Whole Person

The Whole Person: Embodying Teaching and Learning through Lectio and Visio Divina offers readers a rich collection of voices from diverse settings that illustrates the ways in which lectio divina as a contemplative practice can transform teaching and learning. Growing from ancient roots, lectio divina as a contemplative practice and part of contemplative pedagogy, aligns with many efforts in the 21st century to investigate how whole persons can be engaged in learning and how they can develop into their best human selves. Lectio divina, a four-step process of deep reading and viewing, is aligned with the tenets of holistic education; it is an evolving tapestry of embodied learning, creating spaces that empower teachers and students to be rooted in their own meaning making and to develop as whole persons. Lectio divina holds power to help people develop agency and voice in troubling times, all the while understanding themselves as human beings in a hyper-complex world. Using lectio divina in the classroom educates the whole person evoking the mind, spirit and body in a transformative learning experience.

With essays that resonate the energy and hope of education, this wonderful book reminds us of what is still possible in a world where we seem to have lost the depth of vision and the direction of a flourishing life. The essays celebrate the awakening of the whole person, the way teaching and learning can become a transforming practice. The focus is on lectio divina, an ancient practice for modern times, a way to enhance deep reading, excite social justice, make words matter, contemplate the beauty and truth of visual images. We all need to slow down and read this interesting book., This collection of essays represents rich, probing scholarship into the ancient practice of lectio divina, a comprehensive form of deep, contemplative reading. The first clue that this is a worthy addition to the emerging corpus of writings on the theory and application of lectio divina in education lies in the first part of the title: “The Whole Person.” Not only have the authors signaled a holistic, comprehensive approach to lectio divina, but they have also, and just as importantly, signaled what this is all about: the involvement of the whole person in this educational and spiritual endeavor and the development of the whole person as an educational and spiritual endeavor. This is a truly integral approach to incorporating lectio divina in the lives of our students. Moreover, the authors also include visio divina, contemplatively seeing and engaging with a work of art or anything else one might encounter through the eyes. These essays offer readers the scholarship of both expert theory and tested practice; they thus represent educational praxis in a very readable format. This is the perfect volume for educators who need practical guidance in integrating lectio or visio divina in their particular disciplines, considering the ‘text’ in its largest sense., Aligned with the principles of holistic education, The Whole Person: Embodying Teaching and Learning through Lectio and Visio Divina, provides readers with a time and space to consider transformative practices in contemporary educational curricula. Positioned as a pedagogical teaching of the whole person, the authors explore the multiple facets of embodied learning through universal and collective values of wisdom, compassion, loving kindness, joy, beauty and peacefulness. This is a must read for educators interested in attention, reflection, receptivity and transformation., This book provides pedagogical theories based on lectio divina that are both revolutionary and timeless. The holistic education movement should welcome this contemplative practice as a transformative experience, which results in teaching the whole person. This is a much-needed approach in today's K-12 schools and universities as well., This thoughtful book offers teachers contemplative learning processes that bring harmony and balance between students’ inner and outer worlds. Teachers will benefit as well as they explore new ways to integrate mind, body, and spirit into their teaching and their lives. The book’s contents are that rare combination of sound practice and profound illumination.

Jane E. Dalton, Ph.D. is an associate professor of Art Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students in K12 art education and studio art courses. Maureen P. Hall, Ph.D. is a professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students in the teacher preparation program.Catherine E. Hoyser, Ph. D. is professor of English and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches British cultural studies and gender studies.