Resources
Here for Book Review Abstract: Focuses on the opportunities and challenges of using the science of change to improve the academic enterprise. This is not another book about why higher education needs to change. This volume is about how to facilitate change. What could higher education achieve if varied stakeholders decided to work together to accomplish a shared vision by using data and scaling up evidence-based interventions? The contributors offer examples and instructions to help execute change in order to drive collective impact. When we understand large-scale change in other sectors, such as healthcare, business, and the social sector, it can help inform us of what collective impact looks like and how to get there. A deeper investigation into the science of change will enable us to work towards increasing access, overcoming racial disparities, reducing the need for remediation, and improving learning outcomes. (From the Publisher)
Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His life, a tale of woe, is revealed in a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. (From the Publisher)
When five theological schools realized (a) their graduates affirmed vocation as central to their theology and practice, yet (b) the parishioners of their graduates nevertheless did not feel called, they knew they had to do something. For six years, faculty teams from these schools conducted a variety of experiments in pedagogy, curriculum reform, and program development in order to train their graduates to equip all of God's people to claim and live their vocational identity in the world. This article introduces the identified challenge and necessary theological and pedagogical shift and then describes five of those experiments in greater detail.
These three articles deal with the issue of faith in the classroom – whether one should teach “to,” “for,” or “against” faith. While their institutional settings and experiences are different, the authors all contend that more serious reflection needs to be given to the matter of how religious commitment plays out in our diverse pedagogical settings. The initial article by Carolyn Medine surveys the current climate regarding student spirituality in the classroom, the broader governmental concerns, and, the tensions that inform the choices available to a professor. Todd Penner's essay analyzes faith-as-ideology in the undergraduate classroom, and Marjorie Lehman's contribution analyzes how the issue manifests differently in Jewish Studies.
One page Teaching Tactic: Scaffolded activities and assignments beginning the first day of class to help students engage significant life questions in the Bible.
One page Teaching Tactic: Inspiring students through informal encounters with the wide diversity of actual living biblical scholars.
One page Teaching Tactic: Students work alone and in groups to identify effective research questions for their capstone essay.
One page Teaching Tactic: A final paper assignment that knits together the major themes of the course by drawing on activities from the first day of class and peer interviews students have conducted during the semester.
A renowned child psychoanalyst, Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) is perhaps best known for his work on developmental theory (Childhood and Society, 1950) and his studies of the lives of Martin Luther (Young Man Luther, 1958) and Gandhi (Gandhi's Truth, 1969). Twice he found himself intensely engaged in the role of teacher – once as a young artist who had been called by a friend to help in the progressive school formed for the children of Sigmund and Anna Freud's patients in Vienna (1927–1932), and years later (1960–1970) as a tenured professor at Harvard. This essay describes Erickson's teaching experience in both settings and suggests some of the reasons he was honored by Harvard in 1980 as a “humane teacher.” Implications from Erikson's educational practice are drawn that demonstrate how Erikson moved beyond the rote memorization and authoritarian educational practice he experienced as a youth. The essay suggests Erikson's teaching stance at Harvard fits the author's theological tradition's use of the term “teaching elder.”
The undergraduate study of religion is predominantly undertaken by non-majors who are meeting a general education requirement. This means that, while curricular discussions make important distinctions between the work of lower- and upper-division courses, many religion and theology faculty are teaching hybrid courses that we call “introductory upper-level courses.” These play an introductory role in general education while also serving the study of religion in a more advanced way. Attention to how these courses fit into multiple curricular goals will be important for the scholarship of teaching and learning in religious studies and theology. This essay draws on scholarship about introductory teaching and a survey of faculty about introductory upper-level courses to argue that the content of such courses should be understood as serving the study of religion at an advanced level, the context should be understood as introducing general education goals, and the goals for intellectual growth must strike a challenging balance between the two.
Wabash Center Staff Contact
Sarah Farmer, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Wabash Center
farmers@wabash.edu