Designed For

This Graduate Diploma in Education (GDE) is for educators interested in deepening their understanding of the contemplative, reflexive, and reflective basis to social-emotional well-being, resiliency, flourishing and trauma-sensitive pedagogy.

This Graduate Diploma in Education cohort provides educators within the Lower of Mainland of British Columbia a Blended Learning experience and for educators outside of Lower of Mainland of British Columbia a Hybrid Learning experience.

Program Format

• Two-year, 30 unit program
  • Cohort model, typically 20-30 students with smaller mentor groups
• Online learning, Tuesday 4:30-8:30
• Includes a one-week in-person Summer Institute B.C. August (August 12-16, 2024 & August 11-15, 2025)
• No classes in July, during the winter break or ministry-designated spring break

Themes of Study

• Teacher inquiry through contemplative and reflective practices
• Frameworks to support the wholistic development of children, including Indigenous approaches to teaching and learning (First Peoples Principles of Learning)
• Contemplative practices, reflexive, and reflective inquiry
• Theories and practice of care of the self, self-regulation and social-emotional well-being, and care of the other
• Collaborative and caring learning communities
• Personal and social responsibility
• Trauma-sensitive pedagogical practices of resilience and flourishing 

PROGRAM CAPACITIES

Program capacities provide a reflective focus for documenting and self-assessing learning. At frequent intervals throughout the program, participants and their mentors refer to the capacities to assess progress, to set new goals and to create direction for further learning in field studies. At the end of the program, each participant’s comprehensive portfolio includes a synthesis of learning and self-assessment of growth in these capacities, supported by evidence of learning. This program provides opportunities to develop these capacities:

• Demonstrate dispositions of pedagogical sensitivity within practices of caring for the self and for others. 
• Cultivate reflective capacities that support holistic social-emotional development and self-regulatory practices. 
• Explore traditions of contemplative, reflexive, and reflective inquiry to foster mindful engagement with children and youth. 
• Expand theoretical understandings of pedagogical relationality and attunement to children and youth. 
• Create professional learning communities that are attentive to practices of self-and-other integration and care of the self. 
• Develop orientations of inquiry and critical reflection to understand and develop effective teaching practices.

Faculty Members

• Stephen Smith
• Heesoon Bai