (SUNY 2010)
"We live in a world of fragmented identities anchored in fragmented communities. The major challenge of our time is guiding students to go beyond binaries and see lives as situated, embodied, and interconnected. Sentipensante, Laura Rendón’s illuminating guide, empowers us to achieve this goal. With compassion, Laura Rendón helps us realize our own disembodied pedagogical practices, which perpetuate disembodied learning. Laura’s timely prophetic book makes us rethink and reconnect to our authentic pedagogical vision to transform the lives of our students and us. A must-read for all teachers."
Ramaswami Mahalingam, Barger Leadership Institute Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
