Resources by Ryan Korstange

Social media and the daily news both mark the continued normalization of violence. Given that one of the chief aims of liberal education is toward personal development and the attainment of civic responsibilities, the normalization of violence is a central issue with which twenty-first-century educators must grapple. To this end, Pedagogies for Building Cultures of Peace is a useful resource both for centralizing current research on structural and cultural violence and the concomitant dehumanization of the “other” (Chapters 1-4). Further, the book details the many benefits of engaging youth in structured critical dialogue about their experience and internalization of violence in many forms and leverages this dialogic strategy for the transformational aim of building peace and destabilization of structural violence (Chapters 5-9). This book is a theoretical treatment of a specific dialogic experience examining the normalization of violence. It is evident that the experience was significant for the participants, and the detailed reporting of the participant dialogue helps make clear some ways in which structures of violence are normalized for these youth. However, as with qualitative research – the difficulty lies in transferability, specifically in the question of how generalizable the experience of these ten youth is for a broader audience. In part, this challenge could have been alleviated with a more detailed description of both the methods used in the dialogic process itself and by providing more information about the participants themselves. That difficulty aside, the central argument – that safe, collaborative, and critical dialogue functions as a viable pedagogical strategy for building real peace – is compelling, even if the author does not provide practical details for creating this type of dialogue or these types of spaces (a brief outline of the dialogic structure utilized does appear in Table 10.3). Readers of The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching will find the final two chapters the most beneficial. These summarize the dialogue and extract pedagogical implications, which are supported by research in experiential learning, social constructivism, relational epistemology, and power analysis. Taken together, these chapters provide a robust theory that must inform teaching aimed towards peace. As Abidi observes, “education that neglects to challenge normalizations of violence, and the relations that maintain violence as an accepted norm in society, further reinforces unquestioned ideologies of the dehumanized other” (113). It is, therefore, no longer an option to say nothing about the normalization of violence in the classroom – rather collaborative critical conversation must be employed towards the end of peace.

“Well-being” is a complicated construct with at least two referents: the hedonic tradition considering well-being as feelings, and the eudaimonic tradition which sees well-being as a relational activity, the practice of being well, or living life well. This volume explores the various implications and connections existing between well-being (by either definition) and higher education (5). In so doing, the contributions in this volume argue that higher education must change its focus to give “priority to and support for those experiences that make learning and well-being connected objectives” (11). In other words, the authors of this volume suggest that well-being is at the core of higher education, and therefore, institutions of higher learning ought to prioritize experiences that contribute to a student’s well-being. For those involved in higher education, the context for this volume is readily apparent. The landscape of education, as Laurie Schreiner describes it, is a perfect storm wherein, The most diverse group of students enters higher education from schools that have ill-prepared them for college at the same time that postsecondary institutions have shifted their focus to credentialism and financial sustainability. The promise of higher education, to empower students and broaden their capacity to engage the world as global citizens and whole persons, has narrowed to the point that is now perceived as simply a steppingstone to a better job. (136) It is within this context, and against this background that the present volume should be read. Well-being is not a silver bullet, and a focus on well-being in education will not solve all of these problems. But, as the diverse contributions in this volume illustrate, a focus on well-being either at the level of the individual instructor, in programmatic directions, or as an essential direction of whole institutions, goes a long way towards revitalizing the significance of higher education and towards ensuring that students benefit from the time they spend in college. The book is made up of thirty-four essays, which are organized into four parts. The first section is entitled “Analysis and Meaning” and deals with the task of defining well-being and describing it fully, with particular attention to the way in which the concept relates to higher education. The essays in this section are highly critical of the job skills or certification centered model of education and often shift into a defense of the liberal arts. By and large, their point is clear – college education has larger impacts on a student’s life than appear in the classroom, or on assessments of various types. These impacts include the practical factors of a student’s physical and psychological well-being both while they are in school and after graduation. There are also more abstract implications including the development of virtue, community, and citizenship. At the heart of all of these essays are the larger questions about the essential mission of higher education, and the equally difficult question of identifying the defining characteristics of educated students. The second section, “Manifestations and Implementation,” treats various issues brought about by re-focusing higher education onto the development of well-being. Key concepts articulated in this section are those of flourishing, self-authorship, and identity development, and there is also a sustained argument across several essays for the institutional re-definition of student success along with the concomitant implications for assessing success in a well-being paradigm. The third section, “Facilitation: Curricular, Pedagogic and Across Boundaries,” takes on some programmatic consequences of the preceding discussions of well-being. These essays take pre-existing institutional initiatives as something of a case study exploring larger questions of what shape institutions or initiatives focused on well-being would take. Well-being initiatives at Georgetown, George Mason, and Morehouse are analyzed, as are implications of campus carry legislation, and the impact of national goals related to degree completion on community college students and their well-being. The final section, “The Logic of Change: Why, What, and How?” postulates several different theoretical treatments of why institutions of higher education should take on the hard work of change and should reorganize their efforts and re-center their initiatives around well-being. Comparisons are drawn between institutional change in health care and that in higher education. Authors articulate the social/historical context that makes the time ripe for the reinvention of higher education. Also, the benefit of problem-based capstone courses, and particularly the reorganization of curriculum around such courses, are identified. Well-being is a tremendously important concept for the future of higher education, and this volume presents a variety of approaches to the application of well-being onto various aspects of the higher educational institution. Instructors can use this volume to consider ways of adapting their teaching towards the beneficial education of the whole student. Administrators would benefit from thinking through the implications that curriculum and institutional structures and approaches have on student well-being (and that of university staff and faculty). The individual essays are organized well and present cogent arguments. This volume is a great resource for anyone interested in the development of well-being in higher education.

“Learning in the 21st century has drastically changed how learners access and process information” (1). The authors of Best Practices in Engaging Online Learners begin by describing specific changes in higher education that directly impact student learning. This change is obvious. Several technologies are changing the landscape of higher education: electronic textbooks, learning management systems, large-scale institutional data, social media – each of these changes impacts student experience, and benefit from intentional pedagogical usage. These changes are more thorough in distance learning than in face-to-face contexts it seems. The authors present an idealistic call towards engaging and developing rigorous online education that harnesses its possibilities. As such, they advocate active and experiential learning that is high on transfer and reflection. To a certain extent, this book seems to be incorrectly titled. Calling itself Best Practices in Engaging Online Learners leaves the reader with the expectation that the book contains examples of best practices. What the book does in actuality is to categorize several trends in pedagogy and in the scholarship of teaching and learning research. The focus is almost entirely theoretical. The book surveys experiential learning (13-33), project-based learning (36-39), scenario-based learning (39-43), gamification (47-57), cooperative learning (61-71), and assessment strategies (73-89). The summaries of these areas of pedagogy research are accurate and centralize much of the current research, but the most essential questions remain: how does an instructor take the content they need to present and make it engaging for students? How do instructors engage students in the learning process? What specific strategies empower students to have a higher degree of retention and transportability of what they have learned? On these questions, theory only gets us so far. Having said this, the volume has some utility, particularly in that it provides an efficient summary of various mainline innovations in pedagogy research. For this reason, it would be valuable for an instructor new to teaching, or one looking to start making progress towards learning-centered instruction. It also might be worth discussing in a faculty learning community – provided that more seasoned instructors can flesh out the theory with examples from their teaching. The utility of this volume dramatically decreases for the seasoned teacher who has done reading or research into effective teaching practices.

There can be no question that understanding (implicit or explicit) learning theory undergirds effective teaching. This is especially true when instructional topics become confusing or diverge from the common experience of students. Many of the topics students encounter as they study theology and religion fall into this category, and it is for this reason that the collection of Knud Illeris’s works, Learning, Development and Education, has value for teachers of theology and religion. Illeris has spent his career figuring out how learning works and determining how to create authentic, transformative learning experiences. This collection of essays demonstrates the way in which Illeris’s theories developed over time, and shows the breadth of topics that come to bear on the understanding of student learning. Illeris categorizes his selected works into five parts, containing essays that were originally published between the late 1990s and 2015. Some of the essays have not previously appeared in English. The first two sections have the most bearing on the teaching of theology and religion, so they will be the focus of this review. The three essays in Part One succinctly describe Illeris’s comprehensive theory of learning, articulated more fully in his 2007 monograph How We Learn (New York: Routledge). In brief, Illeris argues that learning has two fundamental processes and three dimensions. The processes are “an external interaction process between the learner and his or her social, cultural, or material environment, and an internal psychological process of elaboration and acquisition” (10). Illeris also identifies three dimensions of learning: the content dimension deals with the material being learned, the incentive dimension considers the motivation and energy necessary for learning, and the interaction dimension categorizes dispositions that provide the genesis of learning. Illeris further identifies several barriers to learning (15-17) after recognizing that education is rife with “non-learning and mislearning” (15). According to Illeris, there are four types of learning: cumulative, assimilative, accommodative, and significant/transformational learning. Each of these types of learning is connected to a phase in psycho-social development in Part Two, where Illeris lays out his understanding of lifelong learning (48-55) and gives extended treatment to the function of learning at the youth and adult stages. He argues that education during the phase of youth is typified by a quest for what he calls “self-orientation,” which means the “process where one orients oneself with a view to finding oneself, one’s options, ways of functioning, and preferences” (69). In his view, all educational experiences (inside and outside of the classroom) contribute to and are undergirded by the youth’s quest for self-orientation. The situation is different with adult learners, who have already found their orientation, and so accept responsibility for their actions and their learning. In Illeris’ estimation, this different approach to learning requires different foundations for adult education. Part Three, “Special Learning Issues,” is a compilation of chapters that do not fit in the other sections but provide a theoretical grounding for the arguments Illeris makes in parts one and two. Part Four, “Various Approaches to Education,” includes the oldest of the selected articles, and describes how some of Illeris’s theories were put into practice at Danish universities in the 1970s. The final part concerns learning in working life. Here Illeris applies his comprehensive theory of learning (articulated in Part One) to the workplace. While there is certainly room for criticism of Illeris’s understanding of learning, and in particular, his connections of types of learning with phases of psycho-social development, Illeris’s comprehensive theory of learning is helpful as a foundation for effective theological education. Three observations, in particular, deserve mention. First, his contention that learning is not merely knowledge transfer, or skills acquisition, but includes a variety of psychological, biological, and social factors is worth keeping in mind as we construct learning experiences for our students. Second, Illeris’s observation that youth and adults have a different foundation for learning is significant, especially as there are now more adults students enrolling in college than ever. Finally, it is incredibly important to consider the various barriers students face as they try to learn. While it is certainly the case that students are responsible for their education, Illeris is right to argue that teachers both create and tear down barriers.

There are many important discussions happening in the academy about how to re-envision the student experience in order to provide better learning opportunities. The culture of higher education is undergoing a shift from an instruction-centered model to a learning or student-centered paradigm. These discussions are extremely significant in that they force faculty to re-evaluate and re-envision the traditional models – and ultimately lead to a more thorough and permanent education for the students. However, many of these studies are difficult since ways of applying these new theoretical models is often not immediately obvious. In Building a Pathway for Student Learning, Jones, Noyd, and Sagendorf have compiled a comprehensive and effective workbook addressing this lack. The workbook represents the results of a faculty development course design retreat that the authors have conducted for the last several years. This is not a book about course design, it is a systematic workbook giving direction for designing a learning-centered course in any discipline. At every stage in the course design process, the reader is reminded that, “our success ultimately comes not from what we as instructors are able to do but from what our students learn as a result of taking our courses” (9). To this end, the following pathway is suggested for effective course design. First, know the students you will teach. Second, identify the course learning goals. Third, build a summative assessment to determine the extent to which students have accomplished the learning goals. Fourth, develop a list of learning proficiencies that are required to successfully accomplish the learning goals, and then sequence them. Fifth, create learning experiences that will allow students to build and develop the central proficiencies, and to accomplish the learning goals. Sixth, construct several formative assessments, and use them to evaluate student progress toward the core proficiencies, which will encourage student improvement. After going through each of these stages, the authors lead the reader through two synthetic activities: creating a course poster and syllabus. The course poster assembles the learning experiences to be utilized in class, the proficiencies that will be developed, the way these proficiencies will be assessed, and the goal of the class, in order to ensure coherence and alignment within the course, and to transparently display the structure of the course to students. The syllabus is envisioned as a tool to demonstrate the learning-centered design of the course, not just the course policies and assignments. Each of these synthetic steps is aided by the use of the companion website. The workbook has much to commend. First, each chapter contains a helpful and thorough survey of the more significant research on the topic under consideration. Second, the system suggested to redesign courses is logically ordered, and effective. Third, at several key points the authors suggest proactive ways of finding evaluation of stages in the course design from colleagues. Most importantly, the authors recognize that effective course design has to be a flexible system; they do not claim to have all the answers for how every course can best be structured, rather they provide a series of guiding questions so that individual instructors can think through how to order their classes so that they effectively take students from wherever they begin, to the acquisition of central proficiencies and the accomplishment of learning goals, whatever the discipline. For these reasons, this book should be essential for anyone developing or revising courses towards a learning-centered model.

David Greene’s Unfit to Be a Slave sets out to address the role that education should play in society. His argument rests on the assumption that current educational opportunities are limiting or exploitive of adult working students. He says, “today, the corporations and financiers benefit from the ignorance and silence of the population. The less information and understanding people have, the more they can be misled and controlled” (71; this criticism is borne out in more detail in chapters 4 and 5). The current trend towards “job skills education” is elicited as a prime example of inadequate higher educational opportunities which serve the interests of corporations and not students. Greene argues that “the duty of an educator is to broaden the horizons of learning and challenge the limitations they [students] face” (53). Thus, for Greene, successful education arrives at the “maximal development of intellect, understanding, culture, and awareness of the world around us” (9). Further, effective education must aim to develop students as leaders, and empower them for success, rather than giving them only skills requisite for low-wage or menial employment.   In an effort to ameliorate these problems, Greene presents an outline of a pedagogical system built on Paulo Freire’s idea of “problem posing education.” This model starts with the dissolution of customary boundaries between teacher and student, recognizing that both students and teachers need to learn, and both can teach. Greene builds on this model, advocating that education ought to be focused on the collective development of a set of central literacies: functional literacy, civic or political literacy, health literacy, environmental literacy, and financial and economic literacy (22). Each of these literacies includes competencies for both individual and corporate ends, and Greene’s argument posits they can be gained through what he calls “central tools,” which are: listening, the recognition of pre-existing student knowledge, discussions about real problems faced in daily life, and the advocation and organization of specific actions to combat those problems (71-77). Greene also strongly suggests that education not be confined to the classroom. He contends that higher education must empower students to change society and he provides examples from his own teaching that underscore this need. Unfit to Be a Slave does not contain any quick fix techniques to import into your classroom to move towards a more effective classroom experience, rather it presents an idea of education that is much broader and more holistic. Throughout the book Greene strives to promote a broad educational model that is directed not to the acquisition of job skills themselves, but to an increased ability of students to function well in society and to live well. The book focuses on the plight of adult workers, and takes particular pains to explain the oppressive economic and social factors working against the thriving of adults in the workforce. Personal politics aside, faculty are reminded that life exists outside of the ivory tower of academia, and that student experience informs their perspectives on theoretical matters, and can be marshaled as an asset to an effective learning experience for both the instructor of record and the students enrolled in the course.

For the Love of Learning: Innovations from Outstanding University Teachers is a compendium of thirty-six essays which describe various aspects of innovative pedagogy. The essays were submitted by educators who have received recognition by the United Kingdom’s prestigious National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS), that is designed to recognize excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. Many of the essays describe the results of projects funded by NTFS grants. As Bilham makes clear in the introduction, the collection is an attempt at inspiring fresh and creative approaches to the challenge of shaping students through education. In many ways, this is a collection of case studies as much as a collection of essays. The contributions focus on the description of pedagogical tools which the author has used successfully. None of the specific examples elicited apply directly to the disciplines of theological and religious studies, but the educational theory and the spirit of innovation which lay behind these specific practices are readily transferable. There is a consistent call to engage students, which rests on the supposition that an engaged student learns better, and is retained. Several strategies for this type of engagement are presented. Essays 1 and 9 advocate for the involvement of students in the production and presentation of new content. Essays 11 and 27 suggest the employment of problem-based learning models, in which students seek out their own answers to real-world problems often with limited interference from the instructor. Essay 15 argues that humor in teaching can boost engagement when treating particular difficult or confusing topics. Several of the essays advocate refining the nature of assessments. For example, essay 13 argues that if constructed well, assessments can be an important educational tool serving to teach not just to assess learning. Essay 17 identifies several problems with current models of assessment: they often do not measure the types of thinking that the course requires, or reflect the ability the students develop as thinkers through the course, or consider the fact that all students are different. Essay 18 discusses the benefit of formative assessment, which seeks to encourage deeper thinking and correct misunderstanding early in the educational process, rather than penalizing students at the end of the course, as summative assessment often does. Essay 33 argues that assessment can be viewed as a means for enhancing the employability of students. While none of these essays provide answers to the problem they do provide important conceptual steps forward to aid faculty in thinking through the design of learning experiences and strategies for assessing what has been learned. Finally, the impetus to spend time developing the employability of students is a point well taken (see Essays 4, 24, 27, and 31-26). In many American universities there is an increasing emphasis on the acquisition of job skills – making sure college and university courses contribute to student employability. This trend directly impacts the teaching of theology and religion. In conclusion, this volume is a tremendous resource for someone looking to enliven their teaching. It is not a roadmap to an innovative religious studies course, but it highlights proven pedagogical approaches which are shaping the lives of students in the United Kindgom, and are worth considering for anyone who takes the task of education seriously.

The integration of technology into classroom instruction is an oft-mentioned topic in modern pedagogical discussions. This collection of essays enters into the fray very broadly, by postulating productive ways of integrating various technologies into a wide variety of educational settings, covering an incredibly diverse set of subjects. Despite the dizzying variety inherent to this collection, there are two primary areas in which this volume is helpful to those interested in teaching theology or religion: First, for individual instructors intent on enhancing student learning, this volumes offers an overview of technologies instructors are using successfully, as well as effective summaries of educational theory justifying their approach to technology integration. Second, for departments or department chairs interested in broadening the use of technology within their course offerings, this volume includes many essays discussing methods with which teachers can recognize relevant technologies and their usefulness in the classroom. Several important and foundational principles about the integration of technology into classroom instruction undergird each chapter. Most foundationally, integrating technology into the classroom for the sake of integrating technology is over and over again shown to be ineffective (see esp. 45-46). There is a pernicious assumption in many sectors that classrooms need technology to be effective. Several chapters in this volume offer a very important caution: Technology is a tool, which when used well can serve to help students engage in classroom content more readily and thereby to learn more effectively, but the mere use of any technology does not ensure student engagement or learning. Two other theoretical sections are of note: A helpful overview of several learning theories is provided (informal and incidental learning, relational mentoring, and situated learning) which provides a helpful framework for the integration of technology into a classroom (233-236). Chapter 15 also offers an interesting survey of TPACK (technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge) research-based course design. Though this particular chapter relates this theoretical model to math education, the model has many important implications for theological and religious education. In addition to theoretical contributions, several specific technological tools are discussed with a view to their productive use in the classroom. A few technologies deserve specific mention here: Anonymous student polling either through clickers or Poll Everywhere is offered as an effective tool to enhance student discussion (46-51). Productive use of social media in a classroom setting is discussed (8-11 and 217-228), and its implications for privacy are covered in chapter 16. The role of games in learning is also considered (11-14 and 178-191). The specific games discussed in this volume are not really relevant to theological education; however, readers may be able to draw connections between the book and the Reacting to the Past (RTTP) group. RTTP has a few games dealing with theological or religious material (see RTTP). Several articles are focused on training instructors to use technology effectively while engaged with teaching. The authors contend that successful integration of technology into educational institutions requires first, the establishment of a culture of innovation, then the modeling of effective technological use by administrators and supervisors, and finally continuing support for instructors seeking to integrate technology into their classroom through both ongoing technological education and mentoring. In sum, Keengwe’s Research Perspectives is an all too broad entry into this complicated but important topic. It offers a good, but brief, survey of the theoretical foundation for technological integration, but the specific technologies mentioned, and the training models presented, seem like a preliminary attempt at integration rather than a proscriptive model to be adapted immediately in any classroom.