Biography
Shamini Dias has over 10 years experience as a K-16 arts educator in Singapore, working directly with students as well as a teacher educator and curriculum consultant to integrate drama, art, storytelling and movement as learning modes across the curriculum. Before coming to CGU, Shamini was on the Board of Directors at the Julia Gabriel Speech & Drama Center, Singapore, where she developed drama integrated literacy programs. Shamini is also the editor of Dramatise, the Singapore Drama Educators’ annual publication. She also consults for businesses seeking to include learning within corporate development.
Shamini’s research interests center on teacher education, particularly, developing mindfulness and resilience to help them work as transformative leaders in their classrooms. Specifically, she explores how creative inquiry and work based on processes common to artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs may develop adaptive capacity in teaching and learning. This research draws from complexity and emergence theories that explore postmodern socio-cultural shifts in knowledge and learning, as well as from motivation, resilience and leadership research. Shamini is also interested in the results of neuroscience research that helps illuminate the work done in mindfulness development across different fields. Shamini’s first love, early childhood literacy development and children’s literature, are research areas she hopes to eventually integrate into the work she is currently exploring.
Shamini is an RA on a Spencer Foundation funded project exploring mentoring, led by Professors Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura at the Quality of Life Research Center. She is also part of a transdisciplinary student research group that is exploring knowledge management and learning.
Email: shamini.dias@cgu.edu
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2013 Claremont Graduate University 
150 E. 10th St., Claremont, CA 91711 