Cultivating a Caring and Benevolent Environment in Education

Offered By

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Not Available
45.50 Educational Hours
Intermediate
Language :
English
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About this Course

The course offers an innovative, ground-breaking approach to cultivating a caring, benevolent environment in your personal and professional life and in educational settings. You’ll acquire simple, practical tools for creating such an environment, based on current, up-to-date research. No prior knowledge is required – just curiosity and the will to be surprised.

The course was developed by Prof. Ofra Mayseless from the University of Haifa, Israel, along with many others. We invite you to go on a journey in the realm of caring and benevolence. Enter a magical world of wonder and play, where you will learn mostly through experience.

The course includes theoretical models and practical tools for advancing the personal development of teaching staff and students and provides participants with tools for changing the social-emotional climate of educational institutions by relying on "contemplative education". Contemplative education promotes deep listening to the self and to others, connecting with one’s deep meaning of life and developing a sense of understanding and caring towards yourself and others around you. Within the realm of caring, participants will enter eight different gateways. These are gateways through which one can readily summon a deep and meaningful experience of caring and benevolence. * The course provides practical tools that do not necessarily require additional resources. *

**By relying on extant theory, research and practice the main aim of the course is to promote the possibility of applying "contemplative education" in the educational practice and personal lives of its participants and to create a caring and benevolent culture. **

Instructors

Ofra Mayseless
Ofra Mayseless

Professor of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa. She served as faculty dean from 2006 to 2012, Head of Pedagogical Affairs at the Ministry of Education (2012-2013). A certified clinical psychologist. Head of the multi-university Center for the Study of Human Spirit (under development).

Her area of expertise is the relationship between parents and children, with a focus on the Israeli context of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. She has also studied the motivational system of caring as manifested in various contexts and published a book on this topic – The Caring Motivation. In recent years, she has focused on exploring and studying the spiritual dimension of human development and has co-organized academic conferences on spirituality such as the Israeli Conference on Contemporary Spiritualities, Contemplative Pedagogy, Gates to Spirituality in Psychotherapy and Counselling.

Oren Ergas (1971-2022)
Oren Ergas (1971-2022)

Senior lecturer at Beit Berl College. His studies and writings provide the groundwork for understanding mindfulness and other contemplative practices in education and in training teachers from philosophical and psychological points of view. The courses he teaches combine the practical use of mindfulness and yoga with theoretical brain research and the psychology and the philosophy of consciousness, and education theory. He was a member of an international team of 25 researchers established by UNESCO’s research institute in 2019 tasked with drafting an educational vision document that would provide educational policy recommendations to the 195 member states of the organization.

To read his publications in Hebrew and in English, click here:

https://beitberl.academia.edu/OrenErgas

Ricardo Tarrasch
Ricardo Tarrasch

A faculty member of the School of Education and the School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. After practicing meditation and yoga for over 30 years, Dr. Tarrasch began to include mindfulness in his teaching and study its effects. His research fields include the neurological, cognitive, and emotional effects of mindfulness training among children and adults.

He has developed a mindfulness program for children and has even studied the effects of practicing mindfulness among adults with learning disabilities and/or attentiona problems. He is part of the team that implemented the Mind and Life Institute’s Call to Care program in Israel.

Miki (Michael) Motola
Miki (Michael) Motola

The Dean of Students at Oranim College since 2016, a lecturer and faculty member. Head of Master program For Inclusive Education from 2015 to 2016. His studies deal with empathy in education, contemplative pedagogy, racism in education, multicultural skills, and conflicts between groups within Israeli society.

Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana

A senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, in the Department of Counseling and Human Development, as well as the Department of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education.

As a neuroscientist, her research includes the effects of contemplative mental training on consciousness, cognition and self-reference, and their possible applications to education.

Moti Benita
Moti Benita

A researcher of motivation and emotional adjustment. Faculty member and lecturer at the Department of Education in Ben-Gurion University. Interested in the processes with which people (children, parents, and teachers) internalize goals and values and make them their own, and the relation between the internalization process and the process of emotional adjustment. He received a grant from the Israel Science Foundation to conduct a study to examine the processes of value internalization in the classroom. A clinical psychologist, treating adolescents and adults in a private clinic.

Sofi Barzilay
Sofi Barzilay

A Doctor of Education, training teachers in development and growth with the use of spiritual tools. Lectures in colleges and schools, facilitates workshops on mindfulness and positive psychology for personal and professional development. She has dedicated her life to the active contemplation of herself and of others.

An advocate of mindfulness in education as an expression of innovative pedagogies in education, which includes developing and integrating the subject in the formal advanced study outline, in which teachers, students and principals learn how to meditate, listen to themselves and to others and open up their hearts. An associate director of the Center for Contemplative Pedagogy Oranim College and a member of Center for the Study of Human Spirit at Haifa University.

Amir Freimann
Amir Freimann

Explores spirituality from within and without, co-editor of two books about the connection between education and philosophical-spiritual inquiry, author of Spiritual Transmission: Paradoxes and Dilemmas on the Spiritual Path. A doctoral student at the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa, currently writing a PhD dissertation on Living Transcendence: a phenomenological study of spiritual exemplars.

Arie Kizel
Arie Kizel

Head of the Development of Educational Systems Program in the Department of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education of Haifa University.

Dr. Arie Kizel is president of the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC). His research is in the philosophy of education, philosophy with (and for) children, curriculum and textbooks, and the study of social group narrative. He was head of the German-Israeli Textbook Commission (2010 – 2015). He has published three books and dozens of

Pninit Russo-Netzer
Pninit Russo-Netzer

A researcher and lecturer of positive psychology, existential psychology, logotherapy and the meaning in life, spirituality and spiritual development, mental welfare, and processes of positive change and growth in cycles of life, academic institutions, and other organizations. A logo therapist, head of the Logotherapy Training Program at Tel Aviv University and Head of the Compass Institute for the Study and Application of Meaning.

Dr. Russo-Netzer is an academic counselor, develops intervention and training programs in academia and in various public and private organization, and is a co-editor of the journals Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology and Clinical perspectives on meaning: Positive and Existential Psychotherapy published by Springer NY.

Galit Hanien
Galit Hanien

MA in Human Resources, Mentor and Trainer. Co-Founder of the International Center for Council Insight (ICCI), for the distribution of the Way of Council in Israel and around the world. Manager, Developer and Facilitator of Way of Council training programs at Snapchat Inc. Member of the Human Spirit Research and Nurture Center.

Shay Hanien
Shay Hanien

MBA in Business Administration and Economics. Lecturer, Consultant and Directors’ Mentor. Co-Founder of the International Center for Council Insight (ICCI), for the distribution of the Way of Council in Israel and around the world. Expert at facilitating Council and at working with teaching teams and students. Member of the Human Spirit Research and Nurture Center.

Sharon Fayerberger
Sharon Fayerberger

MEd in foreign language instruction. Lecturer and Teacher Trainer at Oranim Academic college, English teacher at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, Mindfulness and dance teacher for adolescents and adults.

Yafit Auerbach
Yafit Auerbach

BA in Education and MA in Group Facilitation. Doctoral student in the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa.

A facilitator of self-compassion groups and advanced study classes for teachers on self-compassion and gratitude. A member of the Center for the Study of Human Spirit at Haifa University.