University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The cultural politics of educational well-being

(USC Thesis Other)

The cultural politics of educational well-being

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EDUCATIONAL WELL-BEING

by

Neha Miglani

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(URBAN EDUCATION POLICY)

August 2022

Copyright (2022) Neha Miglani

ii
Acknowledgements
It does take a village to initiate, work towards, and complete a doctoral dissertation. I
could not have reached here without my community of family, friends, colleagues, and
mentors — not to mention the babysitters, bus and cab drivers, and others in different parts of
the world who have helped sustain the everyday infrastructure of my life in this time.
For this research, I am deeply indebted to my all interlocutors, in parts of India and
the United States, who opened-up their professional and sometimes personal lives for me.
Their willingness to participate in this research and generosity with their time made this study
possible. Their trust and sincerity are indeed the foundation of this work.
I am extremely grateful to Dr. Patricia Burch for her strong support for this (and
previous) research, for instilling confidence in my ideas, for pushing the scope and quality of
this dissertation, for sharing thoughtful and timely feedback, and for being available for
moral support, when needed. Every doctoral student deserves mentoring like this. Dr. Julie
Marsh’s perseverant spirit and encouragement has saved this project from being dropped to
its sustenance over time. Her engagement with the larger ideas of this project and thoughtful
critiques gave this project a direction that I had not anticipated earlier.
Dr. Nina Eliasoph has been vital to my doctoral experience and scholarly thinking.
The roots of this project can be traced to her theory classes, her championing of my ideas,
and encouraging me to take them up despite difficulties. I can’t imagine having done this
project without her gentle refinements and steady care. I am thankful to Dr. Smriti Srinivas
for sharing unique perspectives on the broader project and showing me the value of this work
outside my immediate circles. Dr. Fazal Rizvi’s work and ongoing discussions with him have
been instrumental in my thinking about the broader implications of this work. His enthusiasm
and curiosity in my research have sharpened my thinking and brought nuance and structure to
my arguments. I am grateful to Dr. Paul Lichterman with whom I studied (the much sought

iii
after) ethnographic methods course at USC, and whose astute feedback gave a certain
direction to a part of this project.
I have designed this research and shared work-in-progress with a community of
scholars within and outside USC. These include, the proposal writing group with Nina, the
Qualitative methods working group at Rossier, and conference presentations at AERA, CIES
in the US, and CESI in India. The generous feedback from individuals in these communities
has shaped this project as I worked towards this dissertation. Tasmin Dhaliwal, Theresa
Hernandez, Mary Ippolito, Kate Kennedy, and Hue-Tam have been wonderful sources of
friendship and intellectual community at different points in time. Special thanks to the
program office at Rossier, Laura and Alex, who have been without a doubt, instrumental to
getting things in place when it comes to official deadlines and submissions. Their support and
ongoing advice remain an invaluable part of my Rossier journey.
Friends outside USC have been critical in providing ongoing support. Sharing the joys
and sorrows of doctoral journey with Jayasree S. has been a source of motivation and
perspective. Several people helped me gain access to my field sites and provided ongoing
support as I conducted my fieldwork in India. I benefitted greatly from thoughtful
conversations with (and networks of) Dr. Rahul Mukhopadhyay, Parul Bajaj, Jagjit Kaur,
Hridbijoy, and Shailja Madan. My affiliation with the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational
Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University was helpful in providing an intellectual space while in
Delhi. Discussions with Dr. Geetha Nambissan at JNU ensured I was grounded in the context
and related scholarship. In the US, I benefitted greatly from being a part of USC community,
especially associations with its esteemed faculty. Most institutions including yoga studios,
schools, and consortiums, opened their doors to me simply because I am a member of USC.
This study was financially supported by the Social Science Research Council, the
Fetzer Institute, American Education Research Association, the USC Graduate School and

iv
Rossier School of Education. I hope the quality of this work is commensurate with my
gratitude for their investment.
I could not have started writing this dissertation without a network of support from
family, friends, and others. My mother-in-law, Santosh, provided invaluable support after my
daughter was born. My sisters-in-law, especially Bulbul and Daisy, have been great sources
of encouragement and childcare. Drafts of this dissertation were written because of Daisy’s
unconditional care and patience in her house in Wales. Friends in Philadelphia, Nancy,
Indivar, Nandita, and Rabani provided much needed disciple to complete as well as
entertaining breaks from this work. Care work for my daughter by Adriana, Nancy,
Photoulla, Rozy, and Pabitra ensured I was able to take the time out for writing.
I thank my parents, Usha and Subhash, whose decades of love, faith, and support have
been crucial for my career. They have always believed in my abilities to do this (and pretty
much any) work and instilled in me curiosity and persistence from a young age – dispositions
much needed for research. My siblings, Pooja and Sahil, have provided much camaraderie,
while continuously reminding me through this journey to keep research work in perspective.
For enduring trial runs of half-baked ideas, for last minute editing of various research
outputs, for silently taking up housework at critical times, for encouraging me to take the risk
of pursuing this project and doing all this while completing his own doctoral work, I thank
my incredible partner, Nafis Hasan. Our daughter, Noor, literally brings light to every day,
and has provided meaningful motivation for completing this work. I dedicate this dissertation
to Noor.

v
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... ii
Dissertation Abstract ............................................................................................................... vii
Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Educational Well-being ................................................. 1
On Methods and Positionality ...................................................................................................7
Socio-cultural Constructions of Well-being (in a Three-Paper Format) .......................... 11
Contributions ............................................................................................................................ 15
Limitations of the Study.......................................................................................................... 17
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 18
Paper One: ‘Pedagogic Bodies’: Embodied Teaching-Learning in the Field of Well-being .. 21
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 21
Introduction............................................................................................................................... 22
Embodied Learning and Missing Teaching Bodies ............................................................ 25
The Pedagogical Tact and Habitus ........................................................................................ 28
Body at the Forefront: Site and Methods.............................................................................. 30
‘Pedagogic Body’ .................................................................................................................... 31
Keeping Well in Los Angeles: Co-creating Yogi Dispositions ......................................... 33
Identifying and Resonating with the Pedagogic Body ....................................................... 37
Explicating Tacit Knowledge Through Language and Action .......................................... 40
Pedagogic Body in Well-being and Beyond: Implications and Discussion .................... 43
Paper Two: Pedagogies of Well-being: Embodied Discipline and Moral Frameworks .......... 47
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 47
Introduction: Emergence of Well-being as a Pedagogical Project.................................... 48
Why ‘Pedagogy’ of Well-being? ........................................................................................... 50
Pedagogy: Orienting Ideas for Investigation........................................................................ 53
The Happiness Class and Methodological Considerations ................................................ 54
Well-being Entangled in Disciplinary and Moral Concerns .............................................. 57
Teachers’ Moral Frameworks and the Pedagogies of Well-being .................................... 67
Conceptions of ‘Disciplining’ Students: What gets left out? ............................................ 68
Discussion and Concluding Thoughts................................................................................... 72

vi
Paper Three: Globalized Mobilities of Educational Well-being: Policy Posture and Scalar
Concerns .................................................................................................................................. 74
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 74
Introduction............................................................................................................................... 75
Engagement with Literatures ................................................................................................. 79
Policy Site and Methods ......................................................................................................... 84
India and Policy Mobilities of Educational Well-being ..................................................... 87
The Specific ‘Posture’ of the Happiness Class .................................................................... 91
Proposing ‘Policy Posture’ ................................................................................................... 100
Implications ............................................................................................................................ 102
References .............................................................................................................................. 105

vii
Dissertation Abstract

Human well-being has become an important concern for individuals and policy
makers over the last decades. Well-being in contemporary cultures is actively pursued as an
intentional project of self-improvement and becomes inherently educational. This dissertation
takes the ‘educational’ nature of well-being as its central concern to investigate the socio-
political constructions of its policy and pedagogy. The questions guiding this study are: How
does one learn and teach others to be well? How do globally circulating ideas of well-being
take shape for specific educational aims? How do people involved in educational policy
(conceived broadly) at different levels negotiate, adopt, or appropriate the various meanings
of well-being?
This three-paper dissertation utilizes two ethnographic investigations to unpack the
policy and pedagogical construction of well-being within and outside formal educational
institutions. The first paper investigates the embodied pedagogy of well-being as pursued by
practitioners of modern yoga. Through an ethnographic investigation conducted in Los
Angeles, I show how teaching (and learning) of well-being as pursued through a massively
popular contemplative technique of yoga is a deeply embodied and ongoing project. The
second and third paper utilize data from a multi-sited ethnography conducted in parts of India
and the United States. Like the first paper, the second paper also focuses on the pedagogy of
well-being but within public schools of Delhi mandated with Happiness Class aimed at
student well-being. I show how the pedagogy of well-being in this institutional context is
deeply intertwined with student discipline and teacher’s moral frameworks. I raise some
critical questions about the conception of student discipline and argue for humanizing
teacher’s work. The third paper begins to map the global policy mobilities of well-being
especially through the presence of contemplative practices like mindfulness and yoga and

viii
India’s relative position in the discourses of well-being. Taking the case of Happiness class
in Delhi, it illuminates both the subnational policy as well as the ideas of educational well-
being as relational and emergent social processes. Together, these papers begin to articulate a
larger cultural politics of educational well-being.

1
Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Educational Well-being

The last two decades have seen an explosion of references to well-being in self-help,
commercial, health, academic, educational, and policy discourses (OECD, 2021; White &
Blackmore, 2016; Wright & McLeod, 2015). Transnational agencies and national
governments are increasingly taking up well-being as an important criterion for development
(OECD, 2013; UNICEF, 2013; WHO, 2000), and educational policy and practices across the
world are discussing student, teacher well-being (Corbin & Pangrazi, 2001; Johnson,
Agbényiga, & Hitchcock, 2014; Wright & McLeod, 2015; Wyn, 2009). One of the key ideas
that undergirds this ubiquity of references to well-being is that we are facing major problems
at macro-structural, interpersonal and individual levels in a period of rapid social change and
uncertainty – that all is not well (White, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified both
this crisis and the discourse as individuals and institutions around the world struggle to be
well. Children and young populations are central to this discourse, whose well-being, or lack
thereof, has become a global concern (Johnson et al., 2014). This is evident, for instance, in
the recent reports published on child or youth wellbeing, such as the four volumes of the
Global Report on Student Well-being (Michalos, 1991a, 1991b, 1993a, 1993b), the Better
Life Initiative (OECD, 2013, 2017), the Global Youth Wellbeing Index (Goldin, 2014;
Sharma, 2017), and the UNICEF child well-being league tables (UNICEF, 2016). These
reports, framed by a sense of alarm, show how children and youth well-being is fraught with
conditions of deteriorating physical, mental health, and overall quality of life. Equally
unwell, however, are the other population groups as evidenced by numerous global reports
capturing the ‘World Happiness’, for instance (Helliwell et al., 2022).
It is in this larger discourse of a crisis of well-being that individuals as well as
institutions are increasingly turning to modern contemplative practices such as yoga and

2
mindfulness. For centuries, contemplative practices have formed an important part of human
lives, influencing subjective, physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social well-
being (Feuerstein, 1998). Both modern yoga
1
and mindfulness are identified as contemplative
practices that continue to influence well-being for people from all over the world in various
ways. Some sources claim that there are more than 300 million yoga practitioners around the
world (Galic, 2022). Nearly 28% of all Americans have tried a yoga class at some point in
their lives (Ipsos Public Affairs, 2016). People from over 180 countries participated in the
“International Yoga Day” celebrations of 2017 (NDTV, 2017). Anthropologists and scholars
of religious studies have found yoga be a practice that operationalizes well-being for
individuals through claims to health, spirituality, and modernity in various contexts around
the world (see, e.g., Jain, 2015; Lalonde, 2012; Schnäbele, 2010; Strauss, 2005). Meditation
and mindfulness, similarly, have emerged as significant techniques to foster well-being, with
an estimated 200-500 million practitioners globally (The Good Body, 2022), as well as
growing interest from a wide range of institutions including education, military, healthcare,
and science (Kucinskas, 2018).
Policy makers influencing formal educational institutions – both schools and higher
education – are increasingly recommending (and sometimes, mandating) contemplative
practices for the aims of well-being. Most universities in the US and other parts of the world
offer courses on yoga and mindfulness
2
. While the exact global reach of such programs is not
known, scholars have noted that yoga and meditation programs are making their way into
schools in “ad hoc, idiosyncratic ways”, largely through regional, grassroots organizations
(Resnick, 2017). Globally, schools are adopting various interventions related to holistic,
comprehensive and (sometimes, called) non-cognitive learning promoting social-emotional

1
As discussed in detail in one of the following papers, modern yoga has been defined differently from yoga of
the pre-modern times. I use the term ‘yoga’ in this thesis as a shorthand for ‘modern yoga’.
2
See also, for instance, the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.

3
learning (SEL), 21
st
century skills, life-skills, happiness, character or values education and so
on (De Souza et al., 2009; Wortham et al., 2020). Given a heightened focus on contemplative
practices in these programs, scholars are noting the beginning of a ‘contemplative turn’ in
education that, despite its limitations, is contributing to epistemological changes in curricular-
pedagogical practices (Ergas, 2019).
My larger project (based on which, three individual papers are presented here)
investigates this growing concern with well-being, especially in its intersections with
education. While motivated by a ‘contemplative turn’ in formal education (Ergas, 2019), this
project is equally interested in an educational turn in well-being (and relatedly, contemplative
practices). Well-being, in contemporary cultures, is not an incidental or assumed outcome of
general education or life anymore. It is not a retrospective reflection of life lived a certain
way. It is actively pursued and practiced daily on specific dimensions and becomes an
intentional act of teaching-learning. Being well, and relatedly healthy, happy, and content
(more on this in the next section) becomes a skill to be acquired. With some of these and
other understandings, everyday aspirations of well-being are taken up as projects of lifelong
learning in formal or informal educational settings. Grappling with the ‘educational’ nature of
well-being practices, this project aims to unpack both the discursive and material forms it
takes.
In terms of everyday material practice, I take the object of my investigation as the
pedagogy of well-being. If estimates are to go by, millions of people enroll themselves in
‘workshops’ and ‘classes’ teaching yoga and mindfulness. Online courses such as the
‘science of well-being’ are gaining increasing popularity (Coursera, n.d.). This form of public
education typically unfolds in a classroom format (in-person or virtual) with a designated
teacher/ instructor and somewhat codified forms of instructions and pedagogy. In schools and
universities, the aims of well-being are more formally codified into the curricula of social-

4
emotional learning (SEL) and related interventions. Many schools around the world have
mandated policies with the larger aim of student well-being. These include daily periods of
SEL that include techniques like mindfulness, postural yoga, relaxation, identifying and
managing emotions and so on. In its intense focus on embodied contemplative techniques
including breathing, exercising etc., the (student) body becomes a key site for and means to
achieving well-being. SEL is being emphasized in reorganizing curricula, pedagogy, and
learning assessments (UNESCO-MGIEP, 2022). Multinational development bodies such as
the UNESCO have created and dedicated a full research institute focusing explicitly on SEL
for the goals of peaceful and sustainable societies (UNESCO, 2012). In this explicit
pedagogical focus aiming for well-being, I ask: How do you learn to be well? More
importantly, how do you teach others to be well?
This pedagogical focus, however, is incomplete without an enquiry of the larger
discourse in which the educational concerns with well-being are taking shape and being
understood. In mapping these discursive moves, the object of my investigation is, conceived
broadly, the policy of well-being. Globally circulating ideas of well-being have been around
for a long time but have gained prominence in the last two decades. Scholars studying
modern contemplative practices of yoga and mindfulness, for instance, have noted the
transnational exchanges through which these techniques have been developed, adopted and
sustained globally (Mallinson & Singleton, 2017). Despite modern interpretations, a part of
the popularity of contemplative practices is traced to their perceived ‘ancient’ and ‘spiritual’
nature (Jain, 2015; Strauss, 2005). Recent research from psychology has made us believe that
much like calculus and chemistry, well-being too can be learnt (Manning-Schaffel, 2019).
‘Muscle’ metaphor is invoked highlighting the human ability to build these skills, making the
entire pursuit of well-being a matter of daily practice. Equally influential (if not more) is the
deep and ever-growing commercial interest in pushing well-being as a product through the

5
most innovative tools and technologies, such as mobile wellness apps. It is in this complex
assemblage of ideas surrounding well-being that everyday meanings are negotiated and some
of them codified as written policy. I ask: How do globally circulating ideas of well-being take
shape in specific education policies? How do people involved in policy (broadly conceived)
at different levels negotiate, adopt, or appropriate the various meanings of well-being?
My larger project thus is interested in the various social, political, and cultural
constructions of well-being at pedagogical and policy (and relatedly political) levels. In these
constructions of well-being, I plan to unpack the ways in which they relate to the democratic
aims of education, especially around the issues of inclusion and agency. The three papers in
this dissertation begin to investigate this larger project.
On Terminologies and Definitions
Widespread concern for well-being
3
contrasts the somewhat weaker consensus on
how it should be defined. Different conceptualizations see well-being as multidimensional
(Corbin & Pangrazi, 2001), multi-disciplinary (Michalos, 2008; White & Blackmore, 2016),
subjective, i.e. interior to a person (Kahneman, 1999), objective or having externally
observable characteristics, such as housing, education etc. (Ehrenreich, 2009; Sen, 1993), and
not the same as physical fitness, but closely related to health (Wright & McLeod, 2015).
4

Most definitions of well-being have an aspirational quality, encompassing combinations of
physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, and material dimensions. Well-being is
often associated with the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia that involves people reflecting on
their lives as a whole, discovering what is most important or valuable (life’s final end or
telos) and aiming to achieve those ends (Fischer, 2014; Michalos, 2008).

3
The terms well-being, wellbeing, wellness, and quality of life are sometimes used interchangeably in the
literature. While some minor differences are noted between these terms (Ellis, 2017), well-being is the more
commonly used umbrella term in the literature.
4
See Gasper (2010), for an extended discussion on definitions of well-being, and their approaches in public
policy.

6
Even though pervasive, well-being as a term remains “conceptually muddy” (Morrow
& Mayall, 2009), “like a cultural mirage: it looks like a solid construct, but when we
approach it, it fragments or disappears” (Ereaut & Whiting, 2008, p.5). While it is related to
overlapping ideas such as happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and self-actualization, one
can experience well-being in their absence too. Scholars argue that it is possible to experience
well-being and states of sadness or loss or ill health at the same time (Manderson, 2005).
Well-being has been closely associated with physical and mental health. World Health
Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, psychological and social
wellbeing” (WHO, 1948, p.1). In this sense scholars note some sort of circularity in the
notions of health as well-being, and well-being as health (Manderson, 2005). However,
despite or probably because of these fluidities in its conceptions, it is asserted effortlessly in
many policy and program rationales. Indeed as Wright & McLeod (2015, p. 2) note “calls to
address wellbeing are so commonplace and widespread that they can mean both everything
and nothing.”
It is because of these reasons that I do not start with an a priori definition of well-
being. As I entered and engaged with the ‘field’, these heterogenous, and sometimes
contradictory definitions of well-being appeared from the ground. For instance, in the case of
a specific intervention called the Happiness class implemented in government schools of
Delhi, the teachers used the terms happiness, well-being, being content, good mental and
physical health almost interchangeably. While none of the papers below takes up this
heterogeneity of definitions as its central concern, this was apparent in my fieldwork and
noted in footnotes where necessary for the argument of the paper. This complexity and
conceptual muddiness in the definitions of well-being makes this project both layered and
somewhat harder to grasp at times, as I will discuss in a section on limitations of this work.

7
On Methods and Positionality
The three papers presented below are based on two separate ethnographic
investigations. While each paper describes in detail the methods and methodological
considerations, I share some additional notes about the overarching approach and my
positionality below. The research questions as well as the methods are very much intertwined
with my own experiences as a yoga practitioner, having worked in various parts of India as
an educational researcher, and my movement related to doctoral research between the United
States and India. My own mobilities between these two large contexts (India and the US)
certainly helped me identify connections that would not have been possible otherwise.
The first year-long ‘enactive’ ethnography (Sá nchez Garcí a & Spencer, 2014;
Wacquant, 2015) was conducted from February 2018 to January 2019 in Los Angeles. As
someone interested in well-being since childhood, I was fascinated by the fervent focus on
well-being in the hub of Hollywood. Being a modern yoga practitioner, I was drawn to the
different forms and meanings it took in this context. I started this fieldwork as part of an
ethnographic methods course. However, the ‘field’ drew me in to continue this investigation,
and generous feedback from mentors gave it a certain direction.
Having completed a Yoga teacher training in 2016 in Mysore, India (one of the global
hubs of yoga practitioners) I was somewhat familiar with the immense curiosity and interest
people from around the world, but especially Americans, took in modern yoga. In Los
Angeles, where I had moved for my doctoral work, modern yoga was all around me. This city
is dotted with a range of independent and institutional chains of yoga studios. My university
offered various free and paid yoga sessions from time to time. School districts were
enthusiastically taking up practices like yoga and mindfulness for students. As I explored
some of these yoga classes, the differences and similarities to my prior experience of yoga
became apparent. While much is being written about modern yoga from a cultural critique

8
and cultural appropriation perspective (especially in the popular media), I became more
interested in the ‘educational’ nature of this phenomenon especially given that yoga was seen
(and experienced by some) as a means to well-being.
Teacher trainings, I realized, were the spaces where this educational knowledge was
most explicitly articulated. I chose a teacher training in ‘vinyasa flow’ (a modern yoga style)
since it is believed to be ‘birthed’ in LA (Mickle, 2015). If LA is the birthplace of this
particular style, then it likely captures, to an extent, the city’s zeitgeist, the cultural spirit
rooted in the context. As I enrolled into a vinyasa teacher training (with the help of kind and
generous teachers), I soon realized my special place in the group. This was primarily because
of my familiarity with the Sanskrit language (in which some of the older yoga scriptures were
written) in addition to being an Indian, of course. I became the go-to person to check the right
pronunciation of a posture name in Sanskrit. In the ‘history of yoga’ sessions, for instance,
the teacher trainer looked at me more often and even asked some clarification questions.
Being familiar with the recent literature pointing towards the fairly global roots of modern
yoga practice (Singleton, 2010), I was surprised by how little it mattered to my interlocutors
as they continued to automatically place India (and sometimes, me) relatively high up the
hierarchy of yoga knowledge. While I did not bring up these concerns directly with other
participants, I was curious to see how they constructed yoga knowledge and took several
notes in this regard. The first paper presented below begins to capture an aspect of this
knowledge construction especially as it relates to a relationship with one’s own and student’s
bodies.
The second muti-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995, 2012) was conducted over 15
months. The first phase included fieldwork in parts of India, primarily Delhi but also (for
interviews with related organizations) in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bangalore from April
2019 to March 2020. I then, in the second (revised) phase, followed some of the connections

9
from this site, specifically to the United States in a largely virtual fieldwork (post COVID-19
outbreak and related lockdowns) from August 2020 to October 2020. The second paper of
this dissertation presents analysis from my fieldwork in India. While the third paper alludes
to some of the interconnections with the US, some more comparative work is under
preparation.
Based on some pilot fieldwork, my initial plan for this muti-sited ethnographic
investigation was to conduct observations in schools implementing well-being/ SEL
initiatives both in India (Delhi) and the United States (California). Initial observations
revealed that both sites rely on an evolving understanding of well-being as well as modern
contemplative practices and look to each other to strengthen and legitimize them. For
instance, schools in Delhi are seeking affiliations from a large consortium in the US, while
educational programs in California seek expertise and validation of revered gurus from India.
Moreover, as I discuss in detail in one of the papers, modern history of spiritual movements
has shown growing interconnections and trans-national exchanges especially between India
and the US (Srinivas, 2015; Strauss, 2005). Scholars have traced their transformation from
counter-culture movements in the US to popular practices (Jain, 2015) that have not only
entered everyday American parlance but also powerful public institutions of education and
others such as science, healthcare and military (Kucinskas, 2018). In India both yoga and
mindfulness, after having gained global popularity, are reclaimed as well as transformed in
both nationalist and globalized idioms (De Michelis, 2020; Strauss, 2005). As these spiritual
practices formally enter public schools in the US and India on a large scale, studying this
phenomenon in one context is invariably incomplete without the other.
However, as scholars have noted, ethnographic fieldwork is guided as much by the
conditions in /of the field itself as by the initial plans. As the world (not just my planned field
sites in Delhi and California) witnessed the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic,

10
school closure in almost all parts of the world and international travel restrictions made it
impossible to continue the fieldwork. I had concluded the India part of my fieldwork by early
March 2020, just in time before the first nationwide lockdown. I took the next few months to
get deep into the data collected so far and actively re-scoped my project to map primarily the
policy connections with the US. In the spirit of a multi-sited ethnography, following policy
meant paying attention to, policy actors (‘people’), policy documents and other infrastructure
(‘materials’), and where they may have had occasion to interact (‘meetings’ or ‘situations’,
including in person or virtual) (McCann & Ward, 2012). Pertinent to my site and its
‘collaborations’, this also meant mapping parts of (fast-moving) dynamic networks
encompassing actors and sites of expertise such as government centers, religious
organizations, trans-national development organizations, commercial companies, think tanks,
venture capital firms, and philanthropies.
I came to understand my position in the field site in India as both of an insider and
outsider. Having grown up and spent significant part of my life in north India, I am well
versed with the larger structures, the local language (Hindi), and cultural idioms that animate
schools, educational bureaucracy, as well as a host of related organizations. I was also
perceived somewhat of an outsider and distant given my enrollment in a University in the
United States and fluency in English, a highly desirable skill for many in India. Aware of the
time demands on teachers and students with a school and given the extended data collection I
aimed to provide reciprocity in different possible ways. This included, for instance, helping
teachers with technology and maintaining documents, and helping students with guidance on
college admissions, English language, and translations etcetera. The second phase which
primarily included interviews via Zoom and social media analysis was relatively less
personal because of its virtual character. I was always met with much curiosity on the other
side of Zoom, partly because of my interest in well-being (which is seen as an emergent field

11
in education by some), and partly because of odd time zones in which some of the interviews
were conducted. In both the investigations, my aim was to be consistently aware of my own
biases and privileges and reflect on how they entangled with my work.
Socio-cultural Constructions of Well-being (in a Three-Paper Format)
Mapping the policy and pedagogical constructions of well-being, the three papers
included in this dissertation begin to do some of the groundwork to develop the larger
project. The first two papers unpack the pedagogical constructions of well-being while the
third paper focuses on its policy constructions. Below, I briefly describe their aims
significance and how they contribute to the larger project. I then note how the three papers
are connected and how they represent divergent directions that the project could take, moving
forward.
Abstracts of the Papers
The first paper titled, ‘Pedagogic Bodies’: Embodied Teaching-Learning in the Field
of Well-being’ begins to explore a possible pedagogy of well-being by taking the example of
modern yoga practitioners in Los Angeles. Using data from a year-long ‘enactive
ethnography’ (Wacquant, 2015) conducted in Los Angeles, United States, I pursue the
different embodied pedagogical understandings that are involved in teaching a technique for
well-being. With specific practices of physical postures, breathing exercises, and focus on
emotions, the human body – with all its cognitive, carnal, affective, and critical capacities – is
a key site on which the pedagogy of contemplative practices (and in-turn the aspired well-
being) unfolds and hence, calls for careful attention. The question of ‘embodied pedagogy’,
therefore, precedes the analysis of a pedagogy of ‘well-being’. Embodiment represents an
important aspect of both well-being and cultural pedagogy. While there are rich insights
around embodied learning, teaching bodies, in whose presence we learn, remain marginal. I
unpack the forging and communication of embodied teaching knowledge in a pedagogy of

12
well-being. Drawing on Herbart’s notion of pedagogical tact (English, 2013; Herbart, 1887 as
cited in van Manen, 2016) and Bourdieu’s interpretation of habitus (Bourdieu, 1980;
Wacquant, 2016), I propose the idea of pedagogic bodies that represents a conscious intent
and concern for others within teaching bodies. This paper shows how conscious intent and
corporeal competence connect to human practice for the purposes of well-being and notes
implications for education and pedagogy in general.
The second paper addresses the question of pedagogies of well-being more directly.
Taking the case of Happiness Class, a SEL initiative implemented in all government schools
of Delhi, India, this paper unpacks what unfolds in the everyday encounters of teaching and
learning of well-being within a classroom setting. Utilizing data from a multi-sited
ethnography (Marcus, 1995, 2012), I deep dive into how the daily pedagogical transactions
unfold within two schools practicing Happiness class in Delhi and how well-being is
constructed at the level of teaching and learning. I show the interweaving of student well-
being with student discipline and teachers’ own moral sensibilities to illustrate the hopes and
discontents of the formal practices of well-being. I demonstrate how a tool meant to find
meaning, and improve mental health is also used to create further differences in students on
physical, psychological, and emotional dimensions, creating opportunities for exclusion. On
the other hand, the conception of this intervention also attempts to put into practice (and as
implemented by some) what could be called the potentialities of discipline and reflections in
teacher’s work. Oriented by the Herbart’s notion of pedagogical tact again, I highlight some
key questions in how we conceive student discipline, that might not always (as most of the
current literature on student discipline is) be polarized between its discriminatory forms or
normative, practical forms. Rather than seeing discipline as something explicit to be done or
when done wrong to be (rightly) critiqued, I ask how we deal with everyday banal elements

13
of discipline that can go one way or the other and can potentially provide room for reflection
and improvement.
The third paper takes up the policy and political constructions of well-being by taking
the case of Happiness class in Delhi again. Given that the concern for student well-being in
educational setting has garnered significant attention globally I build on the theoretical lens
of policy sociology, especially as articulated in the multidisciplinary work on ‘policy
mobilities’ by sociologists, critical geographers, and cultural theorists. This paper illuminates
the construction of a specific sub-national SEL policy – the Happiness Class – in the federal
system of India, in conversation with perceived ideas of well-being at local, national, and
global level/ scale. Placing India in the global policy mobilities of well-being, I highlight
subnational policy in this case as a relational and emergent social process which is multiply
scaled, simultaneously representing, and speaking to the various levels. Specifically, I
highlight, how through use of contemplative practices, mobilities of educational well-being
are entangled between the concerns of secular and religious, ancient and modern, national
and international, spiritual and scientific, and relatedly the ‘east’ and the ‘west’. I propose the
idea of ‘policy posture’ to underscore a policy technique used to (mis)align, (dis)associate, or
(dis)articulate policy discourse with respect to related policy ideas at other levels. Policy
posture highlights the relative stasis of highly mobile policies. Additionally, this paper also
begins to illuminate how the presence of contemplative practices in educational well-being
policies renders them a unique mobility.
Convergences and Divergent Directions
As described above, all the three papers are united in their aims and descriptions
towards understanding some of the socio-cultural and political constructions well-being. The
first two papers are concerned with more everyday exchanges and negotiations of people
practicing well-being. In studying a pedagogy of well-being, these two papers equally

14
grapple with the concept of pedagogy itself. Scholars have shown that despite being a central
concern in education, pedagogy remains under-defined and under-theorized and somewhat of
a black box that oscillates between technical and sociological notions of transmission or
reproduction (Watkins et al., 2015). The first two papers in this regard are not interested in an
ideological critique or proving (yet again) a larger project of social reproduction. Instead, my
aim is to show the complex processes that are constitutive of many such layered processes. In
a way, they follow Bernstein’s characterisation of pedagogy as not only a sustained process
of instruction whereby people acquire particular knowledges, values and skills, but also as a
“cultural relay: a uniquely human device for both the reproduction and the production of
culture” (2003, p. 61-64), and aim to capture this duality. I also unpack pedagogy in these
papers with the hope that the pursuit of well-being, that has been a human endeavour for
centuries, can throw light on this duality of pedagogy itself.
Papers two and three take their investigative base in the same empirical site. These
two papers complement each other in providing a fuller understanding of how a specific
formal well-being intervention (such as the Happiness Class in Delhi) is imagined,
interpreted and negotiated by people at different levels. Building on data from the same
ethnographic investigation, these papers serve as a case to illuminate what might be
happening in other such interventions that are unfolding in schools in many parts of the
world. The urban context of Delhi, while giving this case a unique character, also makes it
comparable to other interventions in large urban centres around the world.
While connected by the larger themes of socio-political constructions of well-being,
the three paper also diverge to give a breadth to the larger project. The first paper captures the
pedagogical elements of well-being in a non-formal educational setting. This not only
broadens the scope of what is largely captured in the so-called ‘educational research’ but also
highlights the ‘educational turn’ in how well-being is understood in contemporary cultures.

15
On the other hand, the third paper brings in the concerns of globalization, especially in how it
interacts with some of the evolving notions of the ‘spiritual east’ and the ‘scientific west’,
given the widespread use of contemplative practices. More work, of course, is needed to flesh
out these ideas in the globalized field of educational well-being.
Contributions
This project lies at the intersection of critical humanistic endeavors: well-being,
education, and public policy. For centuries, human well-being has been a vital part of
everyday living and scholastic inquiry. This research engages with the concept of well-being
that has been considered an important aspect of holistic education whether in schools or
outside (De Souza et al., 2009). Despite an explosion of references to happiness and well-
being in public discourses, the engagement around these ideas is largely polarized. Advocates
see this as an opportunity to human fulfillment, negotiate stressful modern life, and make
policy more people centered (Helliwell et al., 2016; Seligman, 2011). Critics dismiss it as a
smokescreen or a marketing ploy, that depoliticizes collective solidarity, focuses intensely on
individual emotions, bodies, and promotes neoliberal subjectivities through self-monitoring
and performance (Ahmed, 2010; Ehrenreich, 2018; Tokumitsu, 2018). While acknowledging
such concerns, this dissertation steps away from these assessments of well-being to attend to
its educational (and relatedly, developmental) aims. If well-being, as discussed above,
becomes an important individual and collective aspiration then investigations of how well-
being knowledge is constructed (i.e., policy), how is it taught and learnt (i.e., pedagogy), and
what that means for equitable development, are pressing questions for policy, governance,
and education. As a project bringing these concerns together in educational terms, this
research begins to address these issues. In addition to the specific gaps in the literature and
contributions identified in each of the three papers, some of the larger contributions of this
project specifically in terms of research, policy and practice are included below.

16
From a research perspective, this project aims to make contributions to the sub-fields
of socio-cultural foundations of education, educational policy studies, and comparative and
international education. Topically, while student health and physical education has been a
concern for scholarly research for some time (Evans et al., 2004), the more expansive field of
well-being is relatively less researched from an educational perspective (Wright & McLeod,
2015; Wyn, 2009). This investigation explores the various constructions of well-being within
institutional arrangements of contemporary schooling as well as outside them.
Specifically, for the study of contemplative practices like yoga and meditation, this
investigation begins to address a critical gap by discussing the socio-cultural and political
relations forged through pedagogy or assumed in stated policy. This complements the exiting
literature on contemplative practices in schools that has focused almost entirely on the
efficacy of such initiatives (Khalsa & Butzer, 2016; Zenner et al., 2014). By taking the case
of how students and teachers negotiate an embodied pedagogy of yoga and mindfulness, this
project also responds to the call made by scholars to center the empirical experiences of body
in education (Shilling, 2014; Watkins, 2012). Building on the contemporary work on body
that brings together its multiple cognitive, affective, somatic, and social aspects, this
investigation notes students’ embodied negotiations and agency in practicing techniques
towards their own well-being.
This project provides pointers to education and development policymakers around
common understandings, alignment (or lack thereof), or contradictions in articulations of
well-being within policy documents, and everyday expressions in classrooms. This is critical
because schools, where some form of well-being practice is mandated, follow these policy
documents as guiding frameworks. As policy implementation scholars have shown,
contradictions around the definitions of / expectation from policy documents can lead to
misguided implementations (McLaughlin, 1987). One of the key contributions to policy

17
makers from this work is in highlighting the centrality of teachers’ own well-being and moral
sensibilities. A direct implication of this work is thus to focus on teachers’ beliefs in trainings
around well-being programs rather than seeing them as technical skill sets to be imparted.
From a practitioner perspective, the ethnographic descriptions point to possibilities as
well as limits of contemplative practices in different settings. Rather than seeing the everyday
practice of well-being in schools as simply good or bad, my aim is to problematize how it’s
understood and utilized. In questioning the existing conceptions of student discipline, this
research highlights teacher work as ongoing, teacher change as slow and reflective, and
teachers as work-in-progress, much like other human beings. It also highlights the criticality
of ongoing reflections on important as well as ordinary events of classroom. The descriptions
provided in the papers can be insightful for teachers and teacher trainers to see how well-
intentioned ideas can lead to further discrimination of students or making teachers reflect,
even if briefly.
Limitations of the Study
As discussed briefly above one of the difficulties and therefore a limitation of this
work is that the proposed object of research, well-being, is malleable both as a concept as
well as practice. Given the multiple definitions, interpretations, expectations, and associations
related to well-being, grappling with what should be considered as an act towards well-being
was quite expansive and somewhat hard to bound in my field. Would students discussing
their happiness (without any reference to the formal happiness intervention in the school) in a
joyful dance practice count as their understanding of well-being? Is enjoying a charcoal-
activated vegan ice cream by yoga practitioners in the hope that it can be good for their gut
health an intentional act of well-being? While my strategy in the field was to take an
expansive view of how my interlocuters defined and related to well-being, the papers
presented here do not provide a coherent view or aim to capture this exhaustively.

18
Contemplative practices of yoga and mindfulness, as scholars have suggested, are
mobilized, and understood with different registers of health, modernity, nationalism and so
on. While the third paper attempts to capture this in the policy and relatedly political
articulations of well-being, the first two papers focusing on pedagogy do not directly engage
with these differences.
Methodologically, multi-sited ethnography has been critiqued on practical and
conceptual concerns. One of the key concerns has been that engagement with multiple sites
will jeopardize ethnographic commitment to depth and thick description (Hage, 2005). While
others have dealt with this problem by extending the time periods of research at each site,
Falzon (2009) explores the complex effect of time (and not just space) on the “thickness” of
multi-sited ethnographic projects. Using the notion of time-space compression, Falzon
suggests that depth may be hard to come, probably because “it represents the way people
themselves experience the world” currently (p. 9). Even though I spent an extended period in
one of the sites (Delhi), this was partly true in my case as most (if not all) teacher and student
experiences with mindfulness, could be considered somewhat “shallow”, not engaging with
the practice in a deeper way. However, their interpretations and negotiations of well-being
(with or without involving the practice of mindfulness or yoga), as I show in the papers, were
articulated through concerns of political ideologies, moral sensibilities, conceptions of
discipline, as well as conscious intentions of helping others.
Conclusion
The concerns for human well-being are certainly not novel. The character of these
concerns for well-being, what is considered legitimate knowledge around well-being and
relatedly, the means through which well-being can be achieved have surely evolved. As I
note in this dissertation, in its most recent interpretations well-being has a very strong
pedagogical character with an intense focus on individual human bodies, psyches and finding

19
‘scientific’ (primarily psychological) evidence/ solutions to the problems of well-being. Two
important implications of this are the following. One, given the extreme focus on bodies, and
psycho-economic framing, individual is focused at the expense of relationality and the
importance of community in well-being (see e.g., Mathews & Izquierdo, 2009; White, 2017).
Two, since the focus is on finding ‘scientific solutions’, a great deal of focus is on defining,
re-defining, finding the right metrics, and so on for the ‘problem’ or the perceived crises of
well-being, making the discursive field of well-being as a ‘problematique’, something
unresolved or very difficult to solve, if at all.
The three papers begin to do some of the groundwork towards a larger cultural
pedagogy of well-being in its everyday exchanges and larger discourses. I demonstrate how
the pedagogy of well-being, involves labor performed on one’s own body to evoke
experiences, catharsis, and new knowledge including emotional, ethical, and spiritual
reflections. The body became both a means to achieving well-being and an end in terms of
where it could be finally realized. I highlight the unrelenting work and somewhat insatiable
nature of the various experiences related to well-being, pointing to well-being as an
unfinished project. Well-being, in the contexts I investigated, is constantly produced,
reworked on, and unpacked through a realization of the layers of (seemingly unending)
bodily capacities- physical, emotional, ethical, and so on. The complexities of teaching well-
being in a classroom setting are explored through everyday interactions of teachers and
students within established institutions (and problems) of schooling. In a schooling context
like India, teaching well-being is deeply intertwined with concerns for student discipline in
addition to teachers own moral frameworks. The global mobilities of educational well-being
discourse, as I discuss in one of the papers, are animated by the character of one of the central
components of its contemporary iteration, i.e., modern contemplative practices. These remain
entangled in the concerns of secular, modern, spiritual, scientific, and global.

20
The papers presented under the larger framing of educational well-being spark a
series of questions and open up unexplored areas of investigation. For instance, from an
anthropological perspective, it raises the questions of degrees to which well-being is
culturally unique or even dependent, and lies within individual subjectivities, but also “bears
a degree of commonality” given common humanity and interrelatedness (Mathews &
Izquierdo, 2009, p.5). What do yoga practitioners in Los Angles with their embodied
awareness, for instance, have in common with yoga practitioners in parts of India who
practice for years to win the national yoga competitions? The intense focus on well-being
initiatives and contemplative practices in formal educational institutions also opens up the
possibilities of comparative explorations of implementing social-emotional learning in
different contexts, especially given emotions are valued and understood differently in
different parts of the world. While therapeutic cultures dominate some of the interventions
around social-emotional well-being in the ‘western’ countries (Ecclestone, 2004), in what
frameworks do we think about such interventions in countries from the ‘east’ and the global
south? While the global popularity of contemplative practices such as modern yoga is
primarily an urban phenomenon (De Michelis, 2007), what does it mean to bring such
practices to schools in rural areas (for example, statewide school implementations of yoga/
mindfulness in Uttar Pradesh, India or Alabama, US)? From the perspectives of religious
studies and more specifically modern yoga studies, what roles does the strong pedagogical
focus play in redefining modern contemplative practices? What does the increasingly formal
educational cooption of such practices mean for evolving ‘global religions’ (Juergensmeyer,
2003)? Future work can take these multi-disciplinary directions to inform the field of
educational well-being.

21
Paper One: ‘Pedagogic Bodies’: Embodied Teaching-Learning in the Field of
Well-being

Abstract
Globally, modern contemplative practices like yoga and mindfulness are being widely
adopted for the purposes of well-being. This paper begins to explore a possible
pedagogy of well-being by taking the example of modern yoga in Los Angeles.
Embodiment represents an important aspect of both well-being and cultural pedagogy.
While there are rich insights around embodied learning, teaching bodies, in whose
presence we learn, remain marginal. I unpack the forging and communication of
embodied teaching knowledge in a pedagogy of well-being. Drawing on Herbart’s
notion of pedagogical tact and Bourdieu’s interpretation of habitus, I propose the idea
of pedagogic bodies that represents a conscious intent and concern for others within
one’s own body, unpacking relational, pedagogical labor of teaching bodies. This
paper shows how conscious intent and corporeal competence connect to human
practice for the purposes of well-being and notes implications for education and
pedagogy in general.

Keywords: pedagogy, well-being, embodiment, teacher knowledge, conscious intent,
habitus

22
Introduction
The last two decades have seen an explosion of references to well-being. From
popular literature and MOOCs to global health and development, research, policy, and formal
educational institutions – all eyes are turning to this key humanistic need. Contemplative
practices such as modern yoga
5
, meditation, and mindfulness are some of the key ways in
which the aims of modern well-being are being aspired for. For instance, scholars studying
modern yoga in various contexts around the world reveal it to be a practice that
operationalizes well-being for individuals through claims to health, spirituality, and
modernity (see, e.g., Jain, 2015; Lalonde, 2012; Schnäbele, 2010; Strauss, 2005). Typically
delivered in a classroom format with a teacher/ instructor and several learners, these practices
of yoga and meditation have not only caught much public imagination, research, and
commercial interest, but are also being included in formal educational policies worldwide,
especially in curricula around social-emotional learning (SEL). This paper is motivated by
my interest in the ‘educational’ nature of well-being practices. How do you learn to be well?
More importantly, how do you teach others to be well? What is a possible pedagogy of well-
being?
While explicit teaching is not a necessary precondition for learning, some form of
teaching is implicit in how humans grow into adults, learn various skills and arts, and
consciously or unconsciously end up helping others learn. Pedagogical concerns lie in this
acute awareness of helping others learn and in the consciousness of interaction, providing
both a conception and language to understand how teaching and learning relate to each other
(van Manen, 2003). However despite multiple meanings attached to the term ‘pedagogy’ –

5
Scholars have noted significant differences between yoga of the pre-modern times and present-day forms that
are increasingly Anglophone, transnational and primarily postural (De Michelis, 2005). Calling the present-day
forms as ‘Modern Yoga’, these scholars usually define their research field chronologically as yoga in the last
200 years or so. In this paper, I use the term Yoga to refer to Modern Yoga.

23
ranging from teaching/ instructional styles to sociological notions like transmission and
reproduction – scholars argue that pedagogy remains fundamentally “under-defined and
under-theorized” (Watkins et al., 2015). Embodiment, for instance, is one of the assumed
facets of pedagogy, which is rarely unpacked as a set of processes through which certain
bodily capacities are learnt, performed, and communicated (Shilling, 2014; Watkins, 2012).
With specific practices of physical postures, breathing exercises and focus on emotions, the
human body – with all its cognitive, carnal, affective, and critical capacities – is a key site on
which the pedagogy of contemplative practices (and in-turn the aspired well-being) unfolds
and hence, calls for careful attention. The question of ‘embodied pedagogy’, therefore,
precedes the analysis of a pedagogy of ‘well-being’.
Ethnographers and carnal sociologists have developed rich insights around embodied
learning (e.g. Bénéï, 2008, O'Connor, 2005; Wacquant, 2004), noting the various affects and
phenomenological experiences while learning. However, as I discuss in detail below, with
notable exceptions, this work remains focused on learning by our bodies while largely
ignoring the teaching or being taught aspects of pedagogy. Many of these scholars utilize
Bourdieu’s articulation of habitus (Bourdieu, 1980; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) as a
theoretical and empirical tool connecting the body to larger social structures to speak to
educational practices. If indeed, as Bourdieu said that we learn by our bodies, then teaching
bodies, in whose presence we learn, likely play a key role in meaning making. How can a
body learn on its own physical terms, separated from communication, intentions, affect from
another body that is (to an extent) intentionally facilitating its learning?
Foregrounding this relationality of pedagogy in education, I investigate the tacit
knowledge in teaching bodies and the forms of awareness and communication it takes, that
enables pedagogical exchanges for the aims of well-being. I take the example of yoga
teachers in Los Angeles, to study teaching bodies and their interaction with their own and

24
other bodies while aspiring for well-being. Three questions motivate the thrust of this paper.
If all learning is embodied, then how does teaching (which includes learning) incorporate this
sense of embodiment for the aims of well-being? What enables teachers to develop and
communicate embodied knowledge and help others develop a relation to their bodies? Since
pedagogy is deeply influenced by the cultural contexts in which it unfolds, how do teachers
embody the specific milieus of a time and place for the pedagogical purposes of well-being? I
explore these questions through a year-long enactive ethnography (Wacquant, 2015) that,
among other things, included the completion of a 200-hour Yoga Alliance
6
certified teacher
training – a program where teaching knowledge of a practice of yoga is articulated most
explicitly. Additionally, in learning how to teach yoga, prospective teachers arguably begin to
develop the necessary skills, dispositions and the specific embodied knowledge and
relationship with their own bodies that might be required to teach.
I demonstrate that it is primarily for educational purposes, in the intention of teaching
within a particular context, that embodied pedagogic knowledge is realized. This paper
unpacks not only the pedagogical labor that is assumed in the formation of habitus but also
highlights the teaching-learning relations in this labor. I turn to a theory of pedagogy that
speaks to the nature of teachers’ work as practice by utilizing Herbart’s notion of
‘pedagogical tact’. Pedagogical tact represents the possibility of conscious intent in practice,
as opposed to complete automaticity of habitus assumed in Bourdieu’s formulation. Thus,
combined with habitus, pedagogical tact provides an opportunity to theorize an embodied
sense of teaching knowledge that is intentionally and actively developed.
I propose the idea of pedagogic bodies which are part(s) of our bodies, that while
being aware of their own, make space for sensorial, affective, and suffering aspects of others’

6
Yoga Alliance is a US based non-government organization with the world’s largest registry of yoga schools
and teachers. Despite acknowledging issues with their credentialing process, yoga studios and gyms in the US
heavily rely on their certification to hire new yoga teachers.

25
(e.g., student) bodies. Pedagogic bodies are realized in the conscious intention of teaching
and learning and help communicate tacit embodied knowledge. Adept with a tact, pedagogic
bodies not only expand the growing understanding of habitus (O’Connor, 2007; Wacquant,
2014; Watkins, 2012), but also highlight a desire to teach (McWilliam, 1997; Watkins, 2008)
and learn how to teach. Analyzing grounded categories from ethnographic data, I show both
the cultivation of pedagogic bodies and communication of embodied skills needed for
teaching and practicing yoga. I show that while the heightened physicality of a practice like
yoga is important, equally critical is the culture and language in which it unfolds. This offers
some of the groundwork for a pedagogy of well-being. In outlining a pedagogy of well-being,
I note the various intellectual, carnal, affective, spiritual, and ethical dimensions of teaching
and learning. Collectively, I show how conscious intention is connected to tacit knowledge,
and corporeal, affective aspects of human practice.
In what follows, I first delineate the key works that this paper engages with. This is
followed by a section on the selection of sites and methods. I then propose a theoretical
concept of the ‘pedagogic body’ and, in the following three sections, show its presence and
development through ethnographic data with yoga teachers and practitioners in LA. I end
with some notes towards a possible pedagogy of well-being and implications for educational
theory and practice.
Embodied Learning and Missing Teaching Bodies
Ethnographers have explored the less visible and less easily documented aspects of
embodied practices like glassblowing, boxing, circuit training, art, combat sports and also,
yoga (Crossley, 2004; McInnes, 2015; O’Connor, 2005; Sá nchez Garcí a & Spencer, 2014;
Wacquant, 2004). Scholars have specifically built on the notion of habitus to demonstrate
corporeality of learning. For instance, Wacquant’s landmark book ‘Body & Soul: Notebooks
of an Apprentice Boxer’ (2004) details, among other things, his own embodied learning in

26
becoming a boxer in South Chicago through rich, visceral and sensory details. In this and
other work Wacquant (2014) provides a much deeper understanding of habitus, especially by
drawing a distinction between primary and secondary habitus, thus enabling us to capture the
malleability of dispositions. While providing an exceptionally useful model for studying
embodied learning, his work, however, does not sufficiently account for how learners
embodied or came to feel the various corporeal modalities in the presence of, or supported by
their teachers. The neglect of teaching bodies in his work is surprising given that relationality
is a key ontological assumption in Bourdieu’s work. One wonders that it must be, at least in
part through his teacher’s ‘repeated reprimands, silent attention, and ostensible indifference’
that Wacquant (2004, p. 104) embodied the ‘carnal know-how’ of boxing. While he does
mention his teacher’s ‘non-deliberate’ pedagogy which ‘strives to fine-tune, in an empirical
manner, by successive adjustments’, these descriptions are at best thin and not Wacquant’s
focus. Thus, much like Bourdieu, Wacquant too sacrifices to some degree the processual
nature of habitus (that can be unpacked as pedagogical) for a larger analysis of social
reproduction
7
. Similarly, O’Connor (2005) studies embodied knowledge in glassblowing
expanding the notion of habitus to include the material conditions that inform its formation
but does not account for any processes that imparting such knowledge involves.
Exploring ‘reflexive embodiment’ through techniques that act upon one’s own body
with an aim of modification or maintenance, Crossley (2004, 2006) provides another possible
model for studying the embodied pedagogy. Taking the example of circuit training, Crossley
(2004) highlights a specific embodied intentionality that is required for reflexive body
techniques. In practicing circuit training, he notes, bodies “must be absorbed in the activity at
hand, going with the flow and overriding or relaxing the internalized controls which would
ordinarily inhibit such action” (p.53). This reflexive turn in embodiment provides a much

7
See Watkins (2012) and Watkins et al., (2015) for a critique of Bourdieu on these lines.

27
richer engagement with collective and inter-corporeal aspects of learning. However,
Crossley’s focus is also primarily on the embodied learning processes. If learning in reflexive
body techniques happens in part inter-corporeally and intentionally, then how do we account
for teaching bodies with an intent to facilitate learners? With the concept of pedagogic bodies
this paper begins to theorize the embodied-ness of not simply learning but teaching-learning
as it relationally unfolds.
Megan Watkins’ body of work on embodied cultural pedagogy (2005, 2012) traces,
among other things, a genealogy of the embodied student body as imagined through
curricular reforms in parts of Australia. She highlights that while embodied habits and
discipline were once considered central pedagogic tenets, the psychological and progressive
understandings of learning significantly transformed that. Reading Bourdieu’s habitus with
Spinoza’s monism, she empirically highlights the role of the body and conscious efforts in
language learning. In this and other work, Watkins also underscores the declining focus on
the teacher’s role in pedagogy. This paper takes Watkins’ project forward in connecting the
corporeality of pedagogy with the craft of teaching, by taking a case that both highlights
teacher bodies and demonstrates embodied teaching-learning in that process.
McInnes (2015) most explicitly articulates a cultural pedagogy of yoga, providing a
layered account of discursive, embodied, and ethical dimensions in its teaching and learning
through personal experiences. Working with critical discourse analysis, McInnes provides
much of the groundwork to describe a yoga class in its broader pedagogical context noting
several ‘signifying discursive systems in play’ in addition to language, for instance,
extending temporally beyond a class into a café, or discussion on thoughts, feeling and, at
times, esoteric philosophical concerns. Underscoring that the ‘body is always already shaped
through discourses’; he unpacks the instructional schema and syntax of pedagogical language
used in a typical (Iyengar) yoga class. Building on this work, I take up the question of

28
relational pedagogy of yoga in the field of well-being, and empirically investigate the role of
the teacher’s body, which as I detail below, inhabits both learning and teaching roles
simultaneously.
The Pedagogical Tact and Habitus
In his little-known Lecture on Pedagogy, Herbart (1887, as cited in van Manen, 2016)
saw pedagogy as a tact or ‘structures of instant acting’ in the processes of teaching and
learning. Rather than seeing pedagogy as theory or practice, Herbart perceived a space in
between them, where embodied sense of practical actions take place. Describing Herbart’s
notion of pedagogical tact, Kraus (2016) notes that tact is a mode of bridging the gap between
the theories of educational science and educational practice, between pedagogical knowledge
and pedagogical capabilities. Since it would be impossible to support every action with
deliberative theoretical knowledge, tact is “less the result of one’s thinking, but instead gives
vent to one’s inner movement, expressing how one has been affected from without, and
exhibiting one’s emotional state’ (van Manen, 2016, p. 209). Pedagogical tact, is therefore,
unplannable, and unruly as it cannot be regulated by rules or instruments. As a spontaneous
substitute for theory, tact is not always ‘a truthfully obedient servant of the theory’. Indeed,
per Herbart, what distinguishes a good educator from a bad one is how this tact is formed in a
person (Dunkel, 1969). Since tact is situationally dependent, it is only discovered in action
while acting pedagogically, thus negating abstract ideas around pedagogical standards, or
formal attempts at controlling action (Kraus, 2016). Herbart writes: “one must trust his own
ingenuity, in order to meet the needs of the moment in the moment.” (Herbart, 1887, as cited
in English, 2013) Pedagogical tact is thus a self- reflexive regulative of pedagogic action.
English (2013) interprets that tact represents a “conscious turn” towards the learners. “Good
teachers learn that the raison d’etre of teaching is responding to the call of the other – the

29
learner”, she notes (p. 53), and to that extent pedagogical tact represents the ethical nature of
educational relationship
8
.
While not interested in the question of what makes a good or bad teacher, my aim in
this paper is to utilize the notion of pedagogical tact as a way to unpack embodied
pedagogical knowledge and labor. As a “mindfully perceptive mode of being that permits us
to act in the instant of the moment contingently and yet thoughtfully…” (van Manen, 2016, p.
213), pedagogical tact throws light on educational action with intention. It addresses the
existential experience of responding to the call of the other (the learner), something that
habitus fails to acknowledge. Herbart, however, does not provide an embodied perspective of
this tact. His texts are seen as ‘ambiguous’ when interpreting pedagogical tact as a purely
mental ability – seeing it unfold in practice, but sometimes used synonymously with Kant-ian
‘judgement’ (Kraus, 2016).
Habitus is useful here, however, because it provides an embodied way of
conceptualizing learning (which is inseparable from teaching), even though in its various
empirical utilizations it is used primarily to illustrate what could be called (largely)
‘unreflective’ teaching-learning
9
. Habitus could subsume pedagogical tact if only Bourdieu
saw engaged pedagogy as a critical part of a theory of practice. However, the ontological
aspects of both pedagogical tact and habitus, express who we are and who we become as a
result of past life experiences, which in turn guides our actions. This ontological
commensurability between tact and habitus allows us to conceptualize something more useful
for educational purposes. I propose the idea of the pedagogic body (detailed below) that

8
See van Manen (2016) for more on the ethical concerns in Herbart’s work.
9
While Wacquant’s (2014) articulation of ‘secondary habitus’ (and even tertiary, quaternary, quinary, etc.)
captures an effort in consciously acquiring dispositions to some extent, his main interest is to show its ‘distance’
from the primary habitus and the resulting lesser integrated nature of this dispositional formation.

30
provides us not just with an embodied sense of knowing but a reflective sensibility taking
into account the other (a learner) within its own body.
Body at the Forefront: Site and Methods
Realizing that ‘embodied skills and visceral knowledges are a resource for, and not a
hindrance to, social analysis’ (Wacquant, 2005, p. 444), I employ enactive ethnography and
use my own body as a research instrument and object of analysis (Sá nchez Garcí a and
Spencer 2014; Wacquant 2015). I uncover and test the practical schemata by acquiring them
in action by focusing on the pedagogical techniques where they are forged. I started my year-
long fieldwork (Feb 2018 – Jan 2019) by participating in a 200-hours contact Yoga teacher
training program spread over 10 weeks in LA, California and then followed new and
experienced teachers by frequenting the site, practicing with them, and ‘hanging-out’ with
them informally. My primary site was a studio in West LA, Wisdom Yoga (pseudonym
10
)
that remains popular in the area with high ratings and check-ins online (Ratings out of 5 –
Google reviews: 5.0; ClassPass: 4.8; Facebook: 4.9). Offering classes and trainings in
Vinyasa Yoga
11
, the studio was started in 2014 by Kiran, who had over 20 years of
experience teaching yoga and was also the lead teacher trainer.
The 10-week teacher training included a range of sessions and activities. Of these, the
most prominent were posture breakdown (an activity where we spent extended time on one
posture, breaking it down to minute details), hands-on adjustments for others, self-practice,
and sessions on human anatomy, meditation, and philosophy. The training had 14 participants
(including me) and 8 teacher trainers. As teacher trainees, we were invited to assist existing
teachers of the studio for classes meant for the public. I taught in some capacity or practiced

10
All names, including the name of the studio, are pseudonyms as per IRB confidentiality requirements.
11
I chose a teacher training in Vinyasa (a modern yoga style) since it is believed to be ‘birthed’ in LA (Mickle,
2015). If LA is the birthplace of this particular style, then it likely captures, to an extent, the city’s zeitgeist, the
cultural spirit rooted in the context.

31
with at least 24 other practitioners. Therefore, in total, I was in touch with 45 practitioners
who taught, learnt, or practiced in this studio. Post the 10-week teacher training I continued
to follow the existing teacher trainers and newly graduated teachers from our batch by either
attending their class or assisting them with teaching. That 9 out of 14 teacher trainees started
teaching within the first month of completing the program is a proof of gaining the skill and
confidence to teach. I attended their classes to see how they were transitioning into more
formal teaching roles. I continued to frequent the site, ‘followed’ and ‘hung out’ with people
who I trained with in other places, for instance in cafés and events in the city. Additionally, I
conducted in-depth interviews with 5 teacher trainers and 5 teachers who graduated from our
program.
Thus, in the spirit of enactive ethnography, by trying to become a yoga teacher
myself, I used my own body as a tool for research. I was not only observing what other
participants did, but also experienced what doing a posture or meditation felt like and
adopted, to the extent possible, participants’ routines, including certain dietary restrictions. I
wrote scratch notes about both the process and my own experience. After each session, I
expanded scratch notes into detailed field notes – accounts of people, places, interactions, and
events. Data management and analysis was an ongoing process relying primarily on memoing
and open coding (Emerson et al., 1995). My approach to analyzing the data was both
inductive and deductive; some of the coding categories emerged from my respondents’ own
words while others were informed by previous research.
‘Pedagogic Body’
I propose pedagogic bodies are part(s) of our bodies that open communication
channels with other bodies, thus creating an awareness of not only one’s own sensorial,
affective, and suffering selves but that of others’ too. This awareness of other bodies is a key

32
characteristic of the pedagogic body. Pedagogic bodies are not just receptive of others; I
argue, they create a space for others’ sensations, feelings and suffering within its own.
Much like the concept of secondary habitus the pedagogic body represents embodied
dispositions that can be developed with will, desire, and labor and unfold in action. At the
same time, adept with pedagogical tact, what sets pedagogic bodies apart from habitus is
their mindful nature and ability to respond to the concern of the other (learner). In that, much
like Herbart’s notion of tact, pedagogic bodies fundamentally resonate with the ethical nature
of educational relationships, the care for the other. While Herbart refers to tact as pedagogical
to point to practical wisdom that is unique to teachers (English, 2013), I posit that
pedagogical bodies represent the pedagogical capacity within all bodies.
Thus operationalizing an ‘epistemology of practice’ (see: Schö n, 1983), pedagogic
bodies come into action for educational purposes and develop their capacities through a
conscious intent of teaching themselves as well as others, in conversation with the specific
situations, places and people involved. Pedagogic bodies embody not only a teacher’s
personal-practical knowledge (Clandinin & Connelly, 1987) – i.e., knowledge of a teacher's
own past experience, and present actions and future plans – they also attempt to create space
for and feel, to the extent possible, personal knowledge of their students. They represent a
productive desire for teaching and learning (McWilliam, 1997; Watkins, 2008) that makes
education possible in formal and informal spaces.
Scholars have highlighted the role of continued practice (training one’s muscles) to
learn corporeal skills like riding a bicycle. While sustained practice is important, I argue, that
it is through the various capacities of the teachers’ pedagogic body – especially to be aware
of and concerned about others and intentionally facilitating their learning – that makes
possible the explication of tacit knowledge in a pedagogy of well-being. Teaching yoga not

33
only deals with exploring and playing with the limits of strength and flexibility of our own
physical, psychological, and ethical selves but also sensing and pushing others’ limitations.
With the help of empirical data below I demonstrate the conscious forging and
sustaining of pedagogic bodies. In three inter-related sections below, I explore how the
pedagogic body develops, experiences associated embodied knowledge and attempts to
articulate and communicate it to others. The first part shows how yoga teachers navigate
teaching-learning in the larger field of well-being in LA. The second part unpacks how
pedagogic body identifies and resonates with its corporeal and felt aspects. The third part
delineates the specific use or lack thereof language in communicating embodied knowledge.
Keeping Well in Los Angeles: Co-creating Yogi
12
Dispositions
Being a yoga teacher in the US is hard but being a yoga teacher in LA is especially hard!
– Kiran, lead teacher trainer (Oct 2018)
Teaching-learning of yoga in the hub of Hollywood where some of the most cutting-edge
wellness trends originate, mutate, circulate, and are somewhat competitively aspired for is
obviously unique. In this section, I highlight the cultural contexts and the specific socio-
spatial arenas of Los Angeles (LA) in which my interlocutors maneuver their pursuits of
well-being. In a way then this section maps the field (Bourdieu, 1980) of well-being in LA to
the extent that individuals (with their habitus) enter into it and actively believe or pursue
what it offers. While an exhaustive mapping of such a field is beyond the scope of this paper,
I map it from the lived, embodied experiences and choices of practitioners themselves. I
show this specifically in my interlocutors adopting a certain lifestyle – relating to food,
clothing, spiritual and other cultural practices. Additionally, while possible in the given
scenario, this is not a ‘Bourdieusian’ analysis of the field of well-being. In other words, while

12
In American popular culture anyone practicing yoga could refer to themselves as Yogis. Some practitioners
reserve this term for senior and serious practitioners, who also practice an active withdrawal from the world,
among other things.

34
a degree of ‘struggle’ or ‘competition’ for the (presumed) cultural capital was obvious in
respondent’s choices, this was not my primary observation with respect to teaching and
learning. My main aim in mapping a field is to illuminate two key things. One, it highlights
how certain dispositions in this pedagogical context of LA (much like Bourdieu would argue)
were more desirable, and therefore actively taught and learnt. Two, unlike Bourdieu’s
unconscious automaticity of acquiring such dispositions, this paper shows the intentionality
in/ of the pedagogic body as certain dispositions are actively developed through pedagogical
exchanges.
‘Food-made Body’
Because the lead teacher-trainer thought ahimsa (non-violence) is ‘central to the
philosophy of yoga’, participants were formally introduced to and initiated into Veganism.
After a presentation on veganism by an animal rights activist the entire group went to what
was called a ‘pig vigil’, where we ‘witnessed the suffering of the pigs’ right before they were
slaughtered. The presentation and the trip spurred a series of conversations among
participants. While two participants in the group were already vegans, seven of them said
they turned vegans after the teacher training. On the last day of the training, all (but one)
participants said that they made significant changes in their diets after this program reflecting
on ‘ethical aspects of their [food] consumption’.
An enormous amount of break time was spent in discussing food – people’s
relationship to it, their childhood/ cultural associations, to the current choices they made. This
was visible in informal discussions of ‘poisonous effects of sugar’ or complexity in
considering honey as vegan. This ethic of restraint was accompanied by an equally strong
value of indulgence in foods deemed acceptable with newer, unheard of (purportedly
healthier) ingredients, recipes, and restaurants. All group dinner plans were taken up with

35
strong enthusiasm, including creation of a database of vegan restaurants, so we could order
fake chicken and pork dishes.
Despite the somewhat contradictory relationship with food based on restraint and
indulgence, what is important to highlight here is this relationship was consciously and
carefully cultivated. For instance, teacher trainer, Bisu started one of his classes by offering
to share a recipe of khichdi (a hearty South-Asian rice porridge) with the participants. Before
he knew it the room turned into a lively session where multiple people were talking at the
same time – giving each other tips, sharing how to eat certain ingredients and so on. Bisu
later told me that he extended a two-minute planned activity to 30 minutes because ‘it was
important’, as ours is a ‘food-made body’, making a hurried reference to ‘Ayurveda, a sister
science to yoga’. Similarly, an evening after our session, some of us went to a vegan ice-
cream parlor. Before entering, Mini insisted we all try out the ‘activated charcoal flavor’,
because it ‘detoxifies you’. When I asked what it felt like to be detoxified, Mini tried to
articulate the specific feelings. I am not sure if I felt or imagined a ‘mild lightness in my solar
plexus’ after finishing my ice-cream.
Yoga Teacher Body-Image
Yogi bodies in this context had to look a certain way – not only toned and strong with
an ability to do advanced handstands, but also adorned with certain kind of clothes,
accessories, and viewed a certain way by others offline and online. Almost everyone wore
branded and trendy yoga wear along with accessories such as malas (beads necklaces and
wrist bands). About 10 minutes in each one-hour session of yoga practice were dedicated to
doing gym-style core exercises (not typically identified as yoga postures) over fast beats of
music and encouraging cheers of ‘good sweat’. However, in a culture where high intensity
Cross-Fit and F45 trainings seem to be the norm, one of the most athletic yoga styles
(vinyasa) including dedicated ‘core-building’ exercises was not sufficient. Participants felt

36
their “abs [were] not toned enough”. Lindsey described the additional exercises she does,
adding that she is happy to guide a session for us; once again, pointing to the awareness of
aspects that needed additional teaching and learning, and a willingness to share this
knowledge.
Several participants worked hard to develop skills for a perfect Instagram picture. I
noticed Rose, for instance, skipping her lunch two consecutive afternoons, practicing
handstands in front of the mirror at different spots in the studio. On the second day, she asked
me to click pictures giving me quick instructions on what angles to use as she did several
advanced postures, one after the other. After this, Mary (who has more than 5000 Instagram
followers), gave a full tutorial on Instagram filters, and which quotations and hashtags to use
with your images.
New Age Trends and Beliefs
Influenced by the increasingly popular wellness events in the city, the participants
attended and kept each other informed about events such as ‘Sunday VegFest’, ‘Yoga Dance
and Music festival’, ‘The Bhakti Fest’, ‘The Shakti Fest’ through ever circulating invitations
on social media. Web resources were shared about yoga teaching tips, anatomy, and ‘cool’
yoga teachers/ studios in LA. Discussions around other wellness trends, such as essential oils,
‘conscious dating’ apps not directly related to yoga were important too.
Adopting certain New Age spiritual practices seemed to be the right way to become a
yoga teacher in this context. Teacher trainers in the program believed and very intricately
weaved into the training, the idea that ‘emotional issues get stored in physical tissues of the
body’. Different physical postures and meditations were associated with healing of certain
specific emotional issues. For instance, while practicing the half-pigeon pose, Kiran said that

37
this posture was associated with the sacral chakra
13
and therefore helped with healing sexual
traumas and anxiety. Sophie said that she would start to cry as soon as she got into this
posture and for a long time did not want to do it. Kiran encouraged her to continue practicing
so ‘the transformation could happen’. Several participants picked on the transformative
aspects of ‘releasing’ emotions. Agnes, for instance, identified and helped me release what
she called ‘academic anxiety’ in my neck by giving a massage.
Identifying and Resonating with the Pedagogic Body
There’s no running away from your body! If you as a teacher can’t do and communicate the
experience of an asana [posture], how do you expect others to learn?
– James, a teacher trainer (Aug 2018)
In what follows I discuss some of the key mechanisms by which the more corporeal and
somatic aspects of the pedagogic body were operationalized for my interlocutors.
Communicating With and Through Bodies
One of the key modes through which pedagogic body could be experienced was by
noticing the communication within. Among other things, trainees in my program learnt to
teach yoga by first asking or checking with their own bodies. Not only did it seem like the
embodied, somatic information was stored in the muscles (in the form of a memory, perhaps),
but also, the specific muscle memory had to be activated in the very part of the body where it
existed in order to teach a movement. Consider, for instance, the exchanges in one posture
breakdown session where we discussed the eagle posture:
Kiran: So, your leg goes up first [lifts her right leg, holding her right knee with her
hand], hips open [opens her right leg sideways] and then you take the leg over
[brings right thigh over left, bends, and wraps lower right leg behind left calf]
Rose: How else would you do it?
Kiran: Some people bend first, to wrap their legs
[Rose tries to bend and wrap her legs a couple times]

13
Chakras, in various Hindu traditions, are subtle, energy centers in human body that are symbolically mapped
to specific human physiological and emotional capacities (D. G. White, 2011).

38
David: So, is the pelvic floor tilted?
Kiran: Umm… should there be a tilt?
Mini: [doing the pose herself]: I feel it should be neutral…
Kiran: Yes! it should be neutral [Kiran looking at Mini, lengthens her own back]
Mini: [imitating Kiran, tries to rise up] Yup!
David: Sorry, one more question, are your elbows above your chest or below? [his
arms wrapped, moves up and down]
Kiran: [back on her seat, wraps her arms again, looks at her elbows] slightly above
[David repeats his arm movement- up and down]
- Field notes (April 2018)
Knowledge of a posture in this context is not only embodied, such that practitioners had to do
something in order to understand it (like Rose tries to) but also had to be invoked within the
teacher’s own body to be able to give instructions. For instance, Kiran checked with her arms
before confirming the elbow position.
Several of us learning to teach felt this need to check within our bodies. For instance,
having done the sun salutation (a sequence of postures) on one side, Sophie while teaching
the rest of the trainees, moved her leg first and then gave the instructions. Similarly, Julie,
while practicing how to teach, had to close her eyes to give specific instructions to ‘feel
inside [her] body if her leg should be externally rotated or internally’. Thus, a silent and
practical communication with one’s own body preceded the verbal (or non-verbal)
communication with others. The idea is not to simply remember and hunt a stored image of
something in your head. Asking your own body requires re-living a movement in parts of
your body, if not physically then at least energetically.
In several cases, body-to-body communication took place without any words
exchanged; for example, the interaction between Mini and Kiran described above. Kiran
lengthens her own back to show Mini how she could improve her posture. The gist of
embodied knowledge is not only communicated through explicit linguistic interventions but
also through this bodily silent and practical pedagogic technique. This body-to-body
communication became prominent towards the end of the training program as the teacher-
trainers knew more about students’ bodies, the likely mistakes they made, and their capacities

39
for strength and flexibility. For instance, seeing Agnes crouched in a squat pose, another
teacher trainer, Grace, simply looked into Agnes’ eyes and lightly moved her own shoulders
backward. Agnes immediately received the cue and adjusted. The pedagogic communication
involved the personal-practical knowledge of the teacher trainer and the reflexive
embodiment of the trainee to help her realize what she was already familiar with.
Inviting Others’ Bodies
Another way in which teaching yoga unfolded was through explicitly calling upon
and inviting the embodied, affective experiences of students. While the body-to-body
communication happened without using any words, this method was more explicit with a
stated intention and effort to understand what others felt.
While doing a meditation, for instance, we were asked to be in a specific posture for
around five minutes, focus on a specific chakra in the body and were invited to share our
sensorial, embodied experience of the meditation. This resulted in people sharing their
physical pains and self-revelatory emotions. Thus, as part of learning how to teach, we
experienced not only, what Wacquant (2004) mentions as, our own ‘suffering body’, but also
explicitly brought out what other people were suffering from. This concern for other’s
suffering, much like how Herbart describes, was then used as a pedagogical device to create a
group meditation tailored to suffering, and therefore healing, of the larger group.
In another instance, one of the teacher trainers, KP highly encouraged all of us to do
yoga with others - in a group, with our families, friends, even with strangers on a beach. ‘Feel
the energy of others… you might get drained, you might feel energized, but that is how you
learn, and that is how you teach’, she insisted. The underlying assumption in these exercises
and discussions was that other bodies in whose presence we teach, learn or practice are
important and that we need to not only acknowledge them but invite them into our practice
and bodies.

40
Building Knowledge Consensus through Bodies
At times, the capacities of the pedagogic body were agreed upon through actively
building upon embodied knowledge of the group. For instance, discussing details of the
Crescent lunge posture, Tien asked KP, the teacher trainer, about the position of the back
foot. ‘Is the heel stacked over the ball or is it going down towards the floor’, she asked. In
response KP mentioned that there is no right way of doing it and invited all of us to try both
foot positions. A range of opinions filled the room. Mary said, ‘if I keep the heel high, I
strengthen my calf’. David said, ‘but energetically heel down makes sense, so there is one
line of energy in my leg’. Others chimed in. KP insisted that different forms are right, but for
the purpose of instructional clarity took a vote from all the participants on how we should go
about teaching this to others in the studio. Multiple embodied skills were invoked to
collectively decide a teaching skill.
While this seemingly democratic system of creating knowledge may or may not be
unique, what is unique is that multiple practicing bodies are seen as the source of knowledge.
All the participants and teacher trainers in the program were most updated with the specific
knowledge of a posture. The ultimate authority on knowledge, however, was not outside but
inside their own bodies. This knowledge consensus and looking within for the source of
knowledge was not pre-planned or part of a lesson plan. Instead, it was realized in action as a
“creative act of meeting the needs of the moment” English (2013).
Explicating Tacit Knowledge Through Language and Action
Enough of proprioception talk, now just don’t think about anything… let’s do a handstand!
- KP, a teacher trainer (fieldnotes: Apr 2019)
The pedagogic body realized in the making of teachers was equipped with theoretical
knowledge and relied strongly on its ability to access and express this knowledge in action. In
teaching simple and complex postures, on the one hand, yoga teachers actively developed a

41
scientific body vocabulary and used it for instructions, reasoning, and reflection (McInnes,
2015). On the other hand, they urged students to trust and rely on their own bodily
intelligence while doing a posture. In what follows, I expand on these two tactics showing the
language play in the process of action and reflection.
A deep knowledge of human anatomy, spine and vertebras, bone structure, joints,
muscle groups and tissues were actively developed to converse in a kind of body-talk that not
only sounded scientific but also brought gravitas to everyday discussions. A significant time
in the teacher training was devoted to getting into the minutiae of postures, identifying which
posture strengthened or made flexible which muscle-groups and body parts. A sustained
effort was made to learn technical and biological names of body parts and structures. We
‘protracted’ and ‘retracted’ our shoulders rather than moving them forward or backward. We
were advised to experience ‘dorsiflexion’ instead of simply bringing our toes closer to the
shinbone. Issues with good postures were discussed as ‘anterior and posterior pelvic tilts’.
Special discussions were taken up to understand concepts like ‘proprioception’, a sense of
where we are in space, the relative position of one's own parts of the body and the strength of
effort being employed in movement. One teacher trainer conducted an advanced workshop on
‘psoas’, the deepest (and hardest to feel) skeletal muscle pair in our body that originates at the
very last vertebra of the thoracic spine (T-12), attaches all the bones of the lumbar vertebrae,
crossing the front of the pelvis to attach at the top of the inner thigh. Through complex
sequence of instructions and movements, the trainer helped her students identify and feel
their psoas.
Defending the need for this scientific vocabulary a trainer noted, ‘how can I teach
something without knowing the science of it? Yoga is not woo-woo, you see!’. While the
scientific legitimacy of a purported 5,000-year-old practice was important in a context where
fitness is taken seriously, what also seemed critical to teachers was the ability to give precise

42
instructions. Another trainer insisted that the only way he can make his instructions work
well is by naming the exact body part. ‘That every human being has exactly same body parts
with minor differences is a miracle!’ he exclaimed. Becoming savvy in this body-talk was
indeed a means to becoming a knowledgeable and successful yoga teacher in one of the most
competitive health and wellness markets such as that of LA. This expanded scientific
vocabulary, however, was also helping, to an extent make some tacit knowledge more
explicit with some additional reflexive work from practitioners.
The limits of language were identified as soon as teachers and trainees got into action.
In a special class focused on inversions (postures where the body is upside down with the
body weight on hands, arms, or the head), a teacher reflected on how he felt while doing 15
minutes of a handstand at a stretch with a complex vocabulary of physical orientation, his
perception of blood circulation, and energetic shifts through his body. However, almost
instantly he told students to not look for or think of these things while practicing. ‘The reason
I’m sharing my experience is for you to be aware, to keep your inner eye open for these
experiences and let them guide you’, he explained. As one of the teacher trainees, Rose came
out of a feathered peacock pose she described how this was the first time she could ‘actually’
get into the posture fully. ‘I think I was thinking too much about it and therefore wasn’t able
to do it!’, she reflected.
Several other teachers insisted on throwing oneself into action rather than contemplate
about the specifics. However, language was put back again into the experience of the posture
in retrospect. Unable to do a handstand, I was asked to describe what it felt like in those few
moments of finding and losing balance. Kiran, the lead teacher trainers, repeated on several
occasions to ‘trust the body’s intelligence’. However, simply trusting and practicing was not
sufficient for teaching purposes. The act of the posture itself was almost always preceded and

43
followed by a discussion of parts involved, reminding others to keep listening to one’s body,
and a reflection of why they were or were not able to do the posture.
Pedagogic Body in Well-being and Beyond: Implications and Discussion
Motivated by a larger concern for teaching and learning of well-being, this paper
begins to do some of the groundwork towards a pedagogy of well-being. I take the example
of a globally popular modern contemplative practice, yoga, that is being utilized for the aims
of well-being to unpack its teaching and learning in LA. I demonstrate that the pedagogy of
well-being, in this context, involved labor performed on one’s own body to evoke
experiences, catharsis, and new knowledge including emotional, ethical, and spiritual
reflections. The body became both a means to achieving well-being and an end in terms of
where it could be finally realized. In order to feel well, the teacher trainers and trainees in my
program worked hard, stretching not only their physical strengths and flexibilities, but also
acquiring dispositions relating to teaching and actively learning in the specific cultural
community, participating in the ethics of eating a certain way, re-evaluating their moment-to-
moment awareness of breath and being with other bodies, and at times, deeper traumas they
have endured or lived with.
While language is one of the most important tools of pedagogy, the concept of
pedagogic bodies brings to the forefront action that intentionally moves away from thought
and language. The inter-corporeal aspects of the pedagogic body as noted in body-to-body
communication as well as inviting other bodies’ experiences into one’s own highlight the
crucial importance of relationality in aspects of teaching-learning as well as well-being.
Using the concept of pedagogic bodies, I demonstrate that the pedagogy of well-
being, in this context is characterized by a certain intentionality of teaching and learning that
is otherwise not given much attention to. The conscious cultivation of certain habits and
dispositions is discussed in the development of a secondary habitus too, but from a point of

44
view of gaining a certain advantage in the field. However, as shown above, I highlight a
willingness to work hard on developing these dispositions not just for oneself, but others as
well. This is not to say that all teaching (around well-being or otherwise) is intentional all the
time. But the pedagogic body comes into play with intentional acts and concern for others.
However, the unrelenting work towards one’s own well-being and somewhat
insatiable nature of the various experiences also points to well-being as an unfinished project.
One does not just get it like multiplication and know it for the rest of one’s life. Well-being in
this context is constantly produced, reworked on, and unpacked through a realization of the
layers of (seemingly unending) bodily capacities- physical, emotional, ethical, and so on.
The analysis presented above begins to draw out some of the characteristics of an
embodied pedagogy of well-being. We do know that to some degree all pedagogy is
embodied. However, much of the attention to embodied pedagogy has ignored bodies in
whose presence we learn. The concept of pedagogic bodies highlights the knowledge, and
individual and collective labor of teaching bodies. But is the pedagogic body, with its
reflective action, concern for others, and realization in practice applicable only to a pedagogy
of well-being?
One could argue that pedagogic bodies might be too specific to skills like yoga that
requires a heightened awareness of one’s body. I propose, however, that pedagogic bodies
represent pedagogical capabilities of all bodies. Recent research in embodied cognition
(Shapiro, 2007) and neurobiology (Immordino-yang & Damasio, 2007) clearly point to the
emotional and corporeal making of a mathematician, for instance. The possible advantage of
looking at a corporeal practice like yoga, is that in the somewhat exaggerated physicality of
the practice, at least some of the techniques of embodied teaching-learning can be observed
explicitly. Whether these categories of the pedagogic body apply to teaching-learning of

45
another (less visibly physical) skill such as Math or Language, however subtly, is an area of
further research.
The role of conscious intent might also be overplayed in a contemplative technique
like yoga (and perhaps other New Age practices), where being aware and mindful is a part of
the practice and has a certain currency. After all, contemplative techniques, such as yoga and
meditation represent reflexive body work that (sometimes) utilize conscious intent to bring
about changes within oneself (Crossley, 2006; Pagis, 2009). While there may be some truth
to this objection, the conscious character of the pedagogic body is also a reflection of
intentionality and ‘noticing’ in teaching as Herbart posits and other scholars of teacher
knowledge have explored (Loughran, 2013; Mason, 2002). Watkins' (2012) interpretation of
habitus through a phenomenological lens is a similar effort in highlighting engaged elements
of pedagogy.
The presence of conscious intent in the pedagogic body does need further exploration.
One, it speaks to a sort of permeability of conscious and non-conscious forms of knowing. If
tacit knowledge, generally viewed as ‘know how’, is resistant to conscious explication, then
conscious intent seems to assume that there is some way of knowing and distinguishing the
two (Adloff et al., 2015). Two, specifically for educational purposes, the power relationships
implicated in who is able to direct consciously, the pre-conscious socio-cultural learning of
others is another crucial issue.
The concept of the pedagogic body provides a framework for both the personal and
collective tacit knowledge as well as its explication to an extent. Pedagogic bodies’
capability of being intentional and its interplay with language also speaks to the nature of
teacher knowledge in general that has been theorized as personal practical knowledge
(Clandinin & Connelly, 1987). Much like Michael Polanyi’s (1967) assertion, ‘we can know

46
more than we can tell’, the pedagogic body demonstrates that we can also teach more than we
can tell.

47
Paper Two: Pedagogies of Well-being: Embodied Discipline and Moral
Frameworks

Abstract
Student well-being has become a central concern for schools and education policies
worldwide. While researchers have investigated efficacy of several well-being and
social-emotional learning (SEL) programs, there is little attention paid to everyday
pedagogical of well-being. I ask: What pedagogical relations are (re)formed in these
explicit articulations of student well-being? How, if at all, do they (re)produce power
relations in a classroom? By taking the example of a student well-being and SEL
initiative, the Happiness Class, in Delhi, India, I show how the pedagogy of student
well-being is deeply intertwined with embodied discipline and bounded by moral
sensibilities of teachers. Analyzing data from a multi-sited ethnography, I unpack the
everyday encounters with discipline in processual, relational, and embedded contexts.
Based on this analysis I raise pertinent questions about the existing conceptions of
student discipline in the current educational research.

Keywords: well-being, SEL, pedagogy, student discipline, teacher’s work

48
Introduction: Emergence of Well-being as a Pedagogical Project
There is a growing consensus that we are in the middle of a crisis – economy,
environment, climate, but especially, health and well-being. Children and youth are at the
center of this crisis of well-being as evidenced in multiple global reports, indices, and league
tables (Goldin, 2014; Sharma, 2017; UNICEF, 2013). Particularly within schools this crisis is
captured in innumerable reports from almost every part of the world citing rising rates of
suicides, mental health issues, school dropouts and so on. While countries from the global
south are worse off on these parameters, the problem is as bad in the ‘developed’ world. A
report from UNICEF on ‘Child Well-being in Rich Countries’ for instance, notes that “there
does not appear to be a strong relationship between per capita GDP and overall child well-
being” (2013, p. 3). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated this
crisis of well-being, crystalizing inequities on familiar fault lines – race, class, caste, and
gender (OECD, 2021).
Surely, there has been an emerging and strong global education policy response to
this crisis in the last two decades. Worldwide, policies and initiatives aimed explicitly at
student well-being have garnered a significant interest and support both within and outside
schools. Among others, Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has emerged as a prominent idea
in which the goals of well-being are being articulated and programs are being designed.
Aligned with one of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 4.7), UNESCO, for instance,
created a dedicated research institute to mainstream SEL through related research and
programs (UNESCO, 2012). Consortiums and alliances such as CASEL, and ‘Karanga’,
countless research institutions within and outside large Universities, non-governmental
organizations, and various philanthropic organizations are promoting SEL initiatives in local
education policies around the globe. With various inter-related aims, widely popular and

49
growing SEL initiatives underscore the overarching agenda of bringing well-being into
formal or informal education.
We already know that formal educational attainment (possessing more and higher
degrees) is significantly positively related to adult subjective well-being (Witter et al., 1984;
Yakovlev & Leguizamon, 2012). However, this explicit focus on teaching and learning of
well-being renders well-being itself as a pedagogical project. We not only want to teach
children how to speak a language or solve calculus but also learn how to be ‘well’. Explicit
policies, curricula, and skill sets are being identified for this pedagogy of well-being. SEL is
being considered a foundational skill in education, especially in contexts where psychosocial
problems stemming from childhood adversity disrupt children’s ability to learn and socialize.
Recent reports have called for reorganizing curricula, pedagogy, and learning assessments
“toward a whole-brain learner-centric, socially inclusive education for human flourishing that
emphasizes… social-emotional learning” (UNESCO-MGIEP, 2022). As well-being and
SEL
14
interventions formally enter schools, what constitutes its explicit pedagogy remains
somewhat open for investigation. This is critical as pedagogy can shape not only subjective
experience of students in the classrooms, but also how they perceive the subject of well-being
itself. I take up this pedagogical project of well-being, to explore how it gets articulated and
enacted within formal educational spaces like classrooms. Specifically, I ask: What
pedagogical relations are (re)formed in these explicit articulations of student well-being?
How, if at all, do they interact with power relations in a classroom?
I explore these questions by taking the case of Happiness Class, a SEL initiative
implemented in all government schools of Delhi, India. In the sections below, I start with a

14
In this paper, I prefer using the term well-being (over SEL) and sometimes use the terms well-being and SEL
somewhat interchangeably. There are two reasons for this. One, while SEL as a term has gained significant
popularity, interlocuters at my site did not use it in their daily language. Two, as a concept SEL itself has
evolved to mean several things with somewhat varying underlying frameworks. However, well-being remains
an overarching goal of all SEL initiatives.

50
need for such an investigation that explores pedagogies of well-being, and my own
orientation towards a theory of pedagogy. Next, I provide the context of the specific initiative
(Happiness Class) aimed at student well-being and some of the methodological
considerations. Through four ethnographic cases I show pedagogies of well-being as they
unfold in the relational contexts of schools, and how they entangle with everyday disciplining
of students. In the Indian context, where teachers are found to include the development of
moral character of children as part of their duties (Sarangapani, 2003), I also underscore the
influence of teacher’s own moral frameworks in the pedagogies of well-being. Given these
contextual specifics, I raise questions about the current conceptions of student discipline
present in the educational literature. Student discipline in educational literatures is always
seen as something always inherently bad, or something to be explicitly done in classrooms in
certain ways. What if we unpack the everyday instances of discipline(ing) that can go one
way or the other, that can be discriminatory or at times, useful, among other things? I
highlight discipline as a process as much for teachers as for students, underscoring the
importance and scope of reflection and improvisation in teachers’ work.
Why ‘Pedagogy’ of Well-being?
Pedagogy remains under-theorized
As a central concern in education, pedagogy has had multiple and evolving
definitions, ranging from teaching style, classroom management, and modes of instruction, to
larger philosophical concerns, institutional contexts and how they relate to the social world.
Highlighting that pedagogy is much more than formal exchange of skills and techniques,
scholars have made a distinction between implicit and explicit pedagogies (Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1977), visible and invisible pedagogies (Bernstein, 1971) and a ‘hidden
curriculum’ through which certain values are covertly transmitted (Apple, 2004; Jackson,
1968). However, despite proliferating uses of the term, scholars insist that pedagogy remains

51
under-defined and under-theorized (Lusted, 1986; Watkins et al., 2015) and often considered
“unworthy of being taken up as a serious project” (Giroux, 1995, p.6).
In their volume titled ‘Cultural pedagogy and human conduct’, Watkins, Nobel, and
Driscoll (2015) assert that pedagogy remains ‘muddled’ in a network of terms considered
educational, such as teaching, learning, training and curriculum, or implied in a range of
‘sociological notions’ such as acculturation, socialization, transmission or reproduction.
Engaging with a wide range of philosophers and sociocultural theorists who have been
invoked to study pedagogy, the editors of this volume, highlight the different
conceptualizations as well as the missing pieces in the apparent ‘black box of pedagogy’.
They argue that in its conceptual focus pedagogy is understood through which something is
done (to the students), without much focus on how it is done. It is argued that much of the
discussion around pedagogy is typically reduced to focus on institutional structures and
reproduction of power, reiterating its ideological effects and lacks nuance in thinking about
power (Savage, 2010; Watkins et al., 2015). With some exceptions, what remains
undertheorized are the more practical aspects of pedagogy, the everyday processes, and
relations, and unpacking their specific dimensions around the notions of performativity,
embodiment, appropriation and so on (Watkins et al., 2015). Working with these scholars,
this paper examines the various pedagogic dimensions as they unfold in relational, everyday
contexts that make it difficult to reduce pedagogy to a singular definition or ascribed to a
specific ideology.
In a similar spirit, scholars exploring well-being in educational contexts have warned
against a reductionist conceptualization that “pyschologizes, medicalizes, economizes,
geneticizes, socializes or politicizes” these ideas (Michalos, 2008, p.347). Scholars have
argued for and demonstrated, to an extent, the importance of ‘wholeness’ as a developmental
approach, integrating the multiple dimensions on which learners are typically imagined

52
(Wortham et al., 2021). This paper brings together these two large ideas of well-being and
pedagogy in a formal educational setting to relationally unpack each and move towards a
more holistic understanding.
Lacking Focus on Pedagogy in Literatures on Educational Well-being and SEL
The nascent but rapidly growing literature on well-being, and more specifically SEL
in education has attempted to capture the various aspects of such initiatives in schools and
other educational programs. Literature on SEL interventions around the world has captured
its efficacy for student’s skills, attitudes and behaviors, improved economic mobility and
long-term life outcomes (Durlak et al., 2011; Jones & Kahn, 2017). Recent research in the US
has pointed to utilizing SEL for as a lever for student equity and justice-oriented, race-
conscious, transformative education (Jagers et al., 2019). While there is some attention paid
to best practices and conditions for better implementation of SEL in classrooms (Jones et al.,
2018; Marsh et al., 2018), there is relatively little analysis of the conditions and the processes
through which the pedagogy of SEL unfolds. Similarly, research on specific contemplative
practices in schools like yoga and mindfulness has pointed to its efficacy in areas such as
attention, introspection, and emotion regulation (Khalsa & Butzer, 2016; Klingbeil et al.,
2017) with marginal attention, if at all, to its pedagogy.
Scholars are similarly beginning to explore pedagogical concerns and
conceptualizations in SEL programs. Ecclestone (2011), for instance, traces this move
towards SEL in Britain as part of a “long-running tendency to psychologise intractable
educational and social problems” (p. 91). One outcome of this movement, she argues,
includes offering “emotionally-focused pedagogy and knowledge”, particularly for the
disadvantaged populations. Providing a more empirical texture to this discussion, Evans
(2017) explores the micro practices of SEL in select schools in the UK, to show the various
“gendering strategies” in classrooms. She demonstrates a “propensity for gendered pedagogic

53
practices to relativise students’ emotional subjectivities” and calls for more research critically
engaging with policies around well-being (p. 199). Scholars in the US, have critiqued the
“monolithic approaches” of most SEL programs that do not pay much attention to powerful
and oppressive cultural contexts and argue for a more culturally relevant and sustainable
pedagogy (Mahfouz & Anthony-Stevens, 2020). Broadly contextualizing SEL skills in North
America, Japan and South Africa, Hayashi et al. (2022) also highlight the need for a more
culturally relevant SEL that also integrates embodied and situated learning processes.
Building on these works, this paper responds to the calls made to focus on the everyday
pedagogy of SEL and contributes to both its theoretical and empirical understandings.
Pedagogy: Orienting Ideas for Investigation
My orientation towards pedagogy most closely aligns with the German philosopher,
Johann Friedrich Herbart’s idea of ‘pedagogy as tact’ and its interpretations by others.
Herbart saw pedagogy in the structures of ‘instant acting’ and unpacks ‘practice’ itself in
epistemological terms. Highlighting the limits of scientific knowledge in understanding
pedagogy, and an impossibility of only theory supporting all action, Herbart notes, “[n]o
matter how good the theorist is when he applies his theory, then an intermediate part, in the
form of a certain tact, will insert itself quite involuntarily between theory and practice” (1882
as cited in van Manen, 2016, p. 209). Tact for Herbart, therefore, is not a direct result of one's
thinking, but “a mode of action” that expresses one's inner movements, affects and emotions.
It is this space between practice and theory where pedagogic tact is conceived; it enters the
gap that ‘theory leaves vacant’. Thus, a key attribute of pedagogic tact is a ‘creative act of
meeting the needs of the moment’ (English, 2013).
While giving importance to content knowledge, pedagogical tact is both informed by
as well as informs reflective stances on one’s practice. It is in the discontinuities of teaching
practice – of making mistakes or getting stuck – that teachers can reflect on their experiences,

54
rethink their theoretical knowledge, and revise their practice (Kraus, 2016). Another
important aspect of pedagogical tact, as highlighted by scholars studying Herbart’s work, is
that of its ethical nature, especially in its concern for students. For instance, van Manen
(2016) highlights ethical responses to situations teachers face, and further interprets teacher
knowledge s experienced as “ethically thoughtful actions, relations, situations, and embodied
temporalities” (p. 213). English (2013) invokes the Aristotelian notion of phronesis, or the
art of making informed, wise decisions in the moment, to underscore Herbart’s vision.
Combined with tact’s reflective aspect, English (2013, p. 50) argues that Herbart’s work
provides a starting point “for understanding the experience of teaching as discontinuous and
necessarily improvisational”.
Inspired by this broad idea of pedagogy, my aim in this paper is to observe, reflect on
and interpret with teachers themselves the various ‘discontinuities’ in the process of teaching
learning. Such discontinuities in practice, as the reader can imagine, are hard to find in
official documents, or teaching plans but need to be observed in situ as they unfold in
classrooms. Given that the ontological aspect of tact expresses who we are and who we have
become as a result of past life experience, focus on teachers and seeing teaching-learning in a
connected, relational paradigm would be imperative in this investigation. These and other
reasons inspired an ethnographic approach to my investigation, as detailed next. Moreover,
the case of well-being which in itself has been conceptualized as an endeavor in practice and
pursuing an ethical life (Fischer, 2014) provides a further impetus to focus on the question of
everyday practiced moralities in classrooms.
The Happiness Class and Methodological Considerations
To explore the pedagogies of well-being I take the case of Happiness Class, as a well-
being initiative implemented all government schools in Delhi. Introduced in July 2018, the
Happiness Class (and the associated Happiness Curriculum) is targeted specifically to

55
improve student’s well-being, social-emotional learning (SEL), deal with a current
“psychological crisis”, and re-think the purpose of education as a liberating process for
learners, freeing them from “exploitation and injustice in society” (SCERT-Delhi & DoE,
2019, p. 9-10). Given that government schools in Delhi (and elsewhere in India) are attended
primarily by economically disadvantaged children, the Happiness curriculum is being
perceived as a “progressive” reform in public education and has received much attention and
appreciation in India and abroad (Bowman, 2018; Doshi, 2018; Scott, 2021). The state
government of Delhi, governed by a new political party in India, Aam Aadmi Party,
differentiates itself from other major national political parties through a strong focus on
public education. Happiness class, aimed explicitly at student’s well-being and SEL, is one of
their key initiatives.
Among other things, the curriculum framework also invokes Aristotle’s ideas of
happiness as the purpose of life, and recent scientific research around happiness and well-
being (SCERT-Delhi & DoE, 2019). Based on this curriculum (with a defined framework,
and teacher handbooks), the Happiness class is implemented in government school in Delhi
directly impacting over 800,000 students. A compulsory daily period for students in grades 1
through 8, the Happiness class includes practicing mindfulness, discussing stories and other
activities with students around values such as harmony and respect. A typical Happiness class
unfolds as 25-30 minutes of ‘zero period’
15
in a school day. Sessions are organized by the
days of the week in Teacher Handbook - Mondays are dedicated to different mindfulness
activities; each session from Tuesdays through Thursdays includes either a story or an
activity around some of the key values identified such as peace, harmony, respect, and
empathy. This session also includes a short, 3–5-minute mindfulness practice and some

15
A zero period in many Indian schools is a period allotted to typically do non-academic work (such as a hobby
class) after the morning assembly and before the first period.

56
reflections from students; Fridays are exclusively meant for student expression where they
are expected to reflect on what they learnt during the week. The teachers are expected to
facilitate this session encouraging different responses from students, not soliciting any right
or wrong answers.
Given the nature of questions I ask, and my theoretical orientations, I choose
ethnographic methods to investigate the pedagogies of well-being. This paper is part of a
larger multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995, 2012), conducted from April 2019 to March
2020 and August 2020 to October 2020, that explores the various constructions of
educational well-being. To get a first-hand experience of how well-being pedagogy unfolds,
this paper leverages ethnographic observations and interviews from two schools in Delhi. In
line with my broader research questions, these schools were purposely sampled based on high
student diversity in terms of student caste/ religious/ socio-economic status demographics. In
both the schools, I focused on grades 6 to 8 as this age group has been identified as one of the
key influential periods in terms of emotional, moral and personality development (Eccles,
1999), a key aim of implementing these initiatives.
For this paper I utilize data from observations of school days (twice a week or more;
300+ hours), focusing specifically on all well-being sessions including the Happiness class,
student counselling, health, physical education, and other activities. Additionally, I followed
teachers in spaces of informal engagement (like staff rooms), which other researchers have
found to be very productive, as they allow access into the “hidden transcripts” (Scott, 1990) –
moments of reflection on and resistance against their professional roles. To gain access to
individual “narratives” and “imagined meanings” (Lamont & Swidler, 2014) I interviewed
and had ongoing conversations with over 20 teachers, and 10 students.
Data management and analysis was an ongoing activity. I took “jottings” (Emerson et
al., 1995) for all formal and informal conversations, observations, which were converted into

57
field notes every evening. I created more detailed reflection notes every week to determine
preliminary themes and adjust my ongoing focus in observations and interviews. When
encountered with a ‘paradox’ in the field (more on this in the next section), I made reflection
notes and adjusted future investigations accordingly. I open coded the materials, informed
both by data and theory (Miles et al., 2014) to find emergent themes. Based on these themes,
I detail four ethnographic cases, in this paper to highlight different dimensions in the
pedagogies of well-being. Each case written as a vignette is centered around a teacher and
their interactions with a specific student(s). My aim in presenting this ethnographic analysis
is to pay attention (to the extent possible) to teachers own histories, teaching-learning
discontinuities, the everyday pedagogical concerns in teaching well-being, and how teachers
reflect on them.
Well-being Entangled in Disciplinary and Moral Concerns
Early on in my observations in schools in Delhi, I encountered a paradox: while
Happiness class was supposed be about well-being, relieving students of everyday anxieties
and tensions, within classrooms, however, teachers were most concerned about disciplining
students. In a context where disciplinary authority of government school teachers is almost
romanticized (Kumar, 2015), one way to interpret this is the following. Since teachers want
to discipline students anyway, Happiness class becomes another opportunity for teachers to
exert their authority. However, ethnographic engagement over time revealed that teachers
genuinely believed that discipline – in the various ways they defined it – was essential for
their own as well as their students’ well-being.
I find four key dimensions of disciplining students, which teachers articulated and, to
varying degrees, implemented the pedagogies of well-being. I term them as discipling bodies,
emotions, moralities and spiritualities. These, by no means, are indicative of the exhaustive

58
ways in which such pedagogies can unfold but represent what stood out in the specific
context of investigation. Below I describe, interpret, and analyze each of these in detail.
Discipling Bodies: “Three Snaps Work Wonders!”
Palvindar Sir
16
taught social science to grades 6 through 8. His happy disposition and
occasional bouts of anger were famous among his students. Palvindar Sir came from a small
village in the north Indian state of Punjab and went to a government school in his village until
class 10. He told me that he can relate to his students “knowing very well that they come
from poorer backgrounds” and wants to make them “stronger for the world”. This is why he
gave them “life-lessons along with social science lessons”. He thought Happiness Class was a
great initiative by the government as now there is a dedicated time for such life-lessons.
In his classes (both Happiness and social science), Palvindar Sir used mindfulness as
a strategy to make students “instantly quiet”, whenever he felt the noise levels seemed “out of
control”. He demonstrated this instant control to me one day explaining how he can put “wild
behavior” to rest at the sound of his three short snaps. He had devised his own method for
students to get into mindfulness. At his first snap, students closed their eyes. Second snap,
they all stretched their backs to what seemed like an uncomfortable straightness. Third snap,
nothing changed physically, but students presumably start to pay attention to their breath,
body, or ambient sounds. He did not give any instructions for a minute or so and the students
remained largely still and quiet. Beaming with pride, he looked back at me to say, “You see,
Ma’am, how three snaps work wonders!” (Dekha ma’am, teen chutkiyon ka kamaal!).
In one of the Happiness Classes, as students began the ‘body scan’ exercise, a student,
Kishor expressed discomfort in his stomach. Palvindar Sir immediately asked if he had
breakfast in the morning. All students opened their eyes to look at Kishor. “Yes, Sir”, he

16
All names in the paper are pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality. I use Sir or Ma’am after teachers’ name as
per the convention in schools in Delhi, and more generally, India.

59
promptly responded. “Did you go to the bathroom in the morning?”, Palvindar Sir asked
before Kishor finished. Students burst out into a loud laughter. “How then will you feel
alright? Our body works on some rules, don’t you understand that?”, he said furrowing his
brows. Kishor looked at the floor and was asked to put his head down on the desk and relax.
Despite Happiness curriculum’s explicit focus on keeping the instructions secular and
not “mixing yoga meditation with mindfulness”, Palvindar Sir often brought yoga into his
instruction. For instance, after finishing his three-snap-mindfulness session, he asked students
how they felt. A boy promptly raised his hand and said, “Sir, I feel very relaxed”. “Very
good! Do you know how else can you relax? … by doing shavasana”, responded Palvindar
Sir. He asked students to try this yoga posture at home when they felt tired and went on to
describe how to do shavasana. Shava, he explained, means a corpse or dead body and doing
this posture requires letting go every part of your body as though you are dead. “You see,
death is nothing but a very long sleep, and sleep is nothing but a short death”, he concluded
with a smile.
In my conversation later Palvindar Sir mentioned that he is a disciple of Baba
Ramdev, an extremely popular and somewhat controversial yoga guru in India. His pedagogy
of well-being, possibly influenced by his guru, was strongly tied to bodily discipline and
control. While eating a biscuit that said Patanjali – a multinational consumer brand co-
founded by Baba Ramdev – he asked me a series of rhetorical questions, “you tell me
madam… Can students learn anything without being able to bring their attention to
something, without being able to sit still? Can you write your thesis without being able to sit
on your table peacefully? Shouldn’t we train kids to have the discipline needed to be able to
sit and write a thesis like you are writing one?”
I interpret Palvindar Sir’s questions as important and somewhat reflective. I use the
term reflective because scholars have indeed shown that some amount of physical discipline

60
is a pre-requisite for learning. Taking the example of language learning in Australia, Watkins
(2012), for instance, demonstrates the corporeality of learning as she examines
ethnographically, bodies in practice and the role of physical discipline in the process of
learning how to write. The connection between the ‘hand’ and the ‘mind’ is also strongly
focused in the Montessori’s methods of education. Montessori (1949) highlights that pretty
much all the changes in our environment are brought about by our hands and that the “whole
business of intelligences” is to guide the hands to work. However, despite his intentions to
help students, Palvindar Sir’s pedagogical tact in meeting the ‘needs of the moment’, on
several occasions, as noted above, made students feel derided. Activities meant to bring
awareness of different parts became a source of ridicule for students, and an opportunity for
the teacher to differentiate students on dimensions other than intellect.
Disciplining emotions: “Girls don’t cry!”
Tanya ma’am had recently joined the school as a guest teacher
17
and taught English.
She did not receive a formal training for the Happiness Class, but the teacher she replaced
told her that it isn’t too difficult to take one. Born and brought up in the outskirts of Delhi,
Tanya ma’am told me that she was still figuring out the workings of a government school.
Guest teachers in the school had a different staff room and hung out separately from the
‘permanent’ teachers. Accordingly, conversations in the two staff rooms differed drastically.
Precarity of their employment was a common topic of discussion in the guest staff room,
however, Tanya ma’am did not actively participate in it. She told me that it is good to listen
on what other guest teachers were planning but she could not participate in any public
protests as “that required too much time”. So even though she agreed, in principle, with most
demands that guest teachers were making at the time, as the sole bread earner in an all-

17
Guest teachers in Delhi government schools are hired on a contract and receive significantly less benefits as
compared to regular government teachers.

61
female family she valued even the precarious nature of this job with whatever money it
brought.
In the Happiness Class with grade 8 students, Tanya ma’am referred to the teacher
handbook quite often. After a brief mindfulness practice, she started discussing an activity
that explored parent-child relationship. “What are your expectations from your parents? What
are your parents’ expectations from you?”, she read out the questions from the handbook and
then put it aside, encouraging students to reflect. One student raised her hand and promptly
replied, “Ma’am, my parents want me to become a teacher”. Another student started talking
in parallel, “my parents want me to get good marks in school and college”. Students were
warming up; Tanya ma’am stood in one place facing her students, trying to make them talk
one at a time. Swati, sitting on one of the back benches started sobbing with her face down
and other students became silent as they noticed. Tanya ma’am quickly gathered her stole
over her shoulder with a shaking hand and walked somewhat hesitantly towards Swati,
asking if she wanted to share anything. Swati hid her face beneath her hands and said, “sorry
ma’am”. With tears rolling down her eyes she said, “my parents have done so much for me,
but their expectations are too much, I can never…”. Tanya ma’am interrupted before Swati
could finish. “But that’s not a matter of crying! Stop crying… C’mon stop crying now. You
know, girls are very strong. Girls don’t cry”, she insisted. Swati did stop crying, wiping her
face with a handkerchief. Within a few seconds the school bell rang and as noises poured in
from the corridor, Tanya ma’am left the class reminding Swati with an expression of concern,
“girls don’t cry, okay!”
In this inversion of gendered stereotype of crying, Tanya ma’am was speaking from a
moral ground that she held strongly. She later reflected that she genuinely believed in the
advice she gave Swati that “we, girls, have to become stronger”. She said she wants to
change the image and language we use for girls. “You and I understand that being emotional

62
is not sign of weakness but that’s not how the world sees it; don’t you agree?”, she asked me.
In a voice louder than her normal, she asked me, “if I sit and cry that my job is not
permanent, or this and that, what will be the use?” She kept using the phrase “we, girls”
while describing her situation, inviting, and including me, and perhaps seeking some
solidarity in this gendered narrative. Perhaps Tanya Ma’am’s background as a sole bread
earner in an all-female family and the precarity of her own employment instilled the value of
acting tough for her students. However, what was missed in this pedagogical moment, was an
opportunity for Swati to make sense of her emotions, or at least express them in private or to
the school counsellor perhaps.
This discontinuity in practice, as Herbart would call it, did create a moment of
reflection for Tanya ma’am, however. After several days of this event, Tanya ma’am herself
brought it up in a conversation with me, pondering on her response to Swati. “Maybe I
should have called her to the staff room… She must be going through some pressures at
home, I imagine”, she reflected.
Disciplining Morals and Souls: “Ill-mannered Children!” (Badtameez bachhe)
In the middle of a school day, I heard a familiar male sound on the loudspeaker. I
could not follow a word, but was told that it was the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi giving a
speech on “Fit India Movement” a part of central government’s efforts towards the “art of
taking care of one’s body and health ” (Fit India Schools , 2021). As per a Ministry notice, it
was compulsory for all students to listen to Modi’s speech live. I rush to the hall where, I was
told, the live telecast was being broadcasted and attended by several students. The only air-
conditioned hall in this school was stuffed beyond its capacity and failed to beat Delhi’s
sultry heat. In front of the hall, the projector threw a skewed moving image of Modi on a
white silk sheet. The sound, ahead of the video, was muffled and, to an extent, dampened by
the noise levels in the hall.

63
About a hundred students sat on the cushioned mats (meant to practice judo) on the
floor, touching neighbor’s elbows and some almost falling out of the mat. I looked hard but
failed to find a single student who was trying to listen. Some of them sat with their back
towards the screen, facing their friends and having, what seemed like, proper conversations.
About 12 teachers sat on chairs in the back of the hall, and most looked visibly disturbed.
Anita ma’am, the Physical Education (PE) teacher in the school, sat on a chair on one side of
the room with a microphone in one hand and a stick in another. Every now and then she
spoke into the microphone instructing girls to keep quiet. Unlike other female teachers in the
school, Anita ma’am usually wore trousers and t-shirts, and like several other PE teachers in
Delhi, was responsible for “overall discipline” in the school, making sure students walk in
lines to and back from the morning assembly, checking their uniforms etcetera. Hailing from
the neighboring state of Haryana, her strong voice could be heard from corridors away and
made students change their routes within the familiar geography of the school corridors.
After about half an hour the speech ended, and the noise levels rose significantly.
Anita ma’am’s voice grew louder trying to manage the crowd. As the video showed a woman
talking, suddenly the national anthem music started to play on audio. Students were quickly
asked to stand. Anita ma’am tried to catch-up with the lyrics of the national anthem into the
microphone, standing straight on the top of her chair, and with a restrained hand movement,
encouraged students to sing along. A few students in the middle of the crowd started to yell
the national anthem totally out of tune. With a roar of laughter several other students joined,
yelling the anthem. Anita ma’am kept raising both her voice and eyebrows. After a few
seconds of this asynchronous audio competition Anita ma’am, drowned in her own voice,
gave up singing, and made a helpless face looking at other teachers in the back. Students,
jumping with joy by now, ended the national anthem with an even louder hooting, declaring
some sort of a victory after (what one of them later called) the “Fit-India torture”. The

64
images on the projector screen showed an ariel view of serious looking school children
wearing uniform, standing in impeccably straight queues. Unable to create any semblance of
such discipline, Anita ma’am announced, “look at these ill-mannered children!” (dekho kitne
badtameez bachhe hain!) before switching off the microphone.
As we later talked about the events of the day, Anita Ma’am, said she was
embarrassed that this happened in front of me. She quickly mentioned that “these children
come from families that have no sense of order or discipline… they don’t know how to
behave and be in front of others”. When probed what was really wrong with the behavior, she
insisted that although it seemed like harmless fun, in a social setting like school, we have to
be mindful of what others are doing. “What if there was a test going on in the neighboring
class? Is it ok to disturb other students? There is also a hospital outside the school building…
the patients might get disturbed”, she added. These things, she insisted, have be to “realized
internally, in our souls”. How do we alter student’s souls, I asked? Anita ma’am with her
ankle crossed on the knee and tapping stick on the other hand said, “that’s why moral values
are important!”
In the pedagogical moment as it unfolded, however, Anita ma’am did not bring these
important social and moral considerations. What if she told her students that the patients in
the nearby hospital might have a hard time because of what they were doing? Would the
students have reconsidered hooting? Perhaps the students wouldn’t feel the need to rebel if
they were not expected to sit quietly in one place in an event that ironically was about
physical fitness. Anita ma’am’s belief that these students came from families whose souls
didn’t have the capacity for any moral order was a big hurdle in having either an honest
conversation or expect a reasonable change from them. Her style, intensified by the stick in
her hand, was that of bringing compliance by imposition. Despite having valid social and
moral concerns at the back of her head, Anita Ma’am’s imposition of power worked only to

65
an extent. I noted several other events where students pushed this boundary of imposition,
wherever possible, by breaking queues as soon as the teacher is out of sight, running
aimlessly before the next teacher arrived in the class, climbing the school gate to buy
(unhealthy) snacks that they weren’t allowed to, and even jumping tall school walls to bunk
classes or entire school days. The point in highlighting these small acts of rebellion is not just
to show the limits of impositions on bodies and souls, but also the agency of students in their
own perceived well-being and negotiations around expected discipline.
Spiritual / Reflective Discipline: “remember to breathe!”
“If discipline is all that bad then why do we as adults struggle to keep our
smartphones down even when our eyes hurt and we have many more important things to
do?”, asked Rashmi ma’am in a conversation with me. But is self-discipline different from
disciplining others, I ask in response. “But the problem is how to teach self-discipline”, she
said. Rashmi ma’am self-nominated to become the coordinator of Happiness class for her
school and is a strong believer in the technique of mindfulness. In her Hindi and Happiness
class, she often told students to “remember to breathe!”. This, she explained, was a critical
lesson from how she understood the philosophy of the Happiness class. “In these mindful
moments, when you pause to remember to breathe, you can get a perspective on how to
respond to a situation”, she argued.
Her Happiness class included longer mindfulness sessions than the ones
recommended in the Teacher handbook. After a 10-minute mindfulness session in one of her
classes, she asked students how they felt. Two girls responded with a giggle about being
“relaxed” and “happy”. When I asked them later about their experience, they giggled again to
say that they can actually fall asleep in the Happiness class, and that’s why they were relaxed
and happy. Rashmi ma’am takes mindfulness quite seriously, often asking students to “close

66
their eyes and breathe” before making seemingly irrelevant as well as important decisions in
everyday situations.
Mira, one of the students of Rashmi ma’am took a keen interest in mindfulness and
paid attention to the various techniques that the Happiness curriculum included. After
winning an inter-school boxing match in Delhi, she reflected on some of her difficult
moments:
“I was almost losing the game, feeling scared. I felt my opponent was stronger than
me. But I have learnt a lot of techniques under my Happiness teacher. I knew it is
possible to win, but I had to really focus… I remembered mindfulness, and took a few
deep breaths before my last bout… It helped, I feel!”
Another student, Ravi, also praised mindfulness and how Rashmi ma’am taught it. However,
he was less sure about its effectiveness. In class 8, and worried about scoring well in his final
exams, Ravi thought mindfulness was helpful, but only to a certain extent. “Ma’am, all my
tensions vanish (when practicing mindfulness) but they re-appear later” (Ma’am ek baar to
saari tension chali jaati hai, lekin fir waapis aa jaati hai), he insisted. “But Rashmi ma’am
says that things should improve with practice”, he quickly added.
These cases, where a teacher guiding Happiness class strongly believed in the
technique were certainly rare in my fieldwork. However, to ignore them would be to do
injustice to the participants who found mindfulness helpful in big, small, or somewhat limited
ways. Ravi’s example discussed above also lays bare the in inherent contradictions in
introducing techniques like mindfulness in schools. In an environment where the pressures to
perform well on examinations remain extremely high, mindfulness can only take students so
far. While sympathetic to the larger critiques of mandating techniques like mindfulness in
schools (discussed later in this paper), analysis in this section recognizes some of its
potentialities as identified by teachers or students practicing them. As I discussed some of
these concerns with Rashmi Ma’am, she concluded by saying, “I know! The world is a harsh

67
place, the least we can do is to remember to breathe! That’s exactly where we can begin to
change something”.
Teachers’ Moral Frameworks and the Pedagogies of Well-being
One of the key implications I draw from my ethnographic discussions above is to
highlight how teacher’s own moral frameworks and a sense of well-being influences their
pedagogies of well-being. Palvindar Sir’s clear preference of a disciplined body for the larger
aims of well-being, interweaved seamlessly into his instructions for mindfulness, his
descriptions of students, and even his jovial expressions that were not always received well.
Tanya ma’am’s somewhat self-conscious version of feminism was all too obvious in her
advice to Swati and other students. Anita ma’am’s deficit view of the children who accessed
her school was reflective in her casual dismissal of (nothing less than) students’ souls.
Dispositions and attitudes similar to Anita ma’am’s are most clearly captured by some of the
scholars studying teacher’s work in India and elsewhere, especially in trying to ‘discipline’
students (more on this in the next section). Rashmi ma’am’s strong belief in mindfulness
seeped through her interactions with her students and inspired instances of student
engagement with the ideas of well-being.
This is not surprising in the Indian context where some sort of a moral responsibility
is assumed in how teacher perceive their roles. Other scholars in India have noted similarly
how government teachers in India carry this moral responsibility and express it in different
ways (Iyer, 2013; Kumar, 2015; Sarangapani, 2003). However, this moral responsibility takes
a different and somewhat stronger character given the nature of Happiness class, where a part
of the curricula (e.g., stories) present moral dilemmas and while the responses solicited are
not always in the form of ‘moral of the story’, but still have strong moral undertones. When
he first spoke about the Happiness class, Palvindar Sir mentioned that he is very happy that

68
now there is a dedicated time and place to teach life lessons. “Whether these kids turn out to
be morally responsible is our responsibility, after all!”, he added.
Conceptions of ‘Disciplining’ Students: What gets left out?
An important theoretical implication of this work, however, is around raising
questions on the conceptualization of student discipline itself. Given my analysis discussing
everyday embodied encounters of disciplining students in different ways, I present here
certain grounded questions and scenarios that might suggest reconsidering our conceptions of
student discipline. The large and important literature on education and discipline can be
broadly divided two camps. I refer to them as 1) discriminatory discipline, and 2) normative
discipline. I briefly describe these two bodies of literature. While this is by no means an
exhaustive literature review, my aim is to highlight the underlying conception of student
discipline, as assumed in or emergent from existing research. I then highlight what is missing
in these underlying conceptions, specifically to point to what my investigations presented
above point to.
Research focusing on discriminatory discipline presents a sharp critique of what
unfolds in the name of disciplinary practices and the (un)intended harm done to the students
as a result. This is primarily focused on practices rooted in caste, race, gender and other
biases and sometimes includes extreme forms of disciple such as corporeal punishment and
student suspensions and how they are detrimental to student outcomes (Anyon et al., 2014;
Gregory et al., 2010; Welsh & Little, 2018). School discipline or disciplinary practices of
teachers cause lasting and harmful impact on students, especially if they are marginalized.
More theoretical work in this body of research shows students as the subject of disciplinary
control, for instance, in the formation of state (Bé né ï , 2008), further strengthening stereotypes
of class, gender, race or caste (Golann, 2015; Ispa-Landa, 2017; Rafalow, 2018), or building
on Foucault’s work, as a technique of governance (Iyer, 2013). The underlying assumption in

69
this work is that discipline is a form of exercise of power that is necessarily detrimental for
the students.
In several cases inspired by discriminatory stances on discipline, research concerned
with ‘normative discipline’ aims to amend or prevent the harm done to students. Realizing
that some sort of discipline is needed in the classrooms, this body of literature proposes
(more or less) normative best practices, conceptualizations and practical tips around bringing
it in the classrooms (Osher et al., 2010; Skiba & Peterson, 2010). Often couched in the
language of ‘classroom management’, or ‘preventative’ strategies this research is primarily
concerned with ‘what works’ paradigm and hopes to assist teachers and practitioners in
everyday affairs. The underlying assumption here is that some form of discipline is necessary
and can be implemented using certain strategies. Those strategies can be generalized, and
students can pick them up with some effort from teachers. The emergent work on ‘positive
discipline’ (Sizer, 2013) and its references in UNESCO’s ‘Happy Schools Frameworks’
(UNESCO, 2016) engages more with the teachers and student’s contexts, however, remains
ultimately normative about doing discipline the right way, rather than an ongoing process for
both teachers and students.
Both these conceptions of discipline in educational research are critical and useful in
their own right. However, the treatment of discipline as a concept in both these set of
literatures in education research, I argue, gives too much importance to the (already defined)
set of ‘techniques’, rather than engaging with it on its own terms. Discriminatory stances
around student discipline conceptualize it as something, intertwined with knowledge, biases/
stereotypes, and inherently bad within educational spaces. Normative stances around student
discipline hands out tools to teachers without necessarily engaging with teachers themselves
or contextual difficulties. Discipline becomes as something explicit to be done in the
classroom or when done wrongly, to be (rightly) critiqued. More importantly, in these two

70
broad ways of conceiving discipline, what gets left out are everyday pedagogical encounters
that can go one way or the other, that can be potentially harmful or beneficial for individual
students as well as social situations such as a classroom.
The ethnographic cases discussed above provide an opportunity to ask grounded
questions about disciplinary intentions, actions, responses, and exchanges within the
relational space of a classroom where teacher’s backgrounds and moral frameworks are as
critical as the larger policies that are implemented. They highlight the intent and beliefs of the
teachers who do aim a certain disciplining of their students. These intentions and beliefs can
surely be discriminatory (as in Anita ma’am deficit view of her students or Palvindar Sir’s
remarks) but can come from a place of concern for students in being ‘prepared for the real
world’ to paraphrase Palvindar Sir and Tanya ma’am’s words. Despite their intentions, the
actions of the teachers or the way a certain disciplinary exchange takes place could still be
potentially ‘harmful’ for students as in the case of Kishor. However, actions and reflections
on those actions can also become an internalized source of potential change in how teachers
act in future. Tanya ma’am’s reflection on her response to Swati evoked a different strategy
(of what she could have done and might do in future) and a degree of empathy. What if
Tanya ma’am, inspired by this ‘discontinuity’ in her practice and further reflection, changes
her behavior and responses for encounters in the future? How do we account for this?
Additionally, it would be unfair to not pay attention to the social norms and ethical
considerations especially when we bring several (and often, diverse) students to dedicated
spaces of learning such as schools. Anita ma’am’s concern about disturbing other students or
patients in a nearby hospital are certainly valid. What is Anita ma’am communicated these
concerns to her students? Rashmi ma’am’s insistence on finding and staying with your own
breath is an attempt in finding small acts of agency in structures that seem out of individual
control. At its core the case of Rashmi ma’am and her students also connect disciplining to

71
the pursuit of well-being. Belief in spiritual and contemplative practices for finding peace
within oneself, without worrying about the rest of the world, might not be politically
aspirational for some, but has resonated with others for centuries.
An alternate analysis of this work could render the efforts at well-being as structures
of discriminative and possibly, oppressive governance. Government schools in Delhi (and
India, more generally) are accessed by some of the poorest and disadvantaged sections of the
society. To mandate techniques like mindfulness for students when their material realities
remain impoverished, seems possibly unjust. In this light, some scholars have critiqued
imposition of well-being and contemplative techniques in schools highlighting its ‘dark
biopolitics’ that neglect concerns for social justice (Jackson, 2020). Indeed, well-being
implementations in schools can be discriminative as data presented above shows. Moreover,
with specific invocations of different aspects of humans – such as physical body, emotions,
spirituality, morals, and so on – the dimensions on which students discrimination unfolds can
actually multiply (Popkewitz et al., 2006).
But what if we considered disciplining as a relational process that involves teachers as
much as students? What if instances of supposed disciplining actions also inspire reflection
and altered responses in future? And where do we accommodate the much-needed
disciplining of body and mind for purposes of learning as well as living in a social setting
(see e.g., Watkins, 2012)? It is important to note here, that the scholar most associated with
the techniques of power, discipline and self-governance, Michel Foucault, himself refers
to some of the ‘enabling’ potential of power and discipline, especially in his later work on
technologies of the self (Foucault, 1990). Discussing the possibility of power relations as not
always oppressive in an interview with Michael Bess, Foucault notes:
“there’s no reason why [a] manner of guiding the behavior of others should not
ultimately have results which are positive, valuable, interesting, and so on. If I had a
kid, I assure you he would not write on the walls — or if he did, it would be against
my will. The very idea!” (Foucault, 1980).

72
However, as evident in the title of one of his popular texts, ‘Discipline and Punish’,
Foucault’s discussions (and several interpretations, applications for studying formal
education that utilize his work) conceive discipline as primarily negative. Megan Watkins
squarely takes up this concern of enabling potentialities of discipline and how they interact
with pedagogy. Her book titled, ‘Discipline and Learn’ (Watkins, 2012), a wordplay on
Foucault’s work, unpacks the bodily discipline needed for language learning. What
conceptions of discipline could render it as a process that unfolds in everyday, banal,
relational spaces, that are obviously influenced by power, but also allow us to see both its
discriminative effects as well as potentialities? What if we were to assume that it is
impossible to predict and pre-assign a normative category to discipline which is all good or
bad?
Discussion and Concluding Thoughts
This paper unpacks the everyday pedagogy aiming explicitly for well-being, in a
context (SEL interventions) where pedagogy is understudied. The point in highlighting these
big and small, somewhat banal, and seemingly unimportant everyday classroom exchanges is
to show the underlying complexity in teaching well-being in classrooms. The cases presented
above highlight how these efforts at teaching well-being in this context are entangled with
teachers’ own moral frameworks and concerns for discipline.
Scholars working on the issues of SEL have highlighted the critical need to focus on
teacher well-being and their social and emotional learning. Noting that teaching is one of the
most stressful occupations, several interventions have been made and studied for their
effectiveness on teachers. Schonert-Reichl (2017, p.137), shows “how teachers' beliefs -
about their own teaching efficacy, or about whether they receive adequate support, for
example - influence the fidelity with which they implement SEL programs in the classroom”.
Waajid et al. (2013) similarly show the positive effects of infusing SEL into teacher

73
education curriculum. Adding to this work, the cases presented above, present an empirical
case of how teachers’ beliefs and frameworks directly affect their interpretation and
implementation of the SEL initiative.
A formal well-being initiative provides a great opportunity to study pedagogy and
discipline as some of the moral concerns brought up in the pedagogical exchanges are a part
of the curriculum. Of course, studying Math can also invoke social, emotional, and possibly,
moral concerns, but the explicit focus on humanist, virtuous, and ethical ideas likely bring up
more instances for such an investigation. However, there is more to learn about well-being
itself and through this investigation of pedagogies of well-being. In its pedagogical
expressions, well-being is bound by moral concerns and relations of power. A heightened
focus on body and its different dimensions can be a source for further student discrimination.
At the same time, a focus on contemplative practices like mindfulness can potentially allow
for a time and space to reflect on ‘discontinuities of practice’ and improvisation.
The questions raised regarding the various conception of discipline in the current
educational literatures highlight the underlying intentions, responses, reflections, and
attempts at exerting agency by teachers and students, as well as the ongoing nature of such
concerns. Seen in the light of Herbart’s view of pedagogy, these questions also point to
seeing discipline with a Herbartian lens, to the extent that they point to discipline as
something that primarily unfolds in practice and remains dynamic. Disciplinary actions and
exchanges emanate from moral beliefs and frameworks of teachers (that possibly come from
their own upbringing and educational encounters), not in a pre-planned way, but possibly as a
response to situations or discontinuities in the classrooms. Responses from students, and
reflections from teachers themselves could indeed transform the disciplinary stances that
teachers and students take over time.

74
Paper Three: Globalized Mobilities of Educational Well-being: Policy Posture
and Scalar Concerns

Abstract
The concern for student well-being in educational setting has garnered significant
attention globally, through various policies including social-emotional learning
(SEL). Working with the ideas of policy mobilities, this paper illuminates the
construction of a specific sub-national SEL policy in the federal system of India in
conversation with perceived ideas of well-being at local, national, and global level/
scale. Placing India in the global policy mobilities of well-being, I highlight
subnational policy in this case as a relational and emergent social process which is
multiply scaled, simultaneously representing, and speaking to the various levels. I
propose the idea of ‘policy posture’ to underscore a policy technique used to
(mis)align, (dis)associate, or (dis)articulate policy discourse with respect to related
policy ideas at other levels. Policy posture begins to unpack the relative stasis of
highly mobile policies. This paper also highlights the presence of contemplative
practices in educational well-being policies, which renders them a unique mobility.

Keywords: policy mobilities, educational well-being/ SEL, sub-national policy, scale,
globalization

75
Introduction
Informed by trajectories of work in critical policy and policy sociology within and
outside education (Ball, 1997; McCann, 2011; Ozga, 1987, 2021; Peck & Theodore, 2010;
Rizvi & Lingard, 2009), this paper engages with the research on policy mobilities in the field
of educational well-being. Movement and mobilities have been identified as one of the
important facets in recent theories especially in sociology and critical geography (McCann,
2011; Peck & Theodore, 2010; Urry, 2007) as well as education
18
(Gulson & Symes, 2017;
McKenzie & Aikens, 2021). A ‘mobility turn’ focuses on the immense scale of movement of
objects, people, and ideas across the globe highlighting social formations in a state of
constant movement and mutability. This paradigm marks a shift in research from prior focus
on face-to-face relationships towards an analysis of the multiple, the distributed, the fleeting,
and their complex interdependencies that variously shape (what we have come to call)
globalization (Büscher et al., 2011).
Recent work in educational policy mobilities is engaging with and has called for
further investigation of the ‘scale’ or level at which policy is perceived to operate. Moving
away from comparing nations (as a whole) with each other, or seeing all policy connections
as ‘global’, scholars are beginning to engage with sub-national contexts especially within
federal nations (McKenzie & Aikens, 2021; Peck, 2011). In federal systems subnational
differences are not only pronounced, but also create a space for different and complex policy
techniques as compared to the national level. This paper engages with a subnational policy in
the Indian federation, which is defined by multi-level governance, to highlight political and
policy complexities at play. Using data from a larger multi-sited ethnography, I unpack a

18
See, for instance, the special issue on ‘The Mobility Turn and Education’ in the journal, Critical Studies in
Education, Volume 58, Issue 2 (2017).

76
specific policy technique (I call ‘policy posture’), that helps us understand policy as multiply
scaled, gaining significance from as well as reifying existing scales.
Educational well-being, which I broadly define as efforts at well-being that take an
educational nature, provides an excellent case to study policy mobilities with its underlying
ideologies. Especially within formal K-12 education, ideas of well-being have gained an
unprecedented significance in the last two decades. Programs under the categories of Social-
emotional learning (SEL), 21
st
century skills, character or values education, life-skills have
proliferated and increasingly entered formal educational policies and schools around the
world. While the exact reach of such programs is unknown, as many as 70 countries have
adopted a version of SEL in their schools (CFC, 2019). Different conceptualizations see well-
being as multidimensional, multi-disciplinary (Michalos, 2008), subjective, i.e. interior to a
person (Kahneman, 1999), objective or having externally observable characteristics, such as
housing, education etc. (Ehrenreich, 2009; Sen, 1993), and not the same as physical fitness,
but closely related to health (Wright & McLeod, 2015). Well-being has been called a
“conceptually muddy” term (Morrow & Mayall, 2009), making it an idea which is ripe for
appropriation as well as multiple interpretations.
Worldwide, student (and sometimes, teacher) well-being has emerged as a central
concern in education policy and programs. Research on educational well-being, and
especially SEL
19
is nascent, but rapidly growing in many parts of the world. Scholars are
beginning to capture the transnational nature of the rapidly growing interest in well-being
within formal educational spaces. Mapping educational approaches that advocate ‘well-
being’, ‘whole-child’, ‘social and emotional learning’, ‘character’, and similar ideas in
different parts of the world, Wortham et al. (2020) discuss the heterogeneity in such

19
The terms ‘well-being’ and SEL are used somewhat interchangeably in this paper. I do this for two reasons:
One, while SEL as a term has gained significant popularity, interlocuters at my site did not use it in their daily
language. Two, as a concept SEL itself has evolved to mean several things with somewhat varying underlying
frameworks. However, well-being remains an overarching goal of all SEL initiatives.

77
programs’ views of human nature, visions of a good life, and prescriptions for educational
practice. Brown & Donnelly (2020) delineate the competing perspectives of skills and
competencies, morals and ethics, and capital and identity in various programs of what they
term as ‘social emotional wellbeing’. Other scholars have highlighted the somewhat similar
underlying conceptualizations of SEL and related initiatives in different parts of the world
with an ascendance of ideas from positive psychology, therapeutic cultures, and Aristotelian
virtue ethics (Bates, 2021b; L. Jackson, 2020a). Research on SEL also maps the transnational
infrastructures, especially in its psycho-economic framing of students, individualized focus,
and production of novel forms of statistical ‘psychodata’ (Bates, 2021a; Williamson, 2021).
What remains underexplored in these discussions is an investigation of the mobilities of
educational well-being policies especially given that contemplative practices form one of its
important curricular elements and have been studied as global movements.
Contemplative practices such as modern yoga and mindfulness have become an
important component in K-12 policies worldwide that adopt educational well-being
programs. The widespread popularity of modern yoga and mindfulness within schools, is a
phenomenon that has received little critical attention in educational research. Ergas (2019)
calls this emphasis a ‘contemplative turn’ in education, highlighting (despite its problems)
some sort of broadening of underlying epistemologies of school curriculum. Others critique
the biopolitics of yoga and mindfulness in schools, as a practice that can promote neoliberal
subjectivities, neglecting the concerns of social justice in education (L. Jackson, 2020b).
From a policy perspective the large-scale adoption of contemplative practices in schools also
highlight the global movements and evolving nature of such practices themselves. Modern
interactional histories emphasize the relations between the Euro-American and the Indian
subcontinent, especially as they relate to the adoption, popularity, and resistance towards
contemplative practices (Srinivas, 2015; Strauss, 2005; van der Veer, 2013). Engaging with

78
these ‘mobilities’ in contemplative practices themselves, this paper also begins to map some
of these global exchanges as unfolding in the educational policy landscape. Building on a
policy mobility perspective articulates elements of the educational well-being movement that
remain underexplored, especially as they relate to the widespread use of contemplative
practices embedded in such programs.
India is a vital site for studying policy mobilities of educational well-being for several
reasons. One, India as a large and complex federal structure provides an important
opportunity to study policy mobilities at the so-called global, national, and sub-national
levels. While scholars have studied sub-national policy mobilities within federal nations, this
work has largely focused on the countries in the global north – the United States, Australia,
Canada, the UK, or European contexts. Not only is India a much more complex federalism as
compared to the US, Australia and Canada (Tilak, 1989); as a country from the global south
it also represents governance (e.g., electoral politics) and urban issues (e.g., demographic
composition) that are of a different nature. Second, even though the contemplative practices
of yoga and mindfulness are fairly ‘modern’, they do have roots (however removed from
their contemporary practice) in the Indian subcontinent. This connection and perceived
‘source’ of contemplative practices enables mobilities that may have not been so intense
otherwise. A third reason, which is not unique to India per se but applies to many countries in
the world, is the extremely polarized contemporary political and ideological discourse, that
becomes important for the formation and reception of local policy.
Two key questions drive the thrust of this paper. One, how do we begin to map
India’s position in the larger mobilities of educational well-being? And two, what techniques
are adopted to bring into action a specific educational well-being policy in a layered federal
context (like India)? I explore these questions as part of a larger 15-month multi-sited
ethnographic project, that aimed to understand the policy and pedagogical constructions of

79
educational well-being. More specifically, for this paper, I use data from interviews with
teachers, teacher trainers, educational bureaucrats in Delhi, as well as analysis of related
media, including documents, social media, and events.
In what follows, I first discuss some of the key ideas from research on policy
mobilities, the questions of scale, as well as modern contemplative practices that this paper
engages with. I describe the larger context, the specific site and intervention, as well as
methods used for this paper. Next, I begin to map India’s position in the larger mobilities of
educational well-being. This work, even though exploratory is essential before moving on to
a case of a specific policy, since it illuminates some of the globally circulating ideas that
underlie this movement of educational well-being. I then move on to the specific case of a
well-being policy, the Happiness class in Delhi and its key articulations as well as ongoing
work that mobilizes certain ideas but also keeps them in relative stasis. Through this
empirical example, a specific policy technique I call ‘policy posture’ is proposed. I end with
discussion and implications of this work for policy mobilities in education as well as
educational well-being.
Engagement with Literatures
To investigate subnational policy of educational well-being, this paper brings together
works from policy mobilities, politics of scale, and modern contemplative practices.
Policy Mobilities and Subnational Policy
Paying attention to mobilities and a constant state of flux – which may or may not be
uniform – has been invaluable to study policies in a globalized context. ‘Policy mobilities’
have emerged as a new direction in critical policy studies literature that marks a move from
the previous policy ‘transfer’ or ‘diffusion’ work (McCann & Ward, 2012; Peck & Theodore,
2010). This transdisciplinary work highlights a renewed focus on global flows across regions
and places (as compared to focusing only on nation states), continuous transformation and

80
mutation, uneven and at times contradictory reproduction of policy, as well as problematizes
the politics of knowledge and practice (Peck, 2011).
Scholars working with a policy mobilities orientation move away from expecting
linear movements of policy, for instance, transferred horizontally from one country to
another, or vertically from global ideas (e.g., school choice in education) to local
policy. Instead, paying attention to the contextual histories, local politics, and actors,
mobilities research illuminates potential policy uptake and how travelling policies are
adopted in part, combined with other ideas, and mobilized, or not (Brenner et al.,
2010). Others have specifically examined policy ‘immobilities’, when globally circulating
policies are not taken up in certain sites, in cases of ‘non-arrival and non-adoption’, or in
response to policy failures elsewhere (Jacobs, 2011), as well as multi-directional, relational
mobilities highlighting policy movements not just in a top-down fashion but emanating from
different scales (Peck, 2011).
The issue of scale has been identified as a critical aspect in policy mobilities literature
that remains underexplored. Research in the previous decade, especially works on policy
transfer focused primarily on the national-level analyses, or what has been termed as
‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck, 2000). Work responding to such critique, however, have
over-emphasised the global through topological connections enabled via technology. Some
suggested that scholarship on globalisation and education has “reached a conceptual and
methodological impasse”, through an almost exclusive focus on the global diffusion of policy
(Gulson et al., 2017, p. 228). Despite global dispersion of policy ideas, McKenzie et al.
(2021, p. 398) highlight that “topological (or non-scalar) influences on policy making,
national and subnational spheres or ‘scales’ still mediate whether and how policy circulates”.
Indeed, scholars have called for a renewed focus on national and regional differences in

81
studies of education policy making and mobility (Gulson et al., 2017; McKenzie & Aikens,
2021; see also: Vavrus & Bartlett, 2006).
Emerging work explores how categories or ‘scale’ such as global, national, regional,
or local, are constituted and operationalized with respect to policy. Scholars have made a
distinction between considering scale as a ‘category of analysis’, assuming they are fixed or
ontologically permanent, vis-à-vis scale as a ‘category of practice’ emphasizing that they are
socially practiced and epistemologically produced (Papanastasiou, 2017). It is argued that a
range of formal governance structures and ongoing discursive work produces and maintains
the interconnected and porous ‘scales’ or ‘levels’. In this regard, education governance as a
field is embroiled with politics of scale. Hierarchical conceptions of nations, states, provinces
and territories/ zones, school districts, and schools are some of the organizing structures for
education policy. In different educational policy contexts scholars have shown that ‘the
national’ is constituted by “a heterogeneous and emergent assemblage of policy ideas,
practices, actors and organisations, which often reflect transnational traits and impulses”
(Savage & Lewis, 2017, p. 118). Others studying subnational practices in educational policy
mobilities highlight intentional efforts at rescaling and examples of policy immobility, where
subnational education bodies do not engage with the global approaches or mandates
(McKenzie & Aikens, 2021). Similarly, Wallner et al. (2020) highlight the roles that
subnational governments play in the assemblage of standards-based education reforms. They
show subnational governments as “coproducers” of policy, for instance.
This paper responds to the calls made to include subnational scales in analysis of
policies and mobilities. The concerns for scale is especially important in federal contexts that
are defined by multi-level governance. Focussing on the ‘national’ or ‘global’ tends to over-
simplify and obscure the subnational political and policy complexities. Building on the work
described above, I inquire the productions and effects of porous yet still influential

82
subnational levels of governance in relation to policy mobilities. I highlight how introduction
of a policy around educational well-being by a subnational government is in interaction with
different levels/ scales, how it engages or disengages with globally circulating ideas around
well-being. In doing that, I highlight mechanisms through which scale within a federal
structure, gets reified as the policy is continuously created. I illuminate a specific mechanism,
policy posture, through which policy in its relational environment is multiply scaled as well
as concretizes the local, national and global in some ways.
Global Mobilities of Modern Contemplative Practices
Modern contemplative practices, such as yoga and mindfulness have become central
to educational polices around well-being (Ergas, 2019). Research on contemplative practices
from historical, religious studies’, and anthropological perspectives view them as modern,
globalized movements that are increasingly adopted for well-being. Studies of yoga in
informal settings, for instance, reveal it to be a practice that operationalizes health and well-
being for individuals across the world in different ways (Alter, 2004; Jain, 2015; Lalonde,
2012; Schnäbele, 2010; Strauss, 2005). Scholars have noted significant departures of
practices like yoga from their complex pre-histories (Mallinson & Singleton, 2017).
Singleton (2011) argues that the current transnational, Anglophone form of yoga is derived
from a curious mix of British bodybuilding and ‘physical culture’, American
transcendentalism, Christian Science, naturopathy, Swedish gymnastics, and the YMCA.
Unlike the popular belief that sees yoga as a practice handed down for thousands of years,
originating from ancient Hindu texts of the Indian sub-continent, the sudden explosion of
‘postural’ yoga is traced to early 20th century (Alter, 2004). In this context, modern yoga has
been called one of the first and most successful products of globalization (Singleton, 2011;
Syman, 2010). While this mutually transformative interaction between several institutions of

83
the world, explains, to some extent, the current global popularity
20
of contemplative
practices, it also provides a unique opportunity to study global mobilities of educational
policy, that are increasingly adopting these practices for the purposes of well-being.
Contemplative practices of mindfulness and yoga (rooted in Buddhism and Hinduism
and originating primarily in the Indian subcontinent) have gained spectacular popularity in
the US and several ‘western’ countries. Scholars show growing interconnections and
transnational exchanges between India and the US, revealing both the changing nature of
these practices themselves as well as their role in defining global movements (Srinivas, 2015;
Strauss, 2005). Scholars have traced their transformation from counter-culture movements in
the US to popular practices (Jain, 2015) that have not only entered everyday American
parlance but also powerful public institutions of education and others such as science,
healthcare and military through elite networks (Kucinskas, 2018). In India, both yoga and
mindfulness, after having gained global popularity, are reclaimed as well as transformed in
different ways. Following modern yoga practitioners between India and the US, Strauss
(2005), for instance, highlights the ‘pizza effect’, a term used to highlight the transformation
of the meanings of a certain cultural practice in its supposed place of origin, after being more
fully embraced elsewhere and then re-imported back
21
. De Michelis (2020) maps the
simultaneous presence of modern yoga in idioms and discourses that are both revivalist and
nationalist as well as transnational and globalist. Building on these works, this paper begins
to place India in the larger policy mobilities of educational well-being and highlight its
importance at a subnational context.

20
People from over 180 countries participated in the “International Yoga Day” celebrations of 2017 (NDTV,
2017).
21
Used primarily in religious studies and sociology; see White (1991) for more on ‘pizza effect’.

84
Policy Site and Methods
“There are two main aims of education– to make people learn the ability to live happily and
to help others live happily”
(Sisodia, 2019, p. 153)
Since 1950, India has been a federal republic, governed in a democratic parliamentary
system. The Government of India (typically referred to as the Union Government) was
established by the Constitution of India and is the governing authority of a federal union of
28 states and 8 union territories. A distinguishing aspect of Indian federalism is that unlike
other forms of federalism, it is ‘asymmetric’ and gives limited autonomy to only some Indian
states. Education as a governance issue is placed on the ‘concurrent list’ of governmental
jurisdiction, where both the union as well as the state governments can make laws.
The National Capital Territory of Delhi (that contains New Delhi) is a union territory
and one of the largest, populous urban areas in India and the world. As a hub of commercial
activity, Delhi is also the migrant capital of India with over 33% migrant population recorded
in 2016 (Times Of India, 2018). For the last seven years Delhi has been under the
administration of a young political party called the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Formed in the
year 2012, AAP grew out of a civil movement around anti-corruption and positions itself as
an alternative to the mainstream large political parties in India. AAP leader, Arvind Kejriwal,
a former bureaucrat, and the current Chief Minister of Delhi refuses to be guided by
ideologies. “Ideology can’t feed our hunger. We are the common people” (Ideology se pet
nahin bharta. We are aam aadmis!), he claimed in an interview (FirstPost, 2013). Political
analysts have noted AAP’s left-leaning economics, taking a ‘populist’ stance in many cases
(Nikore, 2014). AAP’s (and especially the chief minister, Kejriwal’s) mission has been
analyzed as “technomoral” incorporating both technocratic and moral elements (Sharma,
2018). Others have highlighted that AAP’s strategy is concerned with local issues that matter

85
to ordinary people such providing better education and health services, or free electricity as
opposed to getting “lost in big issues” related to foreign policy or federalism (Vasudeva,
2022).
Ever since it came to power, focus on access to “quality” and “world-class” education
has been one of the top priorities for AAP. Making it a top budgetary priority, AAP
government has maintained the allocation to education at around a quarter of the total budget
(approx. $5.8 billion) of the Delhi government. This was an increase of 106% over the
previous government’s education budget and, remains the highest allocation among all states
of India; average budget allocation to education per state being 14.8% (Biswas, 2020).
Additionally, AAP brought out a series of reforms in school education as a “four-pronged
strategy”. These included a series of programs under- 1) modernizing infrastructure, 2)
capacity-building of schoolteachers and principals, (3) making school administration
accountable, and (4) improving learning outcomes (Atishi, 2020). Public schools in India, as
assessed by several standardized reports, remain poor in providing learning outcomes to
students, and are typically accessed by the poorest sections of the society (ASER, 2018).
AAP government in Delhi has been on a mission to change this perception and composition.
Several of their reforms, especially around ability grouping, use of CCTV cameras, and
equating quality with learning outcomes have been criticized by educators and researchers as
hurried, technocratic, and neoliberal (Raina, 2020). However, despite disagreements on the
nature of these reforms, there is some consensus that unlike other governments in the
country, the current Delhi government is genuinely attempting to reform education in the
state (Aiyar et al., 2021). “You may not agree with their means, but it is hard to doubt their
intent to improve things in education”, commented a Delhi-based journalist in an interview.
Happiness Class is one of the flagship initiatives of the AAP government in all its
government schools. Launched in July 2018 by the Dalai Lama, the Happiness Class (and the

86
associated Happiness Curriculum) is targeted specifically to improve student’s well-being,
social-emotional learning (SEL), and deal with a current “psychological crisis” (SCERT-
Delhi & DoE, 2019). A compulsory daily period for students in grades 1 through 8, the
Happiness class includes practicing mindfulness, discussing stories and other activities with
students around values such as peace, harmony, and respect. typical Happiness class unfolds
as 25-30 minutes of “zero period” in a school day. Ever since its launch it has received much
attention and appreciation in India and abroad (Bowman, 2018; Doshi, 2018; A. Scott, 2021).
A recent study shows positive improvements in relationships both within and outside of
classrooms due to Happiness Class (Care et al., 2020). For grades 9 to 12 students are
introduced to what is being called Entrepreneurship Mindset curriculum (EMC), and much
like Happiness class, includes practicing mindfulness among other things. An estimated 1.6
million students are expected to practice daily mindfulness in public schools of Delhi
(IndiaTV, 2021).
This paper is a part of a larger multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995, 2012) that
explored the policy and pedagogical constructions of educational well-being in parts of India
and the United States. In the spirit of a multi-sited ethnography, following policy meant
paying attention to, policy actors (‘people’), policy documents and other infrastructure
(‘materials’), and where they may have had occasion to interact (‘meetings’ or ‘situations’,
including in person or virtual) (McCann & Ward, 2012). This 15-month ethnographic
investigation (Apr 2019-Mar 2020 & Aug 2020-Oct 2020) started with exploring the
Happiness class in Delhi, including participant observations in two schools, interviews with
teachers, teacher trainers, Happiness curriculum committee, bureaucrats, as well as analysis
of documents and related social media. I then followed some of the connections drawn
explicitly to sites, people, and organizations in the United States.

87
In line with works in policy sociology, this paper takes ‘policy’ to be not only texts
named as such, but also broader media materials such as curricula, strategic plans, and
communications; as well as non-textual mandates such as teacher trainings, school structures,
and implicit rules (Ozga, 1987). The current paper specifically draws on an analysis of
interviews with teachers, teacher trainers and bureaucrats in Delhi, participation in select
teacher trainings, as well as policy documents and related social media. The media produced
by the Delhi government, related government entities, and associated non-government
organizations was collected to understand the larger policy discourse around the Happiness
class. Most interviews with teachers grew out of ongoing conversations as I observed the
classes they were conducting. Extended in-depth interviews were conducted as I developed
more familiarity with a teachers’ way of being in and presenting the Happiness class. I also
attended a 3-day long Happiness class teacher training to understand the various
constructions of policy at that level and how they were being translated for teachers. Semi
structured interviews with teacher-trainers and bureaucrats aimed to grasp their
understanding of the philosophy, aims, and utilities of Happiness class in public schools in
Delhi. Data analysis was an ongoing activity. Data were uploaded and analyzed using NVivo
qualitative data management software. I open coded the materials, informed both by data and
theory (Miles et al., 2014) to find emergent themes. I looked for references to levels of
policymaking and approaches to well-being. I noted topological influences on policy
articulations and other indicators of (im)mobility of well-being. Analyzing interviews from
various actors in relation to the policy context, I looked for trends and perceptions regarding
the influences of a level in relation to others.
India and Policy Mobilities of Educational Well-being
To appreciate the scalar concerns and how a subnational policy interacts with the so
called ‘global’ or ‘national’ discourses, it is critical to briefly map the larger landscape,

88
especially India’s (perceived) position, in the mobilities of contemplative practices within K-
12 educational context. While this is by no means an exhaustive mapping, it begins to show
some of the critical interconnections as well as the larger ideological registers in which
educational well-being is being imagined. Below I show two specific elements of this
preliminary mapping. One, even though it might seem that contemplative practices for
educational purposes bring together the ‘ancient’ and the ‘modern’, they rely on the language
of ‘science’ to be justified for the aims of well-being. Two, relatedly, despite such policy’s
secular commitments, they remain mired in the overcasts of religious concerns.
Sustainable Development and Contemplative Practices
First and foremost, modern contemplative practices have found an important place in
UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals. On 20
th
June 2016 (a day before the
‘International Day of Yoga’) the United Nations hosted an event titled, ‘Conversation with
Yoga Masters - Yoga for the Achievement for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’(UN
Web TV, 2016). This special event sought to “enrich our collective understanding of the
unique features of Yoga and its central place for the achievement of SDGs” (UN Web TV,
2016). A popular and somewhat controversial yoga guru in India, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev,
was a lead speaker in this event. In all his responses, Sadhguru Jaggi underscored that at their
very core the SDGs are essentially about human well-being, presented yoga as a technique
for achieving this well-being. His framing, however, relentlessly relied on framing yoga as
“logically correct and scientifically ascertainable”, a phrase he repeats on several occasions.
“The significant aspect of my personal work has been to remove all the frills of culture that
yoga has acquired through this millennia of transmission… and present it as an absolute
science and technology for well-being…”, he notes (Sadhguru, UN Web TV, 2016: 2:05:28).
More specifically for achieving the educational goals of the SDGs, UNESCO has set
up its first and only Category 1 research institute, (curiously) based out of India, called the

89
Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP).
Established in 2012, MGIEP is solely focused on achieving the SDG 4 Target 7 towards
education to foster peaceful and sustainable societies. In this, the institute is guided by its
vision of “transforming education for humanity” and explicitly develops programs and
products that promote social and emotional learning (UNESCO, 2012). Central to their vision
of SEL is bringing together “scientific research” and “ancient wisdom”. A report, titled
‘Rethinking Learning: A Review of Social and Emotional Learning for Education Systems’ is
coauthored by, and in turn heavily cites neuroscientists, development, social and other
psychologists, behavioral and cognitive scientists. The proposed framework for SEL, called
EMC
2
(giving it a scientific heft), has the modern contemplative technique of mindfulness as
its central element. It promotes practicing mindfulness to increase attention and awareness,
regulate emotions, in addition to also developing empathy, compassion and critical inquiry
(UNESCO-MGIEP, 2020). In its research and collaborations of SEL with youth, teachers,
and schools, MGIEP lists over 100 partner organizations worldwide including state and
central governments, universities, foundations, youth organizations, and several private and
non-profit organizations (UNESCO-MGIEP, 2021).
Being a UNESCO body and as a nodal actor between all these organizations working
on SEL, MGIEP is both creating and enabling mobilities around educational well-being
through the use of contemplative practices. As a modern multilateral body, UN and allied
organizations clearly make it a point to advance science and scientific research in their
agendas. Contemplative practices for educational purposes thus borrow heavily from the
latest research in neurobiology and psychology giving them the heavy weight of science to be
justified for the aims of well-being. Moreover, India with its perceived availability of
spiritual expertise (through Indian ‘gurus’) provides another dimension to such mobilities.
‘Secular’, ‘Scientific’ Collaborations

90
Additionally in the last decade, the exchanges, collaborations, and partnerships
between organizations in India and other countries (especially the US) have seen a
burgeoning interest. While an exhaustive mapping is beyond the scope of this paper, I would
like to highlight one specific example of the Center for Science and Compassion-based Ethics
at the Emory University in the US. Under the guidance of the Dalai Lama, the science
initiative started with designing modern science curriculum for monastics, but soon expanded
to create frameworks and programs for K-12 and the universities internationally. Their
trademark program on social, emotional, and ethical learning (SEE learning) expands the
SEL programs to include “important new topics such as… the cultivation of compassion…,
resiliency skills based on trauma-informed care, systems thinking, and ethical discernment”
(CCSCBE, 2021). While discussing his ideas around ‘secular ethics’, the Dalai Lama notes,
“[f]or thousands of years, Indians have explored and trained the mind through calm abiding
and analytical meditation. Modern education, which originated in the West, includes no
understanding of how to tackle our emotions” (DalaiLama.com, 2020). When explicitly
asked about his focus on the ‘secular’, he claims that the ancient Indian knowledge must be
revived in an entirely secular context. “Such a revival will not be achieved through prayer but
through education. The purpose is not religious, but to enable individual human beings to
find happiness”, he notes (DalaiLama.com, 2020).
Dalai Lama’s critique of the ‘modern’ education as well as the invocation the ancient
past for its revival captures the spirit of these global exchanges around educational well-being
and has become a reason for collaborations between various actors and organizations in this
space. Emory University’s SEE learning program was launched in New Delhi, India in April
2019 in an extensive three-day event presided by the Dalai Lama. This event culminated in
the formation of SEE Learning India, the exclusive nodal body for the dissemination of SEE
Learning in India. SEE learning India already has 16 large organizations as local

91
implementation partners in the country. One of the key members of this organization,
reflected on the ideas of compassion and ethics in an interview and kept referring to them as
“fully secular”.
Here again the position of India is unique. The commitment to the secular, in these
collaborations and initiatives is used almost as a shield to protect their engagement with the
traditional and religious ideas. The anxieties of being ‘secular’ are apparent in its repeated
invocation especially as these practices are brought into and justified for the purposes of
institutions that have been the flagbearers of modernity and have implemented, to a great
extent, the separation of church and state. Educational well-being remains mired in these
underlying ideas contradictions of modern-ancient, secular-religious, and so on. As I discuss
next, these contradictions play an important role as policy making at a sub-national level.
The Specific ‘Posture’ of the Happiness Class
Framing of a policy aiming for nothing less than students’ happiness can only be
understood in its relational environment. My analysis reveals that the framing of Happiness
class within the larger educational reforms in Delhi by AAP is certainly not a straightforward
import of SEL from elsewhere. It is presented with local inspirations and foundations. It is in
awe of and in significant conversation with what are considered ‘global’ ideas around well-
being adapting and appropriating mobile discourses especially around mindfulness and SEL.
At the same time the positioning of Happiness class in Delhi stands somewhat against and
maintains its opposition to how the current central government frames such issues. Led by the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the national government in its policy primarily frames
educational well-being in a more religious and nationalist stance, eulogizing the history of
Indian spiritual traditions. In the sub-sections below, I expand on this articulation, the
(mis)alignments of the ideological stances of the Happiness class and some the work that
keeps it in this ‘posture’ vis-à-vis other scalar entities. Building from this, in the next section,

92
I propose the idea of ‘policy posture’ within the larger framework of policy mobilities that
can help unpack the subnational policy mobilities as they relate to scalar concerns.
Local Roots, Indian Wisdom
“… the solution could be found in ancient Indian wisdom”
– Manish Sisodia, Education Minister, Delhi (2019, p. 154)
“You won’t understand the Happiness curriculum unless you attend a co-existential
philosophy workshop!”
Interview with a core committee member, Happiness Class (Aug 2019)
The roots of the Happiness Class are traced to ‘Madhyasth Darshan’ or co-existential
philosophy, propounded by the late Indian thinker, A. Nagraj. The curriculum framework
utilizes Nagraj’s definition of happiness as “a state of no-conflict, synergy, or a state of being
in acceptance” (SCERT-Delhi & DoE, 2019, p. 12), even though several other definitions are
brought into training programs by individual trainers. Nagraj’s philosophy around happiness
starts with the assumption that human beings seek fulfilment from all aspects of living and
proposes a ‘Happiness Triad’. The triad of happiness is realized and experienced through- 1)
the five senses, e.g., tasting a sweet leading to ‘momentary happiness’, 2) feelings in
relationships, e.g., affection and care and termed as ‘deeper happiness’, and 3) learning and
awareness when, for instance, we solve a problem or learn something new, and is called
‘sustainable happiness’ (SCERT, 2019). Local here is constructed by invoking an Indian
philosopher and looking for relatable a definition of Happiness. Even though Nagraj’s
philosophy is seen as ‘new’ and independent, it was influenced by the methods and ideas of
the ‘vedas’, a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India (N, 2016).
Led by the Education Minister, Manish Sisodia (who subscribes to this philosophy),
the key personnel in the Delhi education department were taken to an eight-day residential
camp (shivir) to understand this philosophy. This residential camp continues to be an

93
initiation into the philosophy and an ongoing practice for teachers and staff associated with
the Happiness class. In discussing this philosophy with the core committee responsible for
the Happiness curriculum, I was told several times that I will not be able to fully understand
and appreciate it unless I attend one of these 8-day camps. “You have been away [in the US]
for some time, you must refamiliarize yourself [with the Indian philosophy]”, mentioned one
of the mentor teachers. In another instance, an invited researcher from the US was similarly
told to attend the philosophy camp by one of the senior members of the core committee of
Happiness class. This insistence and importance given to the local philosophy is critical for
two reasons. One, it continuously reinforced the value of the happiness class as ‘locally
rooted’ within ‘Indian’ knowledge. Two it was used as a way to differentiate non-Indians,
like the invited researcher, or even Indians living outside India, like me
22
, in their inability to
fully grasp that knowledge.
Some of the underlying ideas of the happiness curriculum are understood and traced,
in part, to the wisdom generally associated with the country. In a 2017 international
education conference in Moscow, Sisodia asked education ministers of 45 countries to think
of ways to end terrorism and global warming and assured that “it was possible and the
solution could be found in ancient Indian wisdom” (Sisodia, 2019, p. 154). Highlighting the
importance of deeper and sustainable happiness, mindfulness is identified as technique to
develop it (SCERT-Delhi & DoE, 2019). In his book ‘Shiksha: My experiments as an
education minister’, compiling education reforms in Delhi Sisodia (2019) notes that
“[m]indfulness meditation is an ancient Indian tradition that runs deeper than any present
religious or spiritual rituals or practices” (Sisodia, 2019, p. 145). In a chapter titled

22
I came to understand my position in the field site as both of an insider and outsider. Insider, since I was well
versed with the school structures, the local language, and cultural idioms; and outsider since I was perceived
distant given my enrollment in a University in the US and fluency in English (a highly desirable skill for many
in India).

94
‘Happiness Class: Understanding Emotions’ he adds that the “traditional Indian knowledge
system gives more importance to mindful reading as opposed to memory” (p. 144).
In these references, mentioning ancient and traditional is sufficient to invoke a sense
of history that does not need much explanation. This invocation, however, is careful to not
refer to its religious elements but is presented simply as wisdom. In this context it is also
critical to point out the recently implemented ‘Deshbhakti (or patriotism) curriculum’ in
Delhi as it invokes the nation and a nationalist imaginary most directly. Prefaced by the
preamble of the constitution of India, the Deshbhakti Curriculum Framework (SCERT-Delhi,
n.d.) is framed for the aims of just, equal, secular, and democratic India. The intervention in
classrooms includes practicing ‘mindfulness for the country’ by every student (Dilli-Shiksha,
2022) and reading about national revolutionaries but does not go very far in the “ancient”
history of the country that is more likely to have religious references. As I will discuss below,
this is an important part of the policy posture of Happiness class as it aims to be seen in a
certain light. The call to, and in part the construction of the local (national) through the
registers of “ancient wisdom” is of a certain kind. While relying on the “ancient”, it wants to
appeal to the modern values of scientific, secular, and so on.
Global Knowledge and Exchanges
“Mindfulness is an extremely popular practice in schools and universities around the world”
– Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister, Delhi
23

The same Happiness curriculum framework, that described the ‘triad of Happiness’
articulated by an Indian thinker, however, looks to global sources to legitimate its solutions,
making direct references to research in the US, UK, France, and Australia, among others
(SCERT-Delhi & DoE, 2019). Mindfulness is introduced not in its Buddhist religious origins
but with references to Jon Kabat Zinn, an American professor of medicine famous for his

23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bQpX1Llp4

95
research on mindfulness and globally popular program called mindfulness-based stress
reduction (MBSR). The roots and uses of mindfulness are found in latest research from
neuroscience:
“Mindfulness is rooted in the science of cognitive neuroscience and child
development. It is a highly researched and proven practice by neuroscientists to
enhance attention and self-regulation… [M]indfulness improves decision making,
leads to greater emotional stability, abstract planning and less reactivity. Regular short
practice of mindfulness rewires the neural connections of the part of the brain which
enables us to feel happier, calmer, less anxious and stressed.” (SCERT-Delhi & DoE,
2019, p.10-11)
Social emotional learning is identified as one of the important goals of the program
and several specific aims are aligned with globally popular vocabulary of SEL. For instance,
Happiness Curriculum Framework highlights social-emotional skills to include self-
awareness and coping with anxiety, better relationships through empathy, mindful action, and
conflict resolution (SCERT-Delhi & DoE, 2019, p. 26). Even though no direct references are
made to any framework these aims are much aligned with CASEL framework that includes
1) self-awareness and management, 2) social awareness, and relationship skills, and 3)
responsible decision making. Members of the core committee that designed the Happiness
Curriculum framework also mentioned inspiration from the Emory University’s Social
Emotional and Ethical Learning model, especially around their focus on empathy and
compassion.
This conversation with the ‘global’ knowledge was supplemented with the
bidirectional mobilities of the policy (Peck, 2011). An equal, if not more, effort was placed to
showcase the Happiness class within global events and audiences. The ‘Happiness Utsav’, a
two-week festival, organized in all schools of Delhi in July 2019 to celebrate the one-year
anniversary of Happiness Class invited scholars and researchers from across the world
working in the areas of education and well-being. These included representatives from the
Emory University, Institute of Happiness, Bhutan, dignitaries working on similar ideas in
Japan and other countries. The culminating gala event had conference-style presentations

96
from these members, reflecting on meanings and utilities of well-being research in schools
and specifically the Happiness class. Over time key personnel from the bureaucracy and
supporting members made presentations about the Happiness class and the overall reform in
Delhi in places like UC Berkeley, University of Oxford, Harvard University, and others.
Several other global events have been organized in the last few years to discuss and unpack
the policy and practice of Happiness Class including a Salzburg Global seminar, a roundtable
with global audience (Talreja, 2020). In 2021, the Happiness class was awarded the World
Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Award for its work addressing well-being and
important social-emotional skills (Wise-Qatar, 2021).
A recent report published by an organization in collaboration with the Delhi
government highlights the theoretical underpinnings of the Happiness class and its journey of
implementation in schools (Das & Ravindranath, 2022). It brings together literature on
happiness from Indian and western philosophies, as well as scientific research on positive
education and SEL, with little explanation of how they relate to the Happiness curriculum.
The report maps happiness class initiative onto UNESCO’s ‘Happy Schools Framework’
(UNESCO, 2016), and attempts to see resonances of the Happiness class in various global
practices citing work from the Penn Resilience programs in the schools in the UK, Positive
Education program in Australia, Akita Perfecture in Japan, Gross National Happiness in
Bhutan. By doing this one of the implicit aims of the report seems to be showcasing
Happiness class, despite its local roots, a part of the global conversation around these ideas.
These efforts towards borrowing from, building on, and conversing with global
knowledge around educational well-being through Happiness class could be interpreted as
attempts to gain legitimacy by a young political party trying out new things in its subnational
policy. However, in this invocation of and intense interaction with what is perceived global,
is both aspirational as well as an intentional alignment with ideas of a certain kind. The

97
language and currency of ‘science’ in the modern mindfulness movement has been mapped
by scholars as a strong influence on public institutions in the United States (Kucinskas,
2018). These mobilities of ideas around mindfulness also enables, to some degree, a
reappropriation of the practice, both in terms of how it is introduced and described (for
instance in the curriculum framework), and how it is implemented and taught, as I will
discuss in the next section. There is also more going on if one was to consider these policy
mobilities in the realm of the federal scale politics in India. I discuss this in the next
subsection highlighting what the Happiness class and related policy and political stances
disassociates with.
Standing Against
“Let me state outright what the happiness class in not. There are no moral science lessons in
this curriculum… There is no chanting or praying”
– Manish Sisodia, Education Minister, Delhi (2019, p. 141)
“This is not the same as meditation in Yoga!”
– Several teachers and teacher-trainers while describing mindfulness
Elements of the Happiness class as articulated by policy documents, teacher trainers,
teachers and bureaucrats stand in contrast with how the current federal government has been
articulating these ideas around education and well-being. To get a sense of this
disassociation, it is important to briefly highlight the perceived ideological orientations of the
political party in power at the federal level as well as their focus and orientation towards
well-being and education policies. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), one of the two major
political parties in India is identified with right-wing politics, with policies that historically
reflect ‘Hindu nationalist’ positions (Banerjee, 2005). BJP’s perceived commitment to
Hindutva (an ideology articulated by Indian independence activist Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar) is articulated as cultural nationalism favoring Indian culture over westernization

98
(Malik & Singh, 1992). However, scholars have identified Hindutva ideology as an attempt
to redefine India and recast it as a Hindu nation to exclude members of other religions (Guha,
2007). In this light, scholars have noted how the education policy of previous BJP ruled
federal government (in the years 1999 - 2004) revised public school textbooks (especially
history books) in an attempt to “saffronize”
24
Indian history, glorifying Hindu contributions
over and above other religions’ influences and mutual exchanges between them (Sen, 2005).
In its current federal tenure, the BJP has supported initiatives including a school affiliation
body, ‘Bharatiya Education Board’ (proposed by another controversial yoga guru, Baba
Ramdev) with the larger aim of for “swadeshikaran (indigenisation) of education” (Chopra,
2021), the promotion of Sanskrit Knowledge System, and indigenous and traditional ways of
learning, among others (MHRD, 2020).
In the leadership team as well as teacher trainings of Happiness Class there was a
strong emphasis on differentiating mindfulness from meditation. “Doing attentive meditation
(dhyaan lagana) is different from paying attention (dhyaan dena)” said one of the teacher
trainers, highlighting that the purposes of meditation are different from those of mindfulness.
While meditation is aimed to lead you towards salvation, mindfulness is more about being in
the present and living more fully. To ensure that mindfulness was not mixed with traditional
meanings, a teacher trainer insisted that “this is not the same as meditation in Yoga” (ye yoga
waali meditation nahi hai!), a phrase parroted by several other trainers, teachers, and
members of the curriculum committee. Modern postural yoga, despite its origins traced to
mutual exchanges between several parts of the world, is being reclaimed by the current
federal government through various national and international efforts. Some of these include,
for instance, setting up a ministry of AYUSH, that focuses on the use of Yoga among other

24
Saffron is the color worn by Hindu priests and monks. In this context the term ‘saffronization’ is used to refer
to the politics of right-wing Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) that seek to make the Indian state adopt policies that
recall and glorify Hindu cultural history and heritage of India at the expense of other religious traditions.

99
alternative practices, and releasing a ‘Common Yoga Protocol’ for national and international
audience to authorize what the Indian government considers ‘genuine’ yoga (GoI, 2017).
To appeal to the modern imaginaries the ancient thought is taken up with the terms of
science, secularism, and choice. “The [happiness] curriculum is based on Indian thought and
education in which we have merged science”, notes Sisodia in his book (2019, p.142). When
probed if mindfulness was derived from Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation practice, a teacher
trainer said, “but that’s not we are teaching students”. “We are teaching a scientific technique
for students to become better humans”, he insisted. A strong dissociation is made with any
moralistic instruction in Happiness class. Highlighting that mindfulness is a fully secular and
scientific practice, teachers were discouraged to bring in any form of prayer of religious
symbols in the classroom. A teacher trainer insisted that “we are not supposed to tell students
how to be happy… it’s not a form of normative moral education” but let them discover or
find happiness in various things. Noting the aims of happiness class, a mentor teacher
explained, “we want to make students aware of and think about various things that matter for
happiness; what is momentary happiness; what kind of happiness will last longer and so on…
we want students to make wise choices.”
It is important to mention however, that while this misalignment with the supposed
federal/ national level imaginary of such ideas was apparent in the policy talk, the
implementation (which I studied for my larger project) was a mixed bag. Some teachers
effortlessly brought Hindu symbolic practices within or around mindfulness, for instance,
rubbing hands and placing them over eyes when ending mindfulness, or hailing a Hindu
goddess (by saying jai mata di) in the Happiness class. Some schoolteachers also expressed
discomfort with the adoption of mindfulness by the Delhi government. For instance, a teacher
who taught Sanskrit in the school mentioned, “why is the [Delhi] government shy of using
country’s own [meditation] practices… In a country like India, where almost every region

100
has a rich history of various lineages of meditations, why do we look to an international fad
that teaches meditation in a diluted form?” When asked what the reasons for the government
might be to take this up, he insisted that it was some sort of a political act. “It’s become
fashionable to dissociate with one’s cultural heritage (sanskriti), as it is deeply connected to
religion”, he clarified.
This heightened focus on framing mindfulness as a scientific technique with proven
efficacy in the policy articulations, however, are best understood with the relational political
environment. What is considered ‘national scale’ in such ideas, for instance, the recently
released National Education Policy (2021), are (at least in part) produced by and perceived to
be associated with the BJP, a party that AAP claims to be standing against ideologically
25
. To
summarize, while it may seem like ideologically the party is taking a globalist progressive
stance, it is not sans its strategic invocations of nationalistic (and at times, religious
26
)
imaginaries. The Indian national, the traditional and the ancient is invoked but not in a
dogged eulogizing fashion. This stance or a certain ‘posture’ (as I describe in the next
section) is intentional, strategic, crafted to appeal audiences and registers from different
ideological leanings, and certain sensibilities.
Proposing ‘Policy Posture’
Policy discourse around Happiness class and the labor involved in creating this
discourse by the Delhi government utilizes carefully crafted ideas. One of the schoolteachers
referred to this crafting as a “khichdi of ideas, with carefully selected ingredients”, which
could be roughly translated to a strategic potpourri. However, if one was to unpack this

25
Some critics do claim, however, that AAP’s politics might “end up strengthening the Hindutva project in the
long run” (Vats, 2020)
26
A specific example of this (not pertaining to education policy per se) is when the chief minister recited one of
the Hindu religious chants (hanuman chalisa) in a press conference when requested by a member of the
audience before the recent state elections (Vats, 2020).

101
strategic move, in the light of policy mobilities, federal political context, and the politics of
scale, it represents, I argue, a technique for policy work.
I propose the idea of ‘policy posture’ which represents the discursive infrastructures
created to align or mis-align, associate, or dissociate, articulate, or disarticulate a certain
policy with respect to other similar policies/ ideas in its relative scalar context. These
discursive infrastructures could be formal, in form of documents such as a curriculum
framework, a book published by the education minister in the case above, or informal, such
as public talks, and conversations, and interpretations of teacher trainers. As a policy
technique, policy posture is conscious, intentional, and requires ongoing labor, for instance
trainings, presentations in conferences etc. to keep that position alive. This intentionality in
policy work also points to agency and concerns of various policy stakeholders (Engel &
Burch, 2021); in this case, from the education minister to curriculum designer and teacher
trainers. By choosing to (mis)align with certain ideas, policy posture, I argue, simultaneously
represents the mobility and stasis in policy work. Mobility is represented in borrowing and
contributing to globally circulating ideas; while policy statis is apparent in the labor of policy
actors to keep a chosen posture alive. Stasis is different from (im)mobility of policy
(McKenzie et al., 2021), in that it endures the flux of mobilities to maintain its posture.
Policy posture shows that a policy is multiply scaled, simultaneously local, global,
and national. In its engagement with related policies, this act of posture both reifies and to
some degree resists what are considered ‘fixed’ scales of national or global. Policy posture is
relevant in investigating underlying ideologies of policy within scalar contexts of policy
making, especially in responding to competing ideas from various levels. At a time when
globally traveling policy ideas advocate for best practices in their quest to seem neutral and
post-ideological, paying attention to underlying ideologies is all the more important as they
(re)shape the very terms on which local policy debates are constructed (Brenner et al., 2010;

102
McKenzie & Aikens, 2021). The concept of policy posture, I argue, shows that this
underlying ideology is both formed and expressed in a relational environment. A specific
policy doesn’t just stand on its own with seemingly neutral ‘best practices’ imported from
other countries or research focussing on ‘what works’. It comes into being by endorsing some
ideas as much as rejecting and staying away from others, and especially (other) political
actors endorsing them.
Relatedly, policy posture also highlights scale or levels as an important dimension in
exploring policy mobilities It can deepen our understanding of scale as a ‘category of
practice’ in education policy making (Papanastasiou, 2017). The technique of ‘posture’
illustrates that policy is interwoven with scale in multiple ways. It is not only created and
enacted at specific scales, but also creates, adjusts, or reinforces particular scalar hierarchies
and their significance. In this process, it borrows from the authorization of existing scalar
levels (for instance, scientific research around mindfulness primarily in the US, or ancient
Indian wisdom). Additionally, as (Clarke, 2019) notes, it also then reciprocally enhances the
authority of those levels.
Implications
Contemporary policy mobilities make the spaces and scales of policy both more
visible and more problematic. The specific empirical case of the Happiness class and the
proposed idea of ‘policy posture’ provides a way to think about the scalar concerns in policy
mobilities. The Happiness class is at once global, national, and sub-national – in terms of
discourses it chooses to (mis)align itself to, in terms of popularity and attention it garnered at
the national and international levels, and in terms of the spatial limits of its implementation.
More work is needed to solidify the idea of policy posture, for instance around, what kind of
ongoing labor does it involve for policy actors, what dissonance does it produces in the levels

103
of governance or bureaucratic hierarchies, what effects does it have on the larger stances of a
political party and other policies, and how, if at all, does it affect the policy implementation.
Highlighting the case of a subnational educational well-being policy in a federal
context, this paper’s significance is threefold. First, it adds to the conceptual bandwidth of
policy mobilities work in education, by illuminating specific discursive infrastructures that
enables policy to be mobile, relatively stable, and multiply scaled at the same time. Second, it
extends the empirical reach of educational policy mobilities, by taking the case of a relatively
less explored federal system in the global south. The federal context of India and the urban
capital context of Delhi, while unique in some ways, can allow for potential comparison with
other federations and urban centers in the global south and elsewhere. Third, given the
widespread adoption of educational well-being in schools and higher education, this paper
begins to map some of the mobilities afforded by the extensive use of contemplative practices
in such programs. I show how educational well-being policies build on the existing global
movements of contemplative practices and navigate through some of the ideological concerns
related to those practices.
One might argue that the case of educational well-being especially as it relates to
India, is too specific and may not be valuable for studying other phenomenon or contexts.
However, I argue, that the extensive use of contemplative practices in schools (and even
higher education in many parts of the world), is a significant phenomenon that needs
scholarly attention. While the specific mobilities of modern contemplative practices might be
unique, their widespread adoption in educational institutions creates space of more work in
the areas of critical policy studies, pedagogy, and curricula. As discussed in this paper,
through contemplative practices, mobilities of educational well-being are entangled between
the concerns of secular and religious, ancient and modern, national and international, spiritual
and scientific and relatedly the ‘east’ and the ‘west’. Being implemented in institutional

104
environments such as schools and universities these concerns are intensified as schools have
historically been seen temples of modernity.
Additional work on mapping the larger filed and the specific mobilities of educational
well-being can focus on the politics of knowledge, by investigating for instance the emerging
expertise of educational well-being (through modern gurus, scientific centers etc.) and the
categories of knowledge it borrows from and build on.

105
References
Adloff, F., Gerund, K., & Kaldewey, D. (Eds.). (2015). Revealing Tacit Knowledge:
Embodiment and Explication. transcript Verlag.
Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. Duke University Press.
Aiyar, Y., Davis, V., Govindan, G., & Kapoor, T. (2021). Rewriting the Grammar of the
Education System: Delhi’s Education Reform (A Tale of Creative Resistance and
Creative Disruption). https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-RISE-Misc_2021/01
Alter, J. S. (2004). Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy.
Princeton University Press.
Anyon, Y., Jenson, J. M., Altschul, I., Farrar, J., McQueen, J., Greer, E., Downing, B., &
Simmons, J. (2014). The persistent effect of race and the promise of alternatives to
suspension in school discipline outcomes. Children and Youth Services Review, 44,
379–386. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CHILDYOUTH.2014.06.025
Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (Third). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203487563/IDEOLOGY-CURRICULUM-MICHAEL-
APPLE
ASER. (2018). ASER Data Over Time - ASER Centre. ASER Center.
http://asercentre.org/Keywords/p/407.html
Atishi. (2020). Public education: can it be fixed? In J. Raina (Ed.), Elementary Education in
India (pp. 55–65). Routledge.
Ball, S. J. (1997). Policy Sociology and Critical Social Research: a personal review of recent
education policy and policy research. British Educational Research Journal, 23(3), 257–
274. https://doi.org/10.1080/0141192970230302
Banerjee, S. (2005). Civilising the BJP. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(9).
https://m.epw.in/journal/2005/29/commentary/civilising-bjp.html

106
Bates, A. (2021a). Learning “in the hive”: social character and student wellbeing in the age of
psychometric data. Critical Studies in Education.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2021.1948880
Bates, A. (2021b). Moral emotions and human interdependence in character education:
Beyond the one-dimensional self. Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003049500/MORAL-EMOTIONS-HUMAN-
INTERDEPENDENCE-CHARACTER-EDUCATION-AGNIESZKA-BATES
Beck, U. (2000). The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology of the second age of modernity*.
The British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 79–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1468-
4446.2000.00079.X
Bé né ï , V. (2008). Schooling passions: nation, history, and language in contemporary western
India. Stanford University Press.
Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control. Routledge.
Biswas, S. (2020). Why schools are at the centre of Delhi polls - BBC News. BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-51353525
Bourdieu, P. (1980). The Logic of Practice (R. Nice (Trans.)). Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. Sage.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. The University of
Chicago Press.
Bowman, E. (2018). To Focus On Students’ Emotional Well-Being, India Tries ’Happiness
Classes’ : NPR. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/28/632761402/to-focus-on-students-
emotional-well-being-india-tries-happiness-classes
Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). After Neoliberalization? Globalizations, 7(3),
327–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731003669669
Brown, C., & Donnelly, M. (2020). Theorising social and emotional wellbeing in schools: a

107
framework for analysing educational policy. Journal of Education Policy, 00(00), 1–21.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2020.1860258
Büscher, M., Urry, J., & Witchger, K. (Eds.). (2011). Mobile Methods. Routledge.
Care, E., Talreja, V., Sahin, A. G., & Ravindranath, S. (2020). The happy classroom: Insights
from our study of schools in Delhi, India. Brookings.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2020/08/14/the-happy-
classroom-insights-from-our-study-of-schools-in-delhi-india/
CCSCBE. (2021). Overview | Social, Emotional, and Ethical Learning .
Compassion.Emory.Edu. https://compassion.emory.edu/see-learning/index.html
CFC. (2019). Global Reach: Committee for Children. https://www.cfchildren.org/about-
us/global-reach/
Chopra, R. (2021). Baba Ramdev’s Bharatiya Shiksha Board: How and why the Govt bent
over backwards. The Indian Express.
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/bharatiya-shiksha-board-ramdev-how-and-
why-the-govt-bent-over-backwards-7368117/
Clandinin, J. D., & Connelly, M. F. (1987). Teachers personal knowledge:What counts as
personal in studies of the personal. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19(6), 487–500.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027870190602
Clarke, J. (2019). Foreword. In N. Papanastasiou (Ed.), The Politics of Scale in Policy:
Scalecraft and Education Governance (pp. v–xii). Bristol University Press; Policy Press.
Corbin, C. B., & Pangrazi, R. P. (2001). Toward a Uniform Definition of Wellness: A
Commentary.
Coursera. (n.d.). The Science of Well-Being by Laurie Santos. Coursera. Retrieved April 25,
2022, from https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
Crossley, N. (2004). The Circuit Trainer’s Habitus: Reflexive Body Techniques and the

108
Sociality of the Workout. Body & Society, 10(1), 37–69.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X04041760
Crossley, N. (2006). Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society. Open University Press.
https://doi.org/körper
DalaiLama.com. (2020). The Need for Secular Ethics in Modern Education | The 14th Dalai
Lama. DalaiLama.Com. https://www.dalailama.com/news/2020/the-need-for-secular-
ethics-in-modern-education
Das, A., & Ravindranath, S. (2022). Happiness Curriculum: Theory, Practice and Way
Forward.
De Michelis, E. (2005). A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Modern Esotericism.
Continuum.
De Michelis, E. (2007). A preliminary survey of modern yoga studies. Asian Medicine, 3(1),
1–19. https://doi.org/10.1163/157342107X207182
De Michelis, E. (2020). The Modern Spirit of Yoga: Idioms and Practices. In G. Flood (Ed.),
Hindu Practice (pp. 425–427). Oxford University Press.
De Souza, M., Francis, L. J., O’Higgins-Norman, J., & Scott, D. G. (Eds.). (2009).
International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Wellbeing (Vol. 3).
Springer.
Dilli-Shiksha. (2022). Deshbhakti hai kya. Twiiter account.
https://twitter.com/dilli_shiksha/status/1509843904098869251?s=24&t=WqQMgo--
RAQiM-ddZ62LOQ
Doshi, V. (2018). India, which has long focused on student success, now offers ‘happiness’
classes - The Washington Post. WashingtonPost.Com.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-which-has-long-focused-on-
student-success-now-offers-happiness-classes/2018/07/21/203f2f10-8466-11e8-9e06-

109
4db52ac42e05_story.html
Dunkel, H. B. (1969). Herbart & education. Random House.
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., & Taylor, R. D. (2011). The Impact of
Enhancing Students ’ Social and Emotional Learning : A Meta-Analysis of School-
Based Universal Interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x
Eccles, J. (1999). The development of children ages 6 to 14. The Future of Children, 9(2),
30–44.
Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning or Therapy? The Demoralisation of Education. British
Journal of Educational Studies, 52(2), 112–137. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-
8527.2004.00258.X
Ecclestone, K. (2011). Emotionally-vulnerable subjects and new inequalities: The
educational implications of an “epistemology of the emotions.” International Studies in
Sociology of Education, 21(2), 91–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2011.575100
Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has
undermined America. Metropolitan Books.
Ehrenreich, B. (2018). Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and
Killing Ourselves to Live Longer. Grand Central Publishing.
Elementary Education in India: Policy Shifts Issues and Challenges. (2020). In Jyoti Raina
(Ed.), Elementary Education in India. Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429328794
Ellis, S. (2017, April 9). Wellness, Well-Being... And What About Spa? Huffpost.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wellness-wellbeingand-wha_b_9641722
Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2nd
editio). The University of Chicago Press.

110
Engel, L., & Burch, P. (2021). Policy Sociology in the Contemporary Global Era: Continued
Importance and Pressing Methodological Considerations: Educational Researcher,
50(7), 474–478. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211009184
English, A. R. (2013). Discontinuity in Learning: Dewey, Herbart and Education as
Transformation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.2.0031b
Ereaut, G., & Whiting, R. (2008). What do we mean by “wellbeing”? And why might it
matter? What do we mean by “wellbeing”? And why might it matter? .
Ergas, O. (2019). A contemplative turn in education: charting a curricular-pedagogical
countermovement. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 27(2), 251–270.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2018.1465111
Evans, J., Davies, B., & Wright, J. (2004). Body Knowledge and Control: Studies in the
Sociology of Physical Education and Health. Routledge.
Evans, R. (2017). Emotional pedagogy and the gendering of social and emotional learning.
British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(2), 184–202.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1073102
Falzon, M. (2009). Introduction: Multi-sited ethnography: Theory, praxis and locality in
contemporary research. In Multi-sited Ethnography (pp. 1–23). Routledge.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317093190
Feuerstein, G. (1998). The yoga tradition. Hohm press.
FirstPost. (2013). Arvind Kejriwal is not an angry man. Or a socialist. FirstPost.Com.
https://www.firstpost.com/politics/arvind-kejriwal-is-not-an-angry-man-or-a-socialist-
858861.html
Fischer, E. F. (2014). The Good Life: Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of
Wellbeing. Stanford University Press.
Fit India Schools . (2021). FitIndia.Gov.In. https://fitindia.gov.in/fit-india-school

111
Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality, Volume 3: The care of the self. Penguin Books.
Foucault, Michel. (1980). Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual: An Interview with
Michel Foucault. History of the Present, 4, 1-2;11-13.
Galic, B. (2022). 92 Yoga Statistics You Need to Know in 2022 . Livestrong.Com.
https://www.livestrong.com/article/13768863-yoga-statistics/
Gasper, D. (2010). Understanding the diversity of conceptions of well-being and quality of
life. The Journal of Socio-Economic, 39(3), 351–360.
Giroux, H. (1995). ‘Who writes in a Cultural Studies class? or, where is the pedagogy?’. In
K. Fitts & A. France (Eds.), Left margins: Cultural Studies and composition pedagogy.
State University of New York Press.
GoI. (2017). Common Yoga Protocol 2017. MInistry of Ayush, Government of India.
https://main.ayush.gov.in/ayush-systems/yoga/common-yoga-protocol-2017/
Golann, J. W. (2015). The Paradox of Success at a No-Excuses School. Sociology of
Education, 88(2), 103–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040714567866
Goldin, N. (2014). The global youth wellbeing index. International Youth Foundation.
https://www.iyfnet.org/sites/default/files/library/globalyouthwellbeingindex.pdf
Gregory, A., Skiba, R. J., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). The Achievement Gap and the Discipline
Gap: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Educational Researcher, 39(1), 59–68.
https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09357621
Guha, R. (2007). India after Gandhi : the history of the world’s largest democracy. Pan
Macmillan.
Gulson, K. N., Lewis, S., Lingard, B., Lubienski, C., Takayama, K., & Webb, P. T. (2017).
Policy mobilities and methodology: a proposition for inventive methods in education
policy studies. Critical Studies in Education, 58(2), 224–241.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1288150

112
Gulson, K., & Symes, C. (2017). Making moves: theorizations of education and mobility.
Critical Studies in Education, 58(2), 125–130.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1317756
Hage, G. (2005). A not so multi-sited ethnography of a not so imagined community.
Anthropological Theory, 5(4), 463–475. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499605059232
Hayashi, A., Liew, J., Aguilar, S. D., Nyanamba, J. M., & Zhao, Y. (2022). Embodied and
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in Early Childhood: Situating Culturally Relevant
SEL in Asian, African, and North American Contexts. Early Education and
Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2021.2024062
Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., Sachs, J. D., De Neve, J.-E., Aknin, L. B., Wang, S., & Paculor,
S. (2022). The World Happiness Report 2022.
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/foreword/
Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sacks, J. (2016). World happiness report: Update (Vol 1).
Herbart, J. F. (1887). Zwei Vorlesungen Über Pädagogik (1802). In K. Kehrback (Ed.), J. F.
Herbart, Sämtliche Werke (pp. 63–74). Druch and Verlang von Hermann Beyer and
Söhne.
Immordino-yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. (2007). We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The
Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education. Mind, Brain and
Education, 1(1), 3–10.
IndiaTV. (2021). Happiness Curriculum is a massive success in Delhi government schools
says Deputy CM Education Minister Manish Sisodia. IndiaTVnews.Com.
https://www.indiatvnews.com/education/news-happiness-curriculum-is-a-massive-
success-delhi-government-schools-deputy-cm-and-state-education-minister-manish-
sisodia-731749
Ipsos Public Affairs. (2016). The 2016 Yoga in America Study.

113
https://www.yogaalliance.org/Portals/0/2016 Yoga in America Study RESULTS.pdf
Ispa-Landa, S. (2017). Racial and Gender Inequality and School Discipline: Toward a More
Comprehensive View of School Policy. Social Currents, 4(6), 511–517.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496517704876
Iyer, S. (2013). An Ethnographic Study of Disciplinary and Pedagogic Practices in a Primary
Class. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 10(2), 163–195.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0973184913484996
Jackson, L. (2020a). Beyond Virtue: The Politics of Educating Emotions. In Beyond Virtue.
Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108699747
Jackson, L. (2020b). Must children sit still? The dark biopolitics of mindfulness and yoga in
education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(2), 120–125.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1595326
Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Jacobs, J. M. (2011). Urban geographies I: Still thinking cities relationally. Progress in
Human Geography, 36(3), 412–422. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511421715
Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Williams, B. (2019). Transformative Social and Emotional
Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence.
Educational Psychologist, 54(3), 162–184.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1623032
Jain, A. R. (2015). Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture. Oxford University
Press. https://doi.org/978–0–19–939024–3
Johnson, D. J., Agbényiga, D. L., & Hitchcock, R. K. (Eds.). (2014). Vulnerable Children:
Global Challenges in Education, Health, Well-being, and Child Rights. Springer
Science & Business Media.
Jones, S., Bailey, R., Brush, K., & Kahn, J. (2018). Preparing for Effective SEL

114
Implementation.
Jones, S. M., & Kahn, J. (2017). The Evidence Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students’
Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Consensus Statements of Evidence from
the Council of Distinguished Scientists. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED577039
Juergensmeyer, M. (Ed.). (2003). Global Religions: An Introduction. Oxford University
Press.
Kahneman, D. (1999). Objective happiness. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz
(Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 1–25). Russell Sage
Foundation.
Khalsa, S. B. S., & Butzer, B. (2016). Yoga in school settings: a research review. Annals of
the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373, 45–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13025
Klingbeil, D. A., Renshaw, T. L., Willenbrink, J. B., Copek, R. A., Chan, K. T., Haddock, A.,
Yassine, J., & Clifton, J. (2017). Mindfulness-based interventions with youth: A
comprehensive meta-analysis of group-design studies. Journal of School Psychology,
63, 77–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JSP.2017.03.006
Kraus, A. (2016). Perspectives on Performativity: Pedagogical Knowledge in Teacher
Education. Waxmann.
Kucinskas, J. (2018). The mindful elite: mobilizing from the inside out. Oxford University
Press.
Kumar, K. (2015). Politics of education in colonial India. In Politics of Education in Colonial
India. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315656625/POLITICS-
EDUCATION-COLONIAL-INDIA-KRISHNA-KUMAR
Lalonde, A. (2012). Embodying asana in all new places: transformational ethics, yoga
tourism and sensual awakenings [University of Victoria].
http://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/4453

115
Lamont, M., & Swidler, A. (2014). Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits
of Interviewing. Qualitative Sociology, 37(2), 153–171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-
014-9274-z
Loughran, J. (2013). Pedagogy: Making Sense of the Complex Relationship Between
Teaching and Learning. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 118–141.
https://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12003
Lusted, D. (1986). Why Pedagogy? Screen, 27(5), 2–16.
https://doi.org/10.1093/SCREEN/27.5.2
Mahfouz, J., & Anthony-Stevens, V. (2020). Why Trouble SEL? The Need for Cultural
Relevance in SEL. Occasional Paper Series, 6(43).
https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2020/iss43/6
Malik, Y. K., & Singh, V. B. (1992). Bharatiya Janata Party: An Alternative to the Congress
(I)? Asian Survey, 32(4), 318–336. https://doi.org/10.2307/2645149
Mallinson, J., & Singleton, M. (2017). Roots of yoga. Penguin UK.
Manderson, L. (Ed.). (2005). Rethinking wellbeing: Essays on health, disability and
disadvantage. API Network.
Manning-Schaffel, V. (2019). Can you actually learn how to be happier? Nbcnews.Com.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/can-you-actually-learn-how-be-happier-
ncna1045316
Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The Emergence of Multi-Sited
Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.
Marcus, G. E. (2012). Multi-sited ethnography: Five or six things i know about it now. In S.
Coleman & P. von Hellermann (Eds.), Multi-Sited Ethnography: Problems and
Possibilities in the Translocation of Research Methods (pp. 16–32).
https://doi.org/10.4324/978020381015

116
Marsh, J. A., McKibben, S., Hough, H., Hall, M., Allbright, T. N., Matewos, A. M., &
Siqueira, C. (2018). Enacting Social-Emotional Learning: Practices and Supports
Employed in CORE Districts and Schools.
https://www.edpolicyinca.org/publications/sel-practices
Mason, J. (2002). Researching your own practice: The discipline of noticing. Routledge.
Mathews, G., & Izquierdo, C. (Eds.). (2009). Pursuits of Happiness: Well-being in
Anthropological Perspective. Berghahn Books.
McCann, E. (2011). Urban Policy Mobilities and Global Circuits of Knowledge: Toward a
Research Agenda. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(1), 107–
130. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2010.520219
McCann, E., & Ward, K. (2012). Policy Assemblages, Mobilities and Mutations: Toward a
Multidisciplinary Conversation. Political Studies Review, 10(3), 325–332.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-9302.2012.00276.x
McInnes, D. (2015). Yoga: Cultural Pedagogy and Embodied Ethics. In M. Watkins, G.
Noble, & C. Driscoll (Eds.), Cultural pedagogies and human conduct (pp. 201–216).
Routledge.
McKenzie, M., & Aikens, K. (2021). Global education policy mobilities and subnational
policy practice. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(3), 311–325.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2020.1821612
McKenzie, M., Lewis, S., & Gulson, K. N. (2021). Response: Matters of (im)mobility:
beyond fast conceptual and methodological readings in policy sociology. Critical
Studies in Education, 62(3), 394–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2021.1942942
McLaughlin, M. (1987). Learning from experience: Lessons from policy implementation.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 9(2), 171–178.
https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737009002171

117
McWilliam, E. (1997). Beyond the missionary position: Teacher desire and radical pedagogy.
In S. Todd (Ed.), Learning desire: Perspectives on pedagogy, culture, and the unsaid
(pp. 217–235). Routledge.
MHRD. (2020). National Education Policy.
Michalos, A. C. (1991a). Global report on student well-being, Vol. 1, Life satisfaction and
happiness. Springer-Verlag.
Michalos, A. C. (1991b). Global report on student well-being, Vol. 2, Family, friends, living
partner and self-esteem. Springer-Verlag.
Michalos, A. C. (1993a). Global report on student well-being, Vol. 3, Employment, finances,
housing and transportation. Springer-Verlag.
Michalos, A. C. (1993b). Global report on student well-being: Vol. 4: Religion, education,
recreation, and health. Springer-Verlag.
Michalos, A. C. (2008). Education, Happiness and Wellbeing. Social Indicators Research,
87(Jul), 347–366. https://doi.org/10.1007/sl 1205-007-9144-0
Mickle, K. (2015). America’s Top 10 Yoga Towns. Yoga Journal.
https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/americas-top-10-yoga-towns/
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldañ a, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: a methods
sourcebook. SAGE.
Montessori, M. (1949). The Absorbent Mind. The Theosophical Publishing House.
Morrow, V., & Mayall, B. (2009). What is wrong with children’s well-being in the UK?
Questions of meaning and measurement. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law ,
31(3), 217–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/09649060903354522
N, S. (2016). About A.Nagraj – Madhyasth Darshan. Madyhyasth-Darshan.Info.
https://madhyasth-darshan.info/introduction/about-propounder-a-nagraj/
NDTV. (2017, June 19). International Yoga Day 2017: Over 180 Countries Celebrate

118
“India’s Prescription Of Wellness.” NDTV. https://www.ndtv.com/india-
news/international-yoga-day-2017-over-180-countries-celebrate-indias-prescription-of-
wellness-photos-1714119
Nikore, M. (2014). The populist politics of the Aam Aadmi Party | South Asia@LSE.
Blogs.Lse.Ac.Uk. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2014/01/15/the-populist-politics-of-
the-aam-aadmi-party/
O’Connor, E. (2005). Embodied knowledge: The experience of meaning and the struggle
towards proficiency in glassblowing. Ethnography, 6(2), 183–204.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138105057551
O’Connor, E. (2007). Embodied knowledge in glassblowing: The experience of meaning and
the struggle towards proficiency. Sociological Review, 55(SUPPL. 1), 126–141.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00697.x
OECD. (2013). How’s life? 2013: Measuring well-being. OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2017). How’s life? 2017: Measuring well-being. OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2021). COVID-19 and Well-being: LIfe in the Pandemic. In COVID-19 and Well-
being. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/1E1ECB53-EN
Osher, D., Bear, G. G., Sprague, J. R., & Doyle, W. (2010). How Can We Improve School
Discipline?: Educational Researcher, 39(1), 48–58.
https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09357618
Ozga, J. (1987). Studying education through the lives of policy makers: An attempt to close
the micro-macro gap. In S. Walker & L. Barton (Eds.), Changing policies, changing
teachers: New directions for schooling? (pp. 138–150). Open University Press.
Ozga, J. (2021). Problematising policy: the development of (critical) policy sociology.
Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 290–305.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1697718

119
Pagis, M. (2009). Embodied Self-reflexivity. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72(3), 265–283.
https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250907200308
Papanastasiou, N. (2017). The practice of scalecraft: Scale, policy and the politics of the
market in England’s academy schools: Environment and Planning A: Economy and
Space, 49(5), 1060–1079. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16687764
Peck, J. (2011). Geographies of policy: From transfer-diffusion to mobility-mutation.
Progress in Human Geography, 35(6), 773–797.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510394010
Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). Mobilizing policy: Models, methods, and mutations.
Geoforum, 41(2), 169–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.GEOFORUM.2010.01.002
Polanyi, M. (1967). The tacit dimension. Anchor.
Popkewitz, T. S., Olsson, U., & Petersson, K. (2006). The learning society, the unfinished
cosmopolitan, and governing education, public health and crime prevention at the
beginning of the twenty-first century. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38, 68–87.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315105369
Rafalow, M. H. (2018). Disciplining play: Digital youth culture as capital at school.
American Journal of Sociology, 123(5), 1416–1452.
https://doi.org/10.1086/695766/ASSET/IMAGES/LARGE/FG1.JPEG
Resnick, B. (2017, October 19). Is mindfulness meditation good for kids? Here’s what the
science actually says. Vox. https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2017/5/22/13768406/mindfulness-meditation-good-for-kids-evidence
Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2009). Globalizing Education Policy. In Globalizing Education
Policy (1st ed.). Routledge.
Sá nchez Garcí a, R., & Spencer, D. C. (2014). Fighting scholars: habitus and ethnographies
of martial arts and combat sports. Anthem Press.

120
Sarangapani, P. (2003). Constructing school knowledge: an ethnography of learning in an
Indian village. Sage Publications.
Savage, G. (2010). Problematizing “public pedagogy” in educational research. In J. Sandlin,
B. Schultz, & J. Burdick (Eds.), Public pedagogy: education and learning beyond
schooling. Routledge.
Savage, G. C., & Lewis, S. (2017). The phantom national? Assembling national teaching
standards in Australia’s federal system. Journal of Education Policy, 33(1), 118–142.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1325518
SCERT-Delhi. (n.d.). Deshbhakti Curriculum Framework.
SCERT-Delhi, & DoE. (2019). Happiness Curriculum.
Schnäbele, V. (2010). Yoga in modern society. Kovač.
Schö n, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. Basic
Books.
Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (2017). Social and Emotional Learning and Teachers . The Future of
Children, 27(1).
Scott, A. (2021). Happiness course “improved student wellbeing.” BBC; SAGE Publications
Inc. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055102921999291
Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale
University Press.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: a new understanding of happiness and well-being and
how to achieve them. Nicholas Brealey.
Sen, A. (1993). Capability and well-being. In A. Sen & M. Nussbaum (Eds.), The quality of
life (pp. 30–53). Oxford University Press.
Sen, A. (2005). The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History , Culture and Identity
(Issue 5). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

121
Shapiro, L. (2007). The Embodied Cognition Research Programme. Philosophy Compass,
2(2), 338–346. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00064.x
Sharma, A. (2018). New Brooms and Old. Current Anthropology, 59(S18), S72–S82.
https://doi.org/10.1086/696070
Sharma, R. (2017). The global youth wellbeing index.
https://www.iyfnet.org/sites/default/files/library/2017YouthWellbeingIndex.pdf
Shilling, C. (2014). The body and social theory (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Singleton, M. (2011). The roots of yoga: Ancient+ modern. Yoga Journal.
https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/yoga-s-greater-truth
Sisodia, M. (2019). Shiksha: My Experiments as an Education Minister. Penguin Random
House India.
Sizer, B. B. (2013). Seven Tips for Practicing Positive Discipline. PBS.Org.
https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/seven-tips-for-practicing-positive-discipline
Skiba, R., & Peterson, R. (2010). Teaching the Social Curriculum: School Discipline as
Instruction. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth,
47(2), 66–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10459880309604432
Srinivas, S. (2015). A Place for Utopia. University of Washington Press.
Strauss, S. (2005). Positioning Yoga. Berg.
Syman, S. (2010). The subtle body: The story of yoga in America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Talreja, V. (2020). From Happiness Curriculum to Measuring Happiness.
SalzburgGlobal.Com. https://www.salzburgglobal.org/news/impact/article/from-
happiness-curriculum-to-measuring-happiness
The Good Body. (2022). 27 Meditation Statistics: Data and Trends Revealed for 2022.
TheGoodBody.Com. https://www.thegoodbody.com/meditation-statistics/
Tilak, J. B. G. (1989). Centre–State Relations in Financing Education in India. Comparative

122
Education Review, 33(4), 450–480. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0250-3_9
Times Of India. (2018). How Delhi became the migrant capital of India | Delhi News - Times
of India. Timesofindia.Indiatimes.Com.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/how-delhi-became-the-migrant-capital-of-
india/articleshow/63424352.cms
Tokumitsu, M. (2018). Tell Me It’s Going to be OK. The Baffler.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/tell-me-its-going-to-be-ok-tokumitsu
TV, U. W. (2016). Yoga for the Achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UN
Web TV. https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1uwiesrk2
UNESCO-MGIEP. (2020). Rethinking Learning: A review of social and emotional laearning
for education systemes.
UNESCO-MGIEP. (2021). Ahead of the Curve, Annual Report 2020.
UNESCO-MGIEP. (2022). The International Science and Evidence based Education (ISEE)
Assessment. MGIEP.Unesco.Org. https://mgiep.unesco.org/iseeareport
UNESCO. (2012). Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable
Development (MGIEP). UN.Org. https://in.one.un.org/who-we-are/mgiep-unesco/
UNESCO. (2016). Happy Schools: A framework for learning well-being in the Asia-Pacific.
UNICEF. (2013). Child well-being in rich countries: A comparative overview (Innocenti
Report Card 11).
UNICEF. (2016). Fairness for Children. A league table of inequality in child well-being in
rich countries. https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/830-fairness-for-children-a-
league-table-of-inequality-in-child-well-being-in-rich-countries.html
Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Polity.
van der Veer, P. (2013). The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China
and India. Princeton University Press.

123
van Manen, M. (2003). The Language of Pedagogy and the Primacy of Student Experience.
In J. Loughran (Ed.), Researching Teaching: Methodologies and Practices for
Understanding Pedagogy (pp. 13–27). Taylor & Francis.
van Manen, M. (2016). Pedagogical Tact: Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to
do. Routledge.
Vasudeva, V. (2022). Can a party grow nationally on a populist plank? The Hindu.
web.archive.org/web/20220324194941/https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/can-a-
party-grow-nationally-on-a- populist-plank/article65255350.ece%0AParley
Vats, V. (2020). Swept away. The Caravan. caravanmagazine.in/politics/liberal-jubilation-
around-kejriwal-triumph
Vavrus, F., & Bartlett, L. (2006). Comparatively Knowing: Making a Case for the Vertical
Case Study. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 8(2), 95–103.
Waajid, B., Garner, P. W., & Owen, J. E. (2013). Infusing Social Emotional Learning into the
Teacher Education Curriculum . International Journal of Emotional Education, 5(2).
Wacquant, L. (2004). Body and Soul. Oxford University Press.
Wacquant, L. (2005). Carnal connections: On embodiment, apprenticeship, and membership.
Qualitative Sociology, 28(4), 445–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-005-8367-0
Wacquant, L. (2014). Homines in extremis: What fighting scholars teach us about habitus.
Body & Society, 20(2), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X13501348
Wacquant, L. (2015). For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38(1), 1–
11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-014-9291-y
Wacquant, L. (2016). A concise genealogy and anatomy of habitus. Sociological Review,
64(1), 64–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12356
Wallner, J., Savage, G. C., Hartong, S., & Engel, L. C. (2020). Laboratories , Coproducers ,
and Venues : Roles Played by Subnational Governments in Standards-Based Reforms in

124
Four Federations. Comparative Education Review, 64(2), 249–268.
Watkins, M. (2005). The erasure of habit: Tracing the pedagogic body. Discourse, 26(2),
167–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300500143153
Watkins, M. (2008). Teaching bodies/learning desire: Rethinking the role of desire in the
pedagogic process. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 16(2), 113–124.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14681360802142047
Watkins, M. (2012). Discipline and Learn: Bodies, Pedagogy and Writing. Sense Publishers.
Watkins, M., Noble, G., & Driscoll, C. (2015). Cultural pedagogies and human conduct.
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315794730
Welsh, R. O., & Little, S. (2018). The School Discipline Dilemma: A Comprehensive
Review of Disparities and Alternative Approaches. Review of Educational Research,
88(5), 752–794. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654318791582
White, D. G. (2011). Yoga in Practice. Princeton University Press.
White, S. C. (2017). Relational wellbeing: re-centring the politics of happiness, policy and
the self. Policy & Politics, 45(2), 121–136.
https://doi.org/10.1332/030557317X14866576265970
White, S. C., & Blackmore, C. (Eds.). (2016). Cultures of Wellbeing: Method, Place, Policy.
Palgrave Macmillan.
WHO. (1948). Constitution of the World Health Organization.
WHO. (2000). Health Promotion Glossary Update: New Terms.
http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/about/HPR Glossary_New Terms.pdf
Williamson, B. (2021). Psychodata: disassembling the psychological, economic, and
statistical infrastructure of ‘social-emotional learning.’ Journal of Education Policy,
36(1), 129–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2019.1672895
Wise-Qatar. (2021). The Delhi Government’s Happiness Curriculum - WISE. Wise-

125
Qatar.Org. https://www.wise-qatar.org/project/the-happiness-curriculum/
Witter, R. A., Okun, M. A., Stock, W. A., & Haring, M. J. (1984). Education and Subjective
Well-Being : A Meta-Analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 6(2), 165–
173.
Wortham, S., Ha, S., & Alexander, J. (2021). Wholeness as a developmental goal. Mind,
Culture, and Activity, 00(00), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2021.1961157
Wortham, S., Love-Jones, R., Peters, W., Morris, S., & García-Huidobro, J. C. (2020).
Educating for Comprehensive Well-being. ECNU Review of Education, 3(3), 406–436.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120928448
Wright, K., & McLeod, J. (Eds.). (2015). Rethinking youth wellbeing: Critical perspectives.
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-188-6
Wyn, J. (2009). Youth health and welfare: The cultural politics of education and wellbeing.
Oxford University Press.
Yakovlev, P., & Leguizamon, S. (2012). Ignorance is not bliss: On the role of education in
subjective well-being. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 41(6), 806–815.
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SOCEC.2012.08.009
Zenner, C., Herrnleben-kurz, S., & Walach, H. (2014). Mindfulness-based interventions in
schools — a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(June), 1–
20. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00603

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Human well-being has become an important concern for individuals and policy makers over the last decades. Well-being in contemporary cultures is actively pursued as an intentional project of self-improvement and becomes inherently educational. This dissertation takes the ‘educational’ nature of well-being as its central concern to investigate the socio-political constructions of its policy and pedagogy. The questions guiding this study are: How does one learn and teach others to be well? How do globally circulating ideas of well-being take shape for specific educational aims? How do people involved in educational policy (conceived broadly) at different levels negotiate, adopt, or appropriate the various meanings of well-being?
This three-paper dissertation utilizes two ethnographic investigations to unpack the policy and pedagogical construction of well-being within and outside formal educational institutions. The first paper investigates the embodied pedagogy of well-being as pursued by practitioners of modern yoga. Through an ethnographic investigation conducted in Los Angeles, I show how teaching (and learning) of well-being as pursued through a massively popular contemplative technique of yoga is a deeply embodied and ongoing project. The second and third paper utilize data from a multi-sited ethnography conducted in parts of India and the United States. Like the first paper, the second paper also focuses on the pedagogy of well-being but within public schools of Delhi mandated with Happiness Class aimed at student well-being. I show how the pedagogy of well-being in this institutional context is deeply intertwined with student discipline and teacher’s moral frameworks. I raise some critical questions about the conception of student discipline and argue for humanizing teacher’s work. The third paper begins to map the global policy mobilities of well-being especially through the presence of contemplative practices like mindfulness and yoga and India’s relative position in the discourses of well-being. Taking the case of Happiness class in Delhi, it illuminates both the subnational policy as well as the ideas of educational well- being as relational and emergent social processes. Together, these papers begin to articulate a larger cultural politics of educational well-being.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Care and social-emotional well-being: organizational conditions in policy and practice

PDF

Impact of mindfulness on early education teacher well-being: an evaluation study

PDF

The logic of mining student data: corporate education reform, stakeholder activism, and the fate of inBloom

PDF

Atole con el dedo: learning from low-income parents' lived experiences with educational choice policies

PDF

A meta-analysis exploring the relationships between racial identity, ethnic identity, and Black students' positive self-perceptions in school

PDF

Titrating the solution: the diffusion and institutionalization of the logic of continuous improvement

PDF

Tempering transformative change: whiteness and racialized emotions in graduate leaders' implementation of equity plans

PDF

Applying culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom: a course for secondary, public, urban school educators

PDF

Well-being of school communities

PDF

Teacher well-being matters: an explorative study of early childhood teacher well-being, their experiences, and perspectives

PDF

Exploring the complexities of private sector influence: the case of student data privacy policy

PDF

Culturally relevant pedagogy in Khan Academy’s Algebra 1 course

PDF

Using culturally relevant pedagogy to deepen students' socio-political consciousness: an action research project

PDF

Leadership practices impacting Minnesota school principals’ employee well-being and burnout during the pandemic

PDF

Uneven development of perspectives and practice: Preservice teachers' literacy learning in an era of high-stakes accountability

PDF

Postsecondary students, well-being, and sources of support

PDF

Sociocognitive and neurophysiological contributors to effective secondary teaching

PDF

Teacher practices and student connection: high school students' perceptions of the influences of teacher pedagogy and care on their sense of connection

PDF

Faculty learning in career and technical education: a case study of designing and implementing peer observation

PDF

Education finance and the politics of California policymaking: a case study of the Local Control Funding Formula

Asset Metadata

Creator Miglani, Neha (author)

Core Title The cultural politics of educational well-being

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Urban Education Policy

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/25/2024

Defense Date 07/25/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag body/ embodiment,contemplative practices,international and comparative education,OAI-PMH Harvest,pedagogy,policy,well-being

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Burch, Patricia (committee chair), (committee member)

Creator Email nehaamiglani@gmail.com,nmiglani@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111375220

Unique identifier UC111375220

Legacy Identifier etd-MiglaniNeh-10983

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Miglani, Neha

Type texts

Source 20220728-usctheses-batch-962 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu