Science pedagogy in higher education often emphasises theoretical learning over first-person learning. However, personal experience plays a crucial role in inspiring creativity and insight in science. Therefore, I propose that first-person pedagogies, including experiential and contemplative methods, can make valuable contributions to higher education in science, both by complementing students’ theoretical understanding and by furthering their personal development. To illustrate these points, I reflect on the pedagogical design and student experiences from an outreach project run with undergraduate science students. During the project, the students developed their confidence and creativity in communicating science to others, their ability to work collaboratively, and their sense of contributing to the wider community. Pairing theoretical explanations with experiential learning contributed to enhancing the scientific understanding of the students and outreach event participants. In conclusion, first-person pedagogies can help students to develop a deeper understanding of scientific topics to support their academic and personal development.
Written by Doran Amos | PUBLISHED ON 21st June 2024 | Photo by getty images in conjunction with Unsplash
Introduction
Higher education in “hard science” disciplines such as biology, physics, and chemistry conventionally focuses on teaching students discipline-specific theoretical knowledge, practical laboratory skills, and the ability to think critically (Dietert, 2014). This pedagogical approach is founded on introducing students to the scientific method, which can be conceptualised as a step-by-step cycle of enquiry in which a scientist: 1) develops testable hypotheses; 2) designs quantitative experiments; 3) collects and analyses data relative to the hypotheses; and 4) makes conclusions in light of existing scientific knowledge, which then inform further cycles of scientific enquiry in turn. Within this definition of the scientific method (and pedagogical approaches derived from it), a reliable understanding of the world is achieved by investigating physical and mental phenomena from an objective standpoint; that is, by observing and measuring phenomena “external” to the scientist as a subject (even when these phenomena are within the scientist’s own body or brain).
However, a consideration of science as a social, creative, and historically situated endeavour suggests that the subjective, first-person experience of the scientist plays a central role in the cyclical progress of the scientific method, especially in developing hypotheses and making conclusions regarding scientific problems (Brock, 2015; Kuhn, 1962). Scientific theories are often inspired by analogies from dominant trends in the contemporary culture; for instance, within the field of neuroscience (or early precursors of it), conceptualisations of how the brain functions have shifted from Descartes’ analogy of the brain (along with the body as a whole) as a machine, to Turing’s and many others’ analogy of the brain as a computer, to modern-day analogies of the brain as a neural network, inspired by advances in artificial intelligence (Crane, 2016; Fuller, 2019). These shifts evidently parallel the technological advancements of the cultures each of these scientists and philosophers were living in. In addition, more idiosyncratic personal experiences can be the source of inspiration for novel scientific theories and breakthroughs. For example, in the course of his investigations of organic chemistry, August Kekulé had a spontaneous reverie or vision of “whirling snakes” that led him to propose the circular structure of the six-carbon benzene ring (Rice, 2015). Alongside these big shifts in understanding, smaller moments of personal experience or insight play an underappreciated role alongside deliberative thinking in developing creative ideas and solutions to scientific challenges (Brock, 2015).
The relative lack of emphasis on first-person pedagogies within science education is therefore a missed opportunity to strengthen students’ capacity for methods of personal and experiential enquiry that complement analytical thinking. This is nowhere more pertinent than for those scientific disciplines that cover areas that relate directly to subjective human experience, such as neuroscience and psychology (Smith, 2021). Although the use of personal experience to inform scientific thinking is likely implicit in the creative process of many neuroscientists and psychologists, the capacity to introspect on one’s own lived experience with clarity is perhaps presumed to be too much of an individual and elusive skill to be trained, or else considered of lesser value and validity than theoretical analysis (Brock, 2015).
However, contemplative traditions, such as the approximately 2,600-year-old Buddhist lineage, bear witness to the value of experiential modes of investigation and knowing, and provide a plethora of methods for training these faculties (Dahl and Davidson, 2019). Contemplation in this sense is commonly practised through careful attention to first-person, nonconceptual (e.g. sensory) experience, leading to insights through a largely unconscious, intuitive process (Brock, 2015). This contrasts to the analytical approach that has become dominant in science, but the two approaches can be complementary and supportive of each other. Within the scientific literature, there are many examples of intuitive breakthroughs following a period of intense analysis of a topic (Brock, 2015; Rice, 2015). In turn, these insights can inspire novel scientific thinking and analysis.
At a broader level, I would argue that a major role of education is to help students to connect more deeply with their personal meaning and values (Mamgain, 2010). The emphasis on teaching theoretical knowledge in science can lead to too little time and attention being given to supporting students in maturing their perspective on issues of ethics and meaning, which are integral to their flourishing as individuals and to their future contributions to society. Moving towards first-person pedagogies that emphasise subjective experience could help to revitalise this aspect of science education.
First-person pedagogies for science education
I wish to discuss in particular two forms of pedagogy, namely contemplative pedagogy and experiential pedagogy (Barbezat and Bush, 2013; Kolb, 1984), which I believe can support science students to explore methods of personal and experiential enquiry and develop a deeper orientation towards ethics and meaning. Both pedagogies emphasise first-person experience, careful reflection on experience, and the development and application of skills to benefit a wider community. Contemplative pedagogy has been defined as a way of teaching that “shifts the focus of teaching and learning to incorporate ‘first person’ approaches which connect students to their lived, embodied experience of their own learning…[enabling] them to form richer, deeper, relationships with their peers, their communities and the world around them.” (Barratt, 2014). Practically in the teaching environment, this might involve periods of quiet contemplation, attentive observation to sensory experience, or a journalling or writing practice that encourages personal reflection (Barbezat and Bush, 2013; Francl, 2016).
Meanwhile, experiential pedagogy has been defined as an approach in which “educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities.” (Association for Experiential Education, 2023). In the well-established experiential learning theory put forward by David (Kolb, 1984), four stages of the learning process are delineated: 1) concrete experience; 2) reflective observation; 3) abstract conceptualisation; and 4) active experimentation. Experiential learning opportunities occur most commonly for science students in the context of project work, which may be in a laboratory, on a placement or internship, or as part of an outreach project to communicate science to the wider community (Abdulwahed and Nagy, 2009; Cheng and Shelnutt, 2020; Simons et al., 2012). These projects provide a relatively rare opportunity within the structured learning experience of a university degree for students to apply their knowledge directly and to learn from their experience in a relatively “real world” situation.
In this paper, I offer reflections on the pedagogical approach I have used in designing and supervising outreach projects, focusing in particular on an outreach project themed around psychological stress, stress physiology and breathwork techniques that I ran with final-year undergraduate neuroscience and biomedical science students at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK from October to December 2023. This project and the reflections on it were inspired by a symposium held by the Contemplative Pedagogy Network (CPN) near Totnes, UK in September 2023, which highlighted the themes of confidence, creativity and community, as well as stimulating some of the ideas for contemplative teaching practice that I discuss below. I will begin by describing the aims and design of the project before moving on to discuss how this approach aimed to encourage first-person, experiential learning alongside theoretical scientific learning. I will then reflect on the students’ and participants’ own experiences of the project, before considering how contemplative pedagogy could be incorporated into the supervision and learning methods of the project and into the outreach event itself.
Case study: an outreach project on stress physiology and breathwork
Aims and design
The project aimed to engage with the student population at the university by focusing on improving their scientific understanding of stress and teaching practical methods for stress reduction. It linked stress to the themes of heart rate variability (HRV), a physiological correlate of stress (Kim et al., 2018), and breathwork techniques, which involve conscious regulation of breathing rate to alter the activity of the nervous system, typically with the intention of reducing stress or improving focus (Jerath et al., 2015).
In addition to introducing participants to common-language explanations of these topics via verbal explanations, leaflets, and a website, the outreach event also incorporated a “citizen science” element in which participants could take part in a live “experiment” and experience the effects of one of two breathwork techniques, resonance breathing or box breathing, on their stress levels and HRV (Balban et al., 2023; Steffen et al., 2017).
The aims of the project were primarily as follows:
- Educate participants about the science of stress, including the role of the autonomic nervous system in stress and HRV as a physiological correlate of stress;
- Engage participants by giving them a taste of the scientific method through participation in a “citizen science” experiment to compare two breathwork techniques;
- Introduce participants to practical tools to support their breathwork practice in the future, such as breathwork/HRV apps and a wearable heart rate monitoring device for HRV biofeedback.
Practically speaking, the outreach event was run over two days in November 2023 in the Student Centre on campus and was open to participants of all ages. However, since students are the primary users of that space, they comprised the vast majority of participants. The participants were alternately assigned to perform either resonance or box breathing for one minute while their HRV was measured. This was compared to a 1-minute baseline HRV reading obtained before the breathwork. They also completed anonymous questionnaires before and after this activity, including questions related to their perceived level of stress (Cohen et al., 1983), factors known to influence HRV, such as age, exercise frequency, and alcohol consumption (Altini and Plews, 2021), their experiences of the event, and likelihood of using the breathwork exercises in the future. As the focus of this paper is on the pedagogical approach and learnings from the project rather than the scientific data collection and analysis, I will now move on to explore the former in more depth.
Theoretical and experiential learning during the project
Supervision of the six project students was primarily focused around weekly group meetings in which I guided the students to plan and prepare for the outreach event, including submitting an ethics application to the university for approval (ethical review application ER/ST564/1, approved by the Science & Technology Research Ethics Committee at the University of Sussex, UK on 30th October 2023). In the first couple of weeks, students presented mini-talks on the science of HRV and breathwork to develop their theoretical understanding of the topic. Alongside this theoretical learning, the project was designed to emphasise first-person perspectives and experiential learning (Kolb, 1984). In the lead-up to the event, the students worked as a team to design print and social media advertising materials, information leaflets and a website, and came up with a plan for guiding participants through different stages of the event. They ran a pilot event a week before the real event, enabling them to reflect on and learn from their experience and tweak the outreach plan based on their pilot participants’ feedback.
To further encourage experiential learning, the project students were invited to take the heart rate monitors home over the course of the project and try out different breathing techniques to gain first-hand experience. This helped them to become familiar both with the app and heart rate monitor hardware, but also crucially to discover the effects of the breathwork techniques on their own experiences of stress. The project students would sometimes talk about using the breathwork techniques, including in the final assessed presentation for the project, where one of them exclaimed “the breathing techniques actually work!” after using a breathwork technique to help calm themselves before their presentation.
The outreach event itself also offered an opportunity for the project students to deepen their understanding of the breathwork techniques and their effects on stress by acting as “teachers” to explain the science and guide student participants through the breathwork activity (Carpenter, 2015). In this way, both the project student and the participant were able to engage with both theoretical and experiential understandings of stress by engaging in the breathwork activity. Understandably, many of the students who decided to participate in the event were struggling with their mental health, so it also provided an opportunity for empathy to develop between the students running the event and those participating. At the broadest level, the project was framed as a stress reduction event for the student population. Therefore, the project students running the event themselves could benefit from and contribute to the event based on their own lived experience of stress as a student — they were “experts by experience” (Forbes, 1998).
Experiences of the project
Project students’ experiences
Following the project, I collected feedback from the project students through two online forms, one that requested personal reflective feedback and another that students completed to nominate themselves for an education-related award at the university. All of the comments included below are reproduced with consent from the respective students. Within the feedback, several common themes emerged, which emphasised several important ways in which experiential learning had benefitted the students’ personal development (bold emphasis in the quotations below is my own).
One prominent theme that the students discussed was confidence, as well as the perhaps related themes of communication and a compassionate motivation to help others. One student described what they had gained from running the event in this way:
“I am truly grateful for being given this opportunity to use my neuroscience background knowledge to help others to benefit their well-being. Not only has this event boosted my confidence in speaking to strangers, it has also taught me the importance in bringing awareness to topics such as mental health and overall well-being.
“By actively providing individuals techniques to manage their stress levels, I like to think that I have made a difference in some of their lives and hope they continue on their intentional breathing journeys – whether the change is big or small!”
Another student commented on the confidence they had gained from regularly having to communicate scientific information to others:
“My communication and presentation skills improved greatly and my anxiety around public speaking decreased. Being tasked with creating presentations and delivering them during the initial meetings significantly contributed to diminishing my apprehension towards public speaking and presenting. The more we practiced the more comfortable I became.”
Students also highlighted the theme of community or collaboration, recognising the value of learning both as a team of project students and also in relationship with the wider community of participants at the event:
“We conducted a research project focused on scientific outreach, hosting an event on campus to educate students about heart rate variability (HRV) and introduce scientifically proven breathing techniques for HRV improvement … This experience not only fostered collective learning within our team, but also enabled us to take the participating university students and staff on the journey of learning together with us.”
Another student highlighted the importance of collaboration in the design, planning and promotion of the event:
“Our project also aimed to potentially contribute to existing scientific knowledge on HRV, as it is a significant indicator of health status. To achieve this goal, our student team worked collaboratively with our supervisor Dr. Doran Amos throughout the autumn semester, delving deeply into the topic to ensure the accuracy of the information conveyed, planning event logistics, and promoting our event across campus.”
Finally, one student also mentioned their appreciation of the opportunity for creativity that the project offered:
“Having creative freedom, from how the event would run to creating scientific content, allowed us to independently explore the different scientific communication approaches.”
Overall, these themes highlight how the experiential learning opportunities of the project helped students to develop their confidence, communication skills, team-work and creativity, along with enabling them to experience directly how their personal and scientific understanding can benefit the wider community.
Participants’ experiences
As described above, feedback was also collected from participants of the event using an anonymous questionnaire completed after they had taken part. Participants gave very positive ratings in the questionnaire, with 100% saying they either “liked” or “strongly liked” the event, and 98% saying they were either “somewhat likely” or “very likely” to use the breathing techniques in the future. These positive ratings were reflected in their feedback comments, of which I give three representative examples below.
One participant remarked on their enjoyment of learning something new:
“I enjoyed the educational aspect of the event – I have heard about HRV before, but was slightly confused about what it was, so I am glad that there were clarifications of what it actually was!”
Another participant appreciated the interactive element of their experience and the link to mental and physical health:
“Great to understand what HRV really is, and how it affects my wider wellbeing. Seeing my heart rate monitored live was also very cool.”
Finally, this participant expressed their appreciation for the way the event was run by the project students:
“Everyone was so welcoming and explained things so well, feel like I will definitely try these breathing techniques.”
These comments emphasise the importance of the interactive activities and the relationships between project students and participants in increasing the wider pedagogical impact of the event. These experiential and ethical–relational aspects helped to make the scientific information conveyed easier to understand, more memorable and more personally meaningful to the participants.
Ideas for applying contemplative pedagogy to future projects
Although the project supported the students to develop complementary theoretical and experiential understandings of stress, there is substantial room for development in terms of introducing contemplative methods that encourage a deeper encounter with embodied experience (Hart, 2004). The outreach event framed breathwork as a “stress reduction technique” with simple, clear instructions, leading to an expected outcome. The breathwork activity was organised around the use of an app, EliteHRV, which gave a numerical read-out of HRV (although the participant themselves could not see this, as they were encouraged simply to engage in the breathwork) (Vondrasek et al., 2023). As such, it may have encouraged a largely performative, results-driven attitude in which the participant was not guided to become curious towards their lived embodied experience, nor explicitly to develop understanding or empathy towards it (Kressbach, 2018). These qualities are key elements of many contemplative methods for investigating and relieving stress, such as the Buddhist meditation for cultivating loving-kindness (Pali: mettā bhāvanā; (Gunaratana, 2017)).
To develop a contemplative pedagogy approach, project students could be guided to explore their bodily sensations associated with stress or calm and record their observations with a regular reflective practice, such as journalling (Barbezat and Bush, 2013). Rather than framing stress as a problem, this activity could be explained as training the student’s ability to understand bodily sensations as useful messages about their stress level, potentially developing self-compassion and developing interoceptive awareness to empower them to respond to stress more quickly (Fischer et al., 2017). For example, over a series of weeks during the project, they could be invited to try out the breathwork techniques while noting their bodily sensations before, during and after the breathwork period, perhaps using a brief, app-guided (e.g. 2 minute) “body scan” exercises to bring attention to and note bodily sensations (Hart, 2004). This might be grounded and made more playful by “drawing” sensations within a body outline on a sheet of paper, for example as areas of activation or deactivation of sensation on a “body sensation map” (Nummenmaa et al., 2014). Potentially, the task could be narrowed to focus on sensations within a particular part of the body (e.g. the belly, throat, or heart) and provide more detail of their quality (e.g. numb, tingling, pulsing) using colours or words. Students could complement the notes on their bodily experience in their journal with broader personal reflections on how they found the practice.
This focus on experienced bodily sensations during stress could also be incorporated into the outreach event itself, along with the existing questions about perceived stress (Cohen et al., 1983). Participants could be similarly asked to “draw their sensations” within a body outline, thereby providing an intuitive way of reporting the bodily locations and types of sensation associated with stress. Participants would therefore learn about their own bodily experience of stress, as well as contributing to a shared “stress map” indicating commonalities and differences in how stress manifests in different people (Nummenmaa et al., 2014).
These simple practices of identifying bodily sensations related to stress or calm could provide an accessible way for students to become more aware of a nonconceptual, sensory mode of experience. However, the connection of such a state with clarity of attention and the development of insight are not likely to be immediately obvious. (Dietert, 2014) suggests that it is important for students to see tangible results from a practice, which he achieves by guiding students to directly record and compare their experiences of a target, such as a painting, before and after regular, brief contemplative practices. Specifically, he suggests using a 30-second, heart-focused, guided meditation (related to the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation), which could easily be related to the topic of stress of the outreach project. A brief contemplative activity such as this could be incorporated into the weekly meeting to support students in regularly experiencing the effects of such a practice on their ways of seeing and knowing.
Summary
The outreach project discussed here provided numerous opportunities for students to encounter the topics of stress and breathwork from complementary theoretical and experiential perspectives. Students had the chance to try out the breathwork techniques for themselves, which may have helped them to teach these techniques to other students at the outreach event from a richer, first-person perspective, in addition to conveying objective scientific information about breathwork and stress physiology. Students’ engagement with a mental health topic and the shared experience between student-as-teacher and student-as-participant likely contributed to facilitating empathy in service of the wider student community (Carpenter, 2015).
Thus, the event supported the project students to benefit from some key elements of contemplative and experiential pedagogies, including direct experience of collaboratively creating and running an event, greater confidence in their ability to communicate, an ethical intention and community focus, and awareness of bodily sensations (to some degree). These pedagogical approaches could be developed in the future through practices such as reflective journalling (Barbezat and Bush, 2013), the loving-kindness meditation (Gunaratana, 2017), or drawing a body sensation map (Nummenmaa et al., 2014).
First-person modes of enquiry have long been viewed with scepticism in the scientific community and this view commonly extends into the teaching environment. However, as the reflections I have presented here propose, the education and work of a scientist can be enriched by complementing analytical investigation and theoretical knowledge with an awareness of the depth and value of experiential and contemplative modes of knowing and learning (Abdulwahed and Nagy, 2009; Barbezat and Bush, 2013; Francl, 2016). These pedagogical approaches can help to infuse and connect factual information with students’ lived experiences, helping the learning process to be more fun and engaging, and the material more memorable (Kolb, 1984). Regular practice of first-person enquiry throughout their degree could help students to develop the depth of their experiential investigation, which may help them to gain insights into scientific and personal problems, both during their studies and potentially in their later research career (Dietert, 2014).
In addition to potentially providing novel perspectives and insights into scientific topics, inviting students into these modes of experience could help to bring to their awareness to ethical and relational aspects that might otherwise be considered too subjective and emotional to be part of scientific learning in a university setting(Mamgain, 2010). In order to promote students’ personal development and prepare them to grapple with the complex societal challenges we now face, I believe that it is essential to teach science in a way that actively seeks to combine a student’s analytical–intellectual development with their ethical–relational development (Mamgain, 2010). Of course, students can and do mature emotionally nonetheless, but as science educators, we have a crucial role to play in bringing ethical perspectives and enquiry into the scientific teaching environment, instead of regarding these as less important than scientific facts and theory.
Conclusion
Although first-person, experiential modes of enquiry are typically de-emphasised in university-level science education, the accounts of successful scientists demonstrate that these approaches can play an important role in the process of scientific learning and discovery (Brock, 2015; Rice, 2015). Therefore, more attention should be given to offering opportunities in higher education science courses for students to explore and apply experiential and contemplative learning methods. Finding appropriate ways to introduce first-person pedagogies into science education, which is often dominated by facts and figures, requires creativity and courage on the part of the teacher. To support this, it is important that science educators who have fruitfully brought experiential and contemplative practices into their own teaching continue to share good practice for doing so. Thankfully, there are already a number of excellent examples of first-person practices being applied to science education at university level, such as reflective journalling after laboratory practicals or “beholding” graphical data to observe it without preconceptions (Barbezat and Bush, 2013; Dietert, 2014; Francl, 2016). It is my hope that the reflections offered here will provide further ideas and inspiration to others who see the value of experiential and contemplative pedagogies for student learning and personal growth, both within and beyond the academy.
About the author
Doran Amos is a Lecturer in Neuroscience at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. He is particularly interested in topics related to the mind–body connection, mental health, and contemplative practices such as mindfulness. Alongside his academic career, he has practised Zen Buddhism for around 15 years and enjoys exploring teaching methods to fruitfully combine intellectual and experiential learning.
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