Contemplative pedagogy positions embodied experience as a legitimate form of expertise within Higher Education. While increasingly visible in contemporary learning environments, it remains a radical departure from the traditional ‘banking’ model of education, where knowledge is treated as a possession that is deposited into passive learners. In contrast, contemplative approaches invite presence, reflexivity and first-person voice, shifting education from transmission to participation, recognising it as lived, relational and embodied.

This research situates contemplative pedagogy within a broader decolonial movement in knowledge production, citing other transdisciplinary methods that are striving for similar outcomes, such as autoethnography in cultural studies or ladders of participation in health & social sciences. Each of these approaches creates the conditions for contemplative practice: spaces in which participants can bring themselves into dialogue, recognise the value of their own experiences, and engage with greater equity.
However, these pedagogical and research practices are frequently enacted within institutions shaped by hierarchical power structures, neoliberal performance cultures and, in many cases, colonial histories. Within such contexts, invitations to ‘bring your whole self’, speak in the first person, or share lived experience can risk becoming unsafe. Without careful structural attention, contemplative participation may lead to hypervisibility, marginalisation or retraumatisation, particularly for learners from historically excluded groups.

This workshop argues that psychological safety should be considered as the enabling infrastructure of contemplative pedagogy. Rather than an add-on, psychological safety is a structural condition that determines whether embodied participation is genuinely equitable. The paper proposes three interrelated elements through which psychological safety can be intentionally cultivated within learning environments, whether at an institutional scale or within localised departments: tension, curiosity and ritual.
First, tension considers how discomfort, disagreement and power are navigated. Second, curiosity examines whether questioning, uncertainty and not-knowing are legitimised rather than judged, and the third element considers ritual, and how the repeated practices, norms and structures that signal safety over time and provide consistent scaffolding.

Through exploring these three dimensions, this research proposes a set of critical questions educators and institutions can take away to ensure that contemplative pedagogy does not become performative vulnerability or an impossible ask. By leaning into the difficult work of designing for psychological safety, Higher Education can move closer to learning environments in which the first-person voice is protected and where embodied expertise contributes to genuinely transformative and decolonial knowledge exchange.

Amberlee from Reconcile Journal

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