Reflecting critically on "what is important": the contemplative approach to promote the employability in the future professionals in education.

Abstract

The contribution is primarily aimed at exploring the possibility of working on the employability of the university students, future professionals in education, through mindfulness practices and the contemplative approach.

The paper will start with a critical reflection on the use of mindfulness practices in education, a reflection which invites us to consider them not so much as a "tool" to improve well-being or attention, but as a real educational "process", a viewpoint, among other things, shared by many educational traditions, both ancient and modern, which values self-knowledge, social commitment and the cultivation of ethical virtues in a global and integrated perspective. The article will then outline the educational potential of those practices in the direction of employability, especially thanks to mindfulness seen as a process of embodied ethics which enhances the possibility to reflect critically in terms of values. This latter dimension is extremely in line with an educational vision, as also defined by the OECD Learning Compass 2030, which sees as fundamental the promotion of skills outlined not exclusively in terms of knowledge and abilities, but also of attitudes and values. Skills which will foster not only individual but also social and global well-being in the future planetary citizens we are to train.

Keywords: employability, mindfulness, contemplative pedagogy, education in values, critical reflexivity