Welcome 

We invite you to dive into the recordings of our inaugural Healing-Centered Education Summit. This gathering created space for us to coalesce around the emerging restorative and healing-centered paradigm in educational research and practice. With the challenges facing our world--political polarization, economic inequality, racial and gender violence, and health disparities--the need for practices, policies, experiences, and communities for collective recovery and restoration are crucial. Through workshops, breathwork sessions and dynamic keynote addresses, we activated a generative social field that inspired a new generation of scholarship and pedagogical practices that will influence K-12 and professional education. 

Mission & Vision

Over the last four decades, social-emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness-based and contemplative education, trauma-informed care, restorative justice and decolonizing education have formed part of frameworks that constellate the healing-centered turn in educational discourse. However, the notion of healing-centered education is still fairly new in the realm of educational practice and academic research. Dr. Shawn Ginwright was one of the first educators to conceptualize and use the term healing-centered engagement to describe a more restorative approach to youth development in his book Hope and Healing in Urban Education. 

Although our human community has engaged in healing-centered practices since time immemorial, the notion of intentionally developing and integrating such practices into formal schooling, university curricula, workforce professional development and adult education is a new phenomena. The vision for this summit is to support the array of scholars, practitioners and curious learners in coming together to contribute to the growing interest in healing-centred approaches to education. At the core, whether we call it healing-centered or some other trendy concept, this summit and this historical moment are about creating the conditions for our children and ourselves to thrive and flourish in the face of multiple crises.