Creating care-full communities after COVID : supporting care as a strategy for wellbeing in teacher education
- Authors: McDonough, Sharon , Lemon, Narelle
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Reconstructing Care in Teacher Education after COVID-19: Caring Enough to Change Chapter 16 p. 179-188
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- Description: This chapter situates teachers as providers and supporters of care during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, positing that teachers too require care to support their wellbeing and their work. Drawing on survey data collected from teachers in Australia during a period of remote learning, the authors identify the kinds of care that are both enacted and required during this time. The authors then interrogate notions of care and consider these in light of both individual and systemic actions and ways of being. They explore the ways that care is a multifaceted concept that involves care of self, care of others, and care for community, arguing that creating caring communities requires systemic and communal engagement versus an individual orientation and responsibility towards care. They close by presenting care as a strategy for individual and communal wellbeing in teacher education. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Melanie Shoffner and Angela W. Webb; individual chapters, the contributors.
Making mindful moments : made artefacts as a form of data visualisation to monitor and respond to self-care and wellbeing
- Authors: McDonough, Sharon , Lemon, Narelle
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education: Making and Movement as Mindful Moments of Self-care Chapter 7 p. 105-118
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- Description: As academics working in higher education, we find that the embodied practice of making returns us from our heads to our hands, and in this chapter, we provide an insight into the ways that knitting is a form of self-care that fosters and supports our wellbeing. We draw on narratives to illuminate how we use knitting as a form of data visualisation that enables us to monitor our working practices and to adapt and respond to our self-care and wellbeing needs. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Narelle Lemon; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.
Stepping into a shared vulnerability
- Authors: McDonough, Sharon , Lemon, Narelle
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Creating a place for self-care and wellbeing in higher education : finding meaning across academia Chapter 14 p. 187-196
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- Description: Those working in higher education face challenging and complex work environments, with academic staff subject to multiple accountability demands. In this chapter we engage in dialogic writing to examine ways to create and promote self-care and wellbeing in the space of higher education. We begin with a brief narrative about our own collaborative relationship before exploring strategies and provocations for ways to create authentic spaces for wellbeing. In doing so, we critique the concept of self-care and wellbeing as a performative tool that functions to reinforce individual responsibility and contend that creating space for self-care and wellbeing is a shared, collective and systemic responsibility that invites us to stand in a shared vulnerability.
Mindfully living and working in the academy : Continuing the conversation
- Authors: Lemon, Narelle , McDonough, Sharon
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Mindfulness in the academy : Practices and perspectives from scholars Chapter 17 p. 259-283
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- Description: As scholars and administrators in higher education institutions begin to implement mindfulness practices and perspectives, it is worth examining what can be learned through examining their diverse understandings and perspectives. In identifying the formal and informal mindful practices used by the contributing authors of this volume, we argue that they provide others with a basis for reflection on their own practices and perspectives. In this chapter, we present seven approaches to mindfulness as enacted by the chapter authors. We present an overview of these key strategies and approaches and suggest the possibility of such approaches for individual and collective change.
Mindfulness in the academy : An examination of mindfulness perspectives
- Authors: Lemon, Narelle , McDonough, Sharon
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Mindfulness in the academy : Practices and perspectives from scholars Chapter 1 p. 1-21
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- Description: In a complex and demanding higher education, environment wellness for scholars is an ethical imperative and is an essential component of self-care, required to prevent burnout, distress, and impairment. As we navigate the contemporary higher education environment, it is important to look at ways of working that bring to the forefront self-care and mindfulness. In this chapter, we explore how scholars understand and apply the concept of mindfulness in higher education contexts. We examine ways academics implement mindfulness practices that build the capacity to accept, tolerate and transform mind and body states without reacting so intensively to them by drawing on concepts such as compassion, kindness, gratitude, curiosity, self-awareness and non-judgmental stances. We explore how mindful ways of researching, writing, learning and teaching, leading and engaging with others leads us to be self-aware and engaged in the present. We introduce the notion of Dramaturgical Theory of Social Interaction as a framework for examining mindful practices in academia. This chapter presents a thematic analysis of the work of the authors presented in this volume, situating this in a broader discussion of mindfulness, and we raise questions for further consideration.