Resources

The theological classroom is a place where dynamics of diversity and multiculturalism enter not only the understanding and interpretation of the course material, but also the very processes of teaching and learning. But how is one to learn and assess what students and professors are experiencing as cultural differences, and how is one to sort out the personal characteristics from the cultural? This essay, underscoring the importance of asking students about cultural issues, discusses a few such issues via some anecdotal data.

After laying a theoretical basis for an active learning orientation in the classroom, the co-authors describe methods they developed to evaluate active learning in two different settings of introductory courses in biblical studies. They argue that honoring diverse learning and communication styles among students does not need to compromise academic rigor. The authors show how portfolio-based assessment of student learning allows students a range of ways to demonstrate their mastery of the material. Examples are provided of components of student portfolios from their undergraduate classes.

Recently scholars of religion have disputed whether theology properly belongs to the study of religion in institutions of higher education (McCutcheon 1997a, 1997b; Cady 1998; Brown and Cady forthcoming). At the same time, religious authorities have increasingly censored the work of theologians in seminaries and church-related schools; witness the loyalty oaths required of scholars in religious studies programs at some Protestant denominationally related colleges and the Catholic Church's recent stand expressed by Ex Cordae Ecclessiae. Both scholars who would exclude theology as a field from the study of religion and ecclesiastical authorities who would censor it fail to acknowledge the emergence of academic theology as a field that does not depend on institutional religious affiliation or personal confession of faith, a field that by its nature does depend for its continued existence on academic freedom. This article suggests a working definition of academic theology and then poses three questions: What might studying different kinds of theology academically teach us about religion? How, properly speaking, is theology as performed in a non-sectarian environment now a nomad wandering within the formal study of religion? What are the implications of this shift in status for how academic theologians teach? The article is a revision of the inaugural address, by the same title, given for the Margaret W. Harmon professorship in Christian Theology and Culture at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, November 18, 1999.

Despite an abundance of new pedagogical techniques and technological innovations, textbooks remain a vital part of education at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Students generally accept the authority of their texts, at times believing them to be more reliable than the instructor. Consequently, we must be confident that the presentation of religious traditions is both accurate and balanced. This is particularly true for Taoism, which has become increasingly popular and popularized. Following up Russell Kirkland's Note from the Classroom in the June 1998 issue of this journal, "Teaching Taoism in the 1990s," this study examines the coverage of Taoism in the thirteen most widely used Introductory World Religion textbooks. Through a quantitative analysis of the accounts, we can determine which texts give our students the most responsible description of a long misunderstood tradition. This review focuses on the amount of text devoted to (1) "religious" and "philosophical" Taoism, (2) the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu, (3) quotations and sources, (4) Taoist schools, (5) women, and (6) morality.

One of the difficulties in teaching religious studies in Asia is that many religious theories and case studies are closely related to Western countries and therefore the knowledge and teaching material have a strong Western cultural bias. The cultural differences make teaching rather difficult and, most importantly, lower students' motivation to learn. To deal with the problem, this researcher attempted to introduce material on indigenous religions in various subjects in order to test whether such material would enhance student motivation. The material included newspaper articles, articles in books and journals, television programs, and documentary films. This paper is the result of an experiment in education and personal reflection on the use of indigenous religious materials in teaching religious studies in the Asian context.

This note from the classroom suggests that multicolor highlighting is a useful study technique for religious studies students. The note first reviews the literature regarding the effectiveness of traditional highlighting, then discusses advantages of the modified technique. Monochrome highlighting works only if readers select text through a discriminating reading process. Reading in colors fosters this sort of active reading. It prompts readers to ask how and why a given term, phrase or passage is important. This technique can help students grasp the basic categories and concepts of the discipline and it can embody course requirements or learning outcomes. The note concludes with practical suggestions for using the technique in the classroom.

This classroom exercise developed out of an effort to make the methodology and practical techniques of our field come alive for students of New Testament at a variety of undergraduate levels. Adapting the controversial "voting" technique of the Westar Institute's "Jesus Seminar," students vote with colored beads on the authenticity of Jesus' sayings in Matthew's Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–12). The point of the exercise is not to judge or dismiss Biblical text, but to work actively and thoughtfully with the critical tools and methods of New Testament scholarship, to ponder the implications of academic assessments of "authenticity" when it comes to Biblical text, and to stimulate discussion concerning how we, as professional scholars of the Bible, approach the Gospels.

This paper explores the idea that the educational process plays a vital role in the formation and transformation of selves. Peter Hodgson's theological interpretation of education as paideia and Lucinda Huffaker's work on the achievement of "clarity of self" are brought together to demonstrate that empathy is central not only to evolution of self, but the educational process as well. The argument insists that introductory courses are places of immense potential for helping students in the lifelong task of achieving self-clarity. The "Introduction to World Religions" course is used as a practical illustration of the thesis.

A contemporary liberal education in the humanities and social sciences should introduce students to the serious exploration of various kinds of worlds that human beings articulate and within which they live. Teachers in Buddhist studies can make a significant contribution by offering courses that focus attention on distinctively Buddhist worlds that are directly relevant to postmodern interests and concerns. These courses should also be designed to empower students with the kind of interpretive skills that are needed in a postmodern environment to generate viable modes of sympathetic understanding, convincing forms of critical analysis, and the capacity to formulate and defend responsible personal and social judgments. This article is a revised version of the keynote lecture given at a McGill University conference on "Teaching Buddhism: The State of the Art," October 8–10, 1999.

Six years of the Cross-cultural Colloquy at Virginia Theological Seminary, located in metropolitan Washington, D.C., have alerted the two participating American teachers to some peculiarities of their own American culture, some peculiarities of the home cultures of foreign students, and the importance of the work which foreign Christian leaders must do to select and translate from their new learnings when they begin to turn their minds towards resuming responsibilities at home. We observe that this Colloquy also meets characteristic needs of non-Americans studying theology in the USA: it offers them conceptual tools and an oral forum for explaining to themselves odd aspects of American culture, emotional support during that time of adjustment, and inducements to begin formulating ways to take both curricular and extracurricular learnings and begin to apply them in the settings to which they will be returning. We commend this model for consideration by schools where foreign or minority-culture students' place in the curriculum and in the community of teachers and learners is ill-defined or remains less than satisfactory.