Resources
Assessing the impact of Wabash Center programs on theological education, this article focuses on the vocation of the theological educator, particularly on the impact of theological teaching on faith and on the institutions, values, and practices that shape living. Five contributions of the Wabash Center are highlighted: (1) guiding seminary faculty in the practices of teaching, (2) enhancing the teaching preparation of doctoral students for theological education, (3) linking effective teaching to the development of seminary curricula, (4) enlarging the literature on teaching in theological education, and (5) nurturing the vocation of seminary educators.
The study of religion seeks to understand life and life practices, which means that it is internally suited to dynamic teaching-learning methods such as exploration, conversation, and imaginative construction. Wabash Center hospitality enables reflective conversations about the nature of our craft, the shape of our vocation, and the direction of our discipline.
The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion has its most direct influence on faculty members who teach in colleges, universities, and theological schools. These faculty members, in turn, have an impact upon churches through their leadership and teaching in local communities. Wabash workshops encourage faculty to continue to develop four qualities that make a difference in their teaching and scholarship, in the lives of students who become community and church leaders, and ultimately in the life of the church: these are the abilities to (1) help pastoral leaders integrate multiple kinds of knowledge, (2) value context and particularity, (3) strengthen their skills as public theologians and community leaders, and (4) cultivate the encouragement to live lives of wholeness. The gift of hospitality at Wabash workshops provides the environment and space for faculty to engage these qualities in their teaching, research, scholarship, and living.
The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion is a place of hospitality and its staff the epitome of the "good host." This essay explores the meaning of hospitality, including its problematic dimensions, drawing on a number of voices and texts: Jacques Derrida's Of Hospitality; Henri M. Nouwen's Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, N. Lynne Westfield's Dear Sisters: A Womanist Practice of Hospitality, Arthur Sutherland's I Was a Stranger: A Christian Theology of Hospitality, and Kathleen Norris's "Hospitality." Beginning with the claim that hospitality is concerned with power and grace, the essay explores the relationship between hospitality and teaching, and the modes by which the Wabash Center helps teachers both find their identities and heal.
Thinking about teaching as an act of intellectual hospitality has the potential to shape productively how teachers conceive of their own roles in the classroom, their interactions with students, and their execution of crucial tasks. It also offers a path to helpful reflection about a persistent issue that arises particularly for the many faculty members who teach in small departments of religion and are therefore called upon to address a wide range of topics in their teaching. In addition, adopting an ethos of hospitality in the classroom provides a salutary counterpoint to the pervasive and often corrosive academic practices of critique, refutation, and dispute.
In this book, bell hooks, one of America's leading black intellectuals, shares her philosophy of the classroom, offering ideas about teaching that fundamentally rethink democratic participation. Hooks advocates the process of teaching students to think critically and raises many concerns central to the field of critical pedagogy, linking them to feminist thought. In the process, these essays face squarely the problems of teachers who do not want to teach, of students who do not want to learn, of racism and sexism in the classroom, and of the gift of freedom that is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal. (From the Publisher)
Does education have any relation to theology? How do the educator's worldview commitments speak to his or her practice of education? James Michael Lee brought a definite answer to these questions -- a firm no to the relations question, and an advocacy for empirical findings over and against any speculative or theoretical positions in reply to the commitments question. Lee claimed to have a universal, neutral metatheory for all religious education, a theory that would apply to all religious educators in any and every religion. But in proposing his theory he overlooked the way that empirical facts express worldviews. This book is a detective story, tracing commitments that lay underneath empirical "neutrality." In the process the reader will see avenues that unmistakably link education to theology. Education turns out to be a thoroughly worldview - conditioned process. This new work is essential reading for professors and students in both religious and general education. (From the Publisher)
Dalke brings together a collection of accounts written by herself, students and colleagues. These are incorporated into seven chapters corresponding to the seven stages of Dalke's reflection about teaching and learning in the liberal arts classroom. The text explores the evolution of Dalke's approach to teaching; Dalke's decision to redesign her classes using the model of the Quaker Meeting for Business; difficulties she faced when trying to apply such a model, including the complexities which silence and desire contribute to the classroom; and Dalke's attempt to describe "a vision of the paradise that my classroom might be as well as the unending labor and prayer needed to maintain such a space." (From the Publisher)
Reflecting a national movement that seeks to create a more holistic model of learning and teaching on college and university campuses, Education as Transformation is a collection of twenty-eight essays written by a wide range of educators - including presidents, chancellors, deans, faculty members, administrators, religious life professionals, students, and other leaders in the field of education - on the themes of religious pluralism and spirituality in higher education. These essays provide scholarly analysis, practical information, and inspiration for those who agree that higher education can combine both head and heart in the teaching and learning process and in campus and community life. In seeking to articulate a new vision for higher education in America, the authors explore the possibility that both scholarship and spirituality are essential to fostering global learning communities and responsible global citizens who can address the challenges of a diverse world. (From the Publisher)
Describes some of the teaching techniques found to be effective for educating students and combatting scientific illiteracy. Presents instructional methods developed for implementing learner-oriented educational philosophies and interactive teaching strategies.