Resources

This bibliography lists articles and books on teaching produced by workshop participants and grant recipients of the Wabash Center. It updates a similar list produced in 2007 and published in volume 10 number 3 of this journal.

There has been significant and growing interest in teaching religious studies, and specifically world religions, in a “global” context. Bringing globalization into the classroom as a specific theoretical and pedagogical tool, however, requires not just an awareness that religions exist in an ever-globalizing environment, but a willingness to engage with globalization as a cultural, spatial, and theoretical arena within which religions interact. This article is concerned with the ways that those of us interested in religion employ globalization in the classroom conceptually and pedagogically, and argues that “lived religion” provides a useful model for incorporating globalization into religious studies settings.

During my career, I have regularly taught a survey course on the history of Jews and Judaism in the Persian, Greek, and early Roman periods (ca. 520 BCE – 70 CE). Student performance in the course has long concerned and puzzled me. By the end of the course students demonstrated familiarity with the narratives and concepts we covered, but most did not really “think historically.” They had great difficulties using and applying the historical tools they learned to new situations and evidence. In 2006 and again in 2010 I overhauled the course not only to improve it, but also to figure out how my students learned history. Using a wiki exercise, I traced how students learned and then applied these insights the next time I taught the course. In this essay I report on what I learned.

Effective pedagogy in the capstone course or integrative seminar — a 1000 word response to a Call for Papers.

Effective pedagogy in the capstone course or integrative seminar — a 1000 word response to a Call for Papers.

Effective pedagogy in the capstone course or integrative seminar — a 1000 word response to a Call for Papers.

One page Teaching Tactic: using debate to introduce a topic.

One page Teaching Tactic: students increase comprehension of reading by learning to analyze the structure of a text.

A five-year research project of seminary students from various cultural backgrounds revealed that the slight majority of contemporary seminary students studied are oral learners. Oral learners learn best and have their lives most transformed when professors utilize oral teaching and assessment methods. After explaining several preferences of oral learners, suggestions for effective teaching are provided in this article in order to improve both teaching and assessment of oral learners. Applications are provided for face-to-face and online learning contexts.