Daya Alderfer is a curriculum scholar at the University of Toronto whose research argues that teacher well-being begins in the body, not the staff room.
Worth knowing
She studies what actually keeps educators in the profession, using mixed methods and hermeneutic phenomenology to show how somatic and contemplative practice shapes a teacher's presence in the classroom. She works in Spanish and English and has tested these ideas in K-12 and university settings on more than one continent.
Story
Daya has taught across K-12 and higher education in several countries, and the through line has been a question about how teachers hold up under the work. That led her to doctoral research grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology and yoga philosophy, examining professional becoming as something lived in the body rather than acquired through training days. She is now based in Toronto, where her work brings embodied pedagogy and holistic education into curriculum studies.
Highlights
- PhD researcher and curriculum scholar, University of Toronto
- Author, "Embodiment as Pedagogy: Reclaiming Educator Well-Being Through the Koshas," Holi…
- Bilingual educator and researcher (Spanish/English)
- Teaching and research experience across K-12 and higher education internationally
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