Points of Entry

For many, this is the most common way into the scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion.

A teacher notices, for example, that something occurs in class, perhaps a new instructional strategy that seems to work or, that students respond to an activity in a way quite different from what the teacher intended and expected. Puzzlement, surprise, chagrin, or excitement in response to something that occurred in a particular class session invites reflection on practice.

A fundamental assumption of this approach to writing about teaching is that insight about teaching proceeds directly from practice.

• In its weaker form this type of presentation remains a condensed summary description with generalized narrative and assertion of conclusions. Its general structure is “I did ‘X’,” “‘Y’ happened,” “I think this is good.”
• Weaker examples contain an ill-formed question or insight, leave dimensions of a question unaddressed or underdeveloped, are not connected to a larger conversation about the topic, exhibit a premature leap from event to interpretation, or are unclear about the significance and implications of the central topic.
• Weaker examples tend to disregard contextual factors that may have influenced the teaching situation.
• Stronger examples communicate well not only the “what” and the “results,” but the “how” and the “why.”
• Stronger examples provide insight into the strategic moves that a teacher has made in order to influence the process of learning in a particular way. The strategic interventions are made so real and presented with such clarity and comprehension of the process of teaching and learning that readers gain insight into their own situations and practice.
• Stronger examples develop the “how” and the “why” in conversation with other scholarship on or related to the topic.
• Stronger examples persuade by showing the dynamic character of teaching and learning in the act, often deepening insight into that dynamism by putting into its institutional and cultural contexts.

The generative assumption in this case is that the person of the teacher is crucial to the processes of teaching and learning. It holds that insight comes from reflection on the experience and person of the teacher.

This assumption has been expressed most provocatively and influentially by Parker Palmer in his assertion that “we teach who we are” (see The Courage to Teach, Jossey-Bass, 2007). Powerful positive or negative experiences, transitions in life, or encounters with a text or situation often nudge faculty members toward looking at their lives, their vocations, and their work across a sustained time period or in relation to particular institutional, developmental, or cultural factors. This generative assumption holds that embedded in, or behind, personal narratives are larger insights and issues.

In contrast, Jay Parini, recommends developing a “teaching persona” – a mask that is consciously fabricated and employed in order to achieve particular pedagogical purposes in the classroom (The Art of Teaching, Oxford, 2005).

Parini sees teaching more as a performance, while Palmer sees it more as a disclosure.

• In weaker examples of this type of essay a personal narrative remains personal and particular to the author only, with little or no indication of how the author’s own experience might be relevant to others.
• Weaker essays take the form of a personal testimonial: “this I believe” – and does not move beyond the author.
• Stronger essays of this type use the personal as refraction of an experience or problem or issue with which many in the profession grapple.
• Stronger examples make multiple connections between an author’s personal experience and what the author knows (stronger) or suspects (somewhat weaker) is the experience of other teachers in similar contexts. These essays become stronger when they portray the personal as gateway into significant issues for a wider community of practitioners, cast the personal as the pivot on which crucial general issues of teaching and learning turn, or portray the personal as raising conundrums that are shared by teachers in similar contexts, or stages of career or sub-discipline.
• Stronger examples relate their findings to a broader community of practitioners and contribute to ongoing conversations in that community.

Essays in this vein tend to start from a more abstract point, often from discussions of purposes of particular educational projects, such as general education, the major, formation of clergy, training of preachers, or the capstone experience. Essays in this genre help in interpreting the educational project to other constituencies within and beyond higher education.

The virtue of this approach is that it invites a larger view, offers a broader horizon, and can provide a sense of coherence. This type of essay brings together into an integrated whole the various factors that shape a teaching context: faculty, students, institution, field, and the world in general.

• Weaker examples of this type of essay remain overly abstract and generalized.
• Weaker examples are moralistic in tone, presenting their conclusions as self-evident without explicitly rooting them in any specific tradition or view of the world or the educational project.
• Weaker essays are written in a manner that disregards particularities of individuals, institutions, or fields, and the diversity of purposes these may have. They promote a “one size fits all” solution to what are perceived as universal problems without encouraging readers to think carefully and critically about how they might adapt general insights to their own situations.
• Stronger examples provide a coherent vision of a community engaged in a project and a conceptualization of work alongside which or over against which practitioners can locate their own practice. They sharpen readers’ senses of what is at stake and the full dimensions of an issue.
• Stronger essays in this mode often contribute to identification of pivotal points or elements in the teaching and learning process, or the influence of contextual factors on it.
• Strong essays include illustrations and examples that clarify and prompt possible abstraction and translation to new contexts, a central determining factor of quality in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Essays of this kind often make passionate arguments about how to teach or about something that is centrally important in teaching, for example: critical thinking, the democratic classroom, service learning, contemplative pedagogy, problem-based learning, multiple intelligences, and student-faculty research.

• Weaker examples of this genre offer too simple a view of the teaching and learning process that focuses intently on one dimension of it to the exclusion of other dimensions of relevance.
• Weaker essays make an overgeneralized claim that is disproportionate in scope to the supporting evidence provided.
• Weaker essays are inattentive to the particularities of the various contexts of teaching theology and religion in higher education in North America and beyond.
• Stronger examples of this type of essay make a clear, passionate presentation of an exciting idea or new technique and locate that technique within its historical trajectory.
• Stronger essays make claims that are proportional to the evidence adduced.
• Stronger essays tend to prompt continuing conversation as professors alternately develop, refine, qualify, or reject the central proposal that is being advanced.

Fields change in terms of materials, questions, procedures, and contextual influences. Any one of these changes can prompt reflection on its implications for teaching in that field. The generative assumption of this type of essay is that effective teaching demands a deep and current knowledge of one’s own discipline. Only with that type of knowledge is a teacher able to make informed decisions about what to present in the classroom and how to present it.

This type of essay often offers an anatomy of decisions made by a particular teacher in constructing a course syllabus or a unit of a course.

Essays in this vein focus on the intersection of disciplinary knowledge with practical considerations involved in teaching certain courses and student populations in specific contexts (such as the community college, the theological school, or the liberal arts college).

• Weaker examples of this category simply report on or describe the newly available resources without offering a substantial account of the pedagogical issues created or raised by the materials.
• Weaker examples simply state: “I now teach these texts instead of those texts.”
• Weaker essays fail to develop the pedagogical issues such as the design of a particular course or unit or pedagogical strategies actually employed in teaching with the new material under consideration.
• Stronger examples in this mode focus on the educational dynamics of using specific material in the classroom setting, bringing together students, professor, and material. They describe and analyze occasions for considering the alignment, or lack of alignment, of these three in the course.
• Stronger examples provide sustained consideration of how to use the new resources leading to identification of issues that requires the rethinking of a fairly widely shared consensus about how to teach a particular subject matter.
• Stronger essay are able to make arguments that the issues being raised have implications for other fields.
• Stronger essays situate the new resources of the field in the layers of culture, community, and institution within which teaching occurs.

The generative assumption in this case is that there are well-established (and largely unexamined and taken for granted) conventions of both teaching and scholarship that shape the teaching of certain material in ways that may well be counter-productive. Those conventions prevent the student, professors, and material from being aligned in ways that promote learning.

Conceptualizations of research fields and standards for disciplinary scholarship develop and change. Posing problems that a particular field presents to teaching is useful. Sometimes the problems in teaching a field can, in and of themselves, shed light on or provide support for reframing or revising a field.

• In weaker examples of this category the discussion of the field remains on the field –its content, methodology and procedures – and does not turn in any sustained way to actually teaching the field. The discussion grapples with guild issues, the author’s disciplinary scholarly agenda, or institutional constraints to the full flourishing of the field at a particular institution, but it leaves the relation of all of those issues to teaching wholly or largely implicit.
• Weaker essays tend to have overgeneralized claims about teaching that are not supported by the analysis and interpretation of specific evidence. In addition, they may make sweeping claims of significance for their argument that are out of proportion to the evidence provided.
• Stronger examples of this type of scholarship tie the nature of the field to the teaching of the field through sustained analysis and interpretation, and clarify multiple dimensions of the issue being explored and its implications for teaching.
• Stronger essays probe the connection between the nature of the field and the teaching of the field to a level of depth that discloses real or potential implications for the teaching of other fields in theology and religion, and even beyond.
• Stronger essays exhibit both a thoughtful querying of the field and a thoughtful reflection on actual classrooms and curricula, both in the author’s own context and more broadly throughout the field.