Holistic Education Review

Professor Thakur S Powdyel is an educator by choice, conviction and passion. As the country’s first democratically elected Minister of Education, he moved Bhutan towards fulfilling the MDGs and the country’s constitutional mandate for education. His major interests include institutional integrity, national self-respect, moral literacy and gross national happiness. Powdyel’s vision of holistic education as expressed in My Green School has been translated into several languages around the world. His other books include As I Am, So Is My Nation, Right of Vision & Occasional Views, Gyal-Khab: Reflections on State, Citizen, and Citizenship Education, and Light of My Life (principal author).

Thakur S Powdyel is a recipient of the International Gusi Peace Prize, Global Education Award, and Distinguished Service Award for his pioneering work in Education as well as the Coronation Gold Medal 2008 and the Institutional Award: The Honour of Druk Thuksey 2012. Thakur S Powdyel invested his public office with a rare and chastening quality of integrity, service and selflessness in the evolving Bhutanese democratic landscape in honour of his country and fellow-citizens, born of his deeply-held beliefs and convictions. Professor Powdyel has often been described as the most widely foot-travelled education minister in the world.

John P. (Jack) Miller, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto and Head of OISE’s Centre for Teacher Development. He has also been Visiting Professor at Shinwa Women’s University in Kobe, Japan, and at Rietsumeiken University in Kyoto, Japan. Professor Miller teaches courses in holistic education and spirituality in education. He has also led workshops and given keynote addresses on those topics at conferences around the world.  Notable among his many books, chapters, and journal articles are Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education: Breaking New Ground (2005), Education and the Soul: Toward a Spiritual Curriculum (2000), The Contemplative Practitioner (1994), Holistic Learning: The Teacher’s Guide to Integrated Studies (1990), The Holistic Curriculum (1988), The Compassionate Teacher (1981), and Humanizing the Classroom (1976). His writing has been translated into seven languages. 

Ron Miller, PhD has been an educational scholar and activist, teacher, publisher and bookseller, community leader and philanthropist. He founded the original Holistic Education Review in 1988 and helped gather an international movement for this emerging educational paradigm. Originally trained as a Montessori educator, he received his Ph.D. from Boston University in American Studies, focusing on the cultural and historical foundations of education. His research led to several books, including What Are Schools For? Holistic Education in American Culture (1992), Free Schools, Free People: Education and Democracy After the 1960s (2002), and essay collections including Caring for New Life (2000), Creating Learning Communities (2000), and The Self-Organizing Revolution (2008), among others.

Ron taught in the education program at Goddard College and built the Bellwether School in Williston, Vermont, which has been a model holistic school for more than twenty-five years. He retired from his educational activism around 2010 and settled in the small Vermont town of Woodstock, where he has served on nonprofit boards and run an adult learning program, teaching courses on American, Canadian and local history and current events. 

Prapapat Niyom is the president of Arsom Silp Institute of the Arts and founder of the Roong Aroon School in Bangkok, Thailand. In the past, as a former architect, she taught at the Architecture University in Bangkok and served as a Deputy Governor of Bangkok. She holds an honorary doctorate in education and has served as a member of the National Reform Council on Education and advisor to the Minister of Education. For the last 20 years, she has created templates of holistic education, reflection-based practices, contemplative arts and value-oriented curriculum.

Philip Snow Gang, Ph.D. is Founder and Academic Dean of The Institute for Educational Studies (TIES) and its graduate programs in Integrative Learning and Montessori Integrative Learning, affiliated with Union Institute and University He is a pioneer in the field of integrative, systemic and transformative approaches to education. He is the author of Rethinking Education and co-author of Conscious Education: The Bridge to Freedom, and developer of the mobile mind-mapping simulation, Our Planet, Our Home. His newest book (2021) is “Educating for Right-Action and Love: Extending and Expanding the Montessori Vision,”. From 1987 through 1991 he was a citizen diplomat, joining a small group of American educators who visited the Soviet Union. In 1990 he helped co-found and was named Executive Director for the Global Alliance for Transforming Education, a worldwide effort to define and promote the principles of holistic education. From 1992-1996 Gang was on the faculty of California Institute of Integral Studies as a professor-mentor to students engaged in doctoral studies in the School of Transformative Learning, initiating the field of online education that became the basis for TIES programs. His driving question is What contexts and processes in education might liberate teachers and learners so that they become catalysts for the new human – one whose integral relationship with Gaia is bound by right-action and love? 

Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa) aka Dr. Don Trent Jacobs is faculty in the School of Leadership Studies at Fielding Graduate University. Formerly Dean of Education at Oglala Lakota College and tenured Associate Professor at Northern Arizona University. With doctorates in health psychology and in Curriculum and Instruction (with a cognate in Indigenous Worldview) he has authored 21 books and numerous other publications relating to wellness, critical theory, education and Indigenous worldview. His publications have been praised by a number of notable thinkers, including John Pilger, Greg Cajete, Noam Chomsky, Thom Hartman, Henry Giroux, Sam Keen, Bruce Lipton, Dan Millman, Vine Deloris, Jr. and many others.

AERO elected him as one of 27 visionaries for their text, Turning Points, and he is recipient of a number of recognitions for his activism, including the Martin-Springer Institute’s Moral Courage Award.

He is currently involved in helping create the first No Take Zone Marine Park on the Costalegre in Mexico. Four Arrow was first alternate for the 1996 Olympic Equestrian Endurance Team and placed 4th in the World Championship Old Time Piano Contest. He enjoys a number of ocean sports at his homes in Jalisco, Mexico and British Columbia, Canada with his photographer wife. He is a popular and thought-provoking keynoter and has presented on various topics in Australia, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, South Korea, and Japan and is on the Fulbright list of International Scholars.

Marni Binder, EdD is an Associate Professor and currently the Associate Director for Academic Leadership in the School of Early Childhood Studies, Faculty of Community Services at Ryerson University. Prior to coming to Ryerson in 2007, she worked in the preservice and graduate programs at the Faculty of Education, York University. Marni also worked extensively with primary-aged children, as well as with junior-aged children as an educator in Regent Park, a downtown area in Toronto for 23 years. Past research with children involved storytelling, the visual arts, spirituality and multimodalities. Her artistic practice, research and teaching are rooted in arts-based education and a holistic philosophy, including issues of equity, diversity and social justice. She brings creativity and mindfulness practices to the scholarship of teaching and learning in her mentorship of faculty and students. She is the recipient of the Provost’s Innovative Teaching Award at Ryerson for 2016-2017 and the Sue Williams Excellence in Teaching Award for her Faculty in 2013.

Marni has been involved in several podcasts/webinars about holistic education and art education. As well as numerous published articles and chapters, she was a co-editor for The International Handbook of Holistic Education, and for Drawing as Language: Celebrating the Work of Bob Steele.

https://www.ryerson.ca/early-childhood-studies/about/people/faculty/marni-binder/

Yoshiharu Nakagawa, PhD., is a professor of education at Doshisha University, in Kyoto, Japan. His current interests include holistic education, spirituality, transpersonal psychology, Eastern philosophy, Indian philosophy, and contemplation. He teaches holistic education and contemplative education at his school, and is active in the Japanese Society for Holistic Education & Care, and the Japanese Association of Transpersonal Psychology & Psychiatry. He is also one of the founding members of the Asia-Pacific Network of Holistic Education.

He is the author of Education for Awakening: An Eastern Approach to Holistic Education (2000) and the co-editor of Nurturing Our Wholeness: Perspectives on Spirituality in Education (2002), in addition to contributing articles  to many journals and anthologies.

Andrea Purcell, PhD: I have always loved learning, both in and out of school. After a fairly traditional and successful K-12 experience, my eyes were opened to students and communities who were underserved in schools as an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz. I developed an interest in culturally relevant and compatible education that led me to graduate programs at the University of Hawaii. I met incredible local educators working to empower Native Hawaiian and other youth in Hawaii through programs addressing current community challenges. I saw the impact of getting kids outside of the school walls on their engagement and outcomes.

As a classroom teacher, I worked to bring what I had learned into my own practice. During those teaching years, I was introduced to Big Picture Learning. The simple foundations of structuring learning opportunities around Relationships, Relevance, and Rigor resonated deeply and have informed the work I have done as a teacher, principal, and consultant for the past 20 years. I believe in the power of education to battle the inequities pervasive in our communities.

I am fascinated by how the mind works, and I travel with my husband and 2 kids whenever possible to challenge my lenses and frames of reference. If there happens to be high quality, ethically sourced dark chocolate along the road, the journey is that much more enjoyable!

Dr. Ashwani Kumar is an Associate Professor of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University. His teaching and research focus upon meditative inquiry, which is a self-reflective and aesthetic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living. He has conceptualized several key curricular and pedagogical concepts, namely, curriculum as meditative inquiry, teaching as meditative inquiry, and music as meditative inquiry. He has also developed a contemplative research methodology called dialogical meditative inquiry to conduct subjective and inter-subjective qualitative research. He is the author of two scholarly books: Curriculum As Meditative Inquiry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Curriculum in International Contexts: Understanding Colonial, Ideological, and Neoliberal Influences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He has served as the President of Arts Researchers and Teachers Society, Canada.

Katherine Weare is Professor at the University of Southampton and the University of Exeter. She is internationally known for her writing, speaking, research, and development work on mindfulness and compassion for children and young people and those who care for them. Since 2000 she has advised the English government’s Department for Children, Schools, and Families on policy in the area of social and emotional learning. She is an honorary member of the Society of Public Health Medicine, and a board member of the international network INTERCAMHS (International Alliance for Child and Mental Health in Schools). She also serves on the editorial boards of several mental health journals. She is author of Developing the Emotionally Literate School and Promoting Mental, Emotional and Social Health: A Whole School Approach.