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Traversing a rock-strewn terrain of essentialist methodologies historically employed for teaching Islam, the author espouses a non-Essentialist pedagogy that combines critical reflection, analysis of historical methods, and development of an appreciation for alternative notions about Islam and global interdependence. In this essay the author contends that teaching Islam ought to avoid our and their language and instead aim at helping students think in critically reflective, creative, and relational ways so that they might learn to "think of civilizations as transformative, reflexive, and fluid entities."

In this essay I reflect on my experience thus far of teaching Islam as a non-Muslim at Metropolitan State University and at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. I begin by narrating a conversation about conversion that I had with one of my Muslim students. Then I introduce the theme of multiplicity as a way of being, teaching, and learning. The third section illustrates the theme of multiplicity pedagogically with reference to institutional identity, choice of textbooks, topical organization of the course, the "mosque visit" assignment, and class composition and student roles in the classroom. I conclude in the fourth section with personal reflections on multiplicity in relation to credibility and identity, politics and transformation. The essay was inspired by my realization that I embody multiple religious identities, and that one of my purposes is to build community inside and outside the classroom in an effort not only to transcend the tendency of our culture to adopt an essentialist view of Islam as suspect and alien, but also to recover Islam as a universal religion and to consider its agenda for world transformation alongside those of other religions.

This article presents findings from an empirical study exploring student and teacher perspectives on positive learning experiences in practical theological education. Forty-five students and twenty teachers were interviewed in focus groups in four educational institutions delivering programs in practical theology. The findings indicated that students valued practical theological education when it enabled them to think critically in relation to their personal or professional experience, and that students valued tutors, their peers and a flexible curriculum design in promoting this kind of learning. There was a high correlation between students' views of positive learning experiences and what tutors perceived as important qualities that they hoped their students would develop. Difficulties associated with the students' lack of clarity about the learning process and the tensions between academic and professional contexts are also discussed.

Based on results from interviews with theological educators at forty-five seminaries in North America, the author begins by listing twenty-six concerns expressed about technology in theological education, particularly the concerns about electronically mediated distance education. These concerns are categorized loosely under three headings: Practical and Personal Concerns, Pedagogical and Educational Concerns, and Philosophical and Theological Concerns. More important than the list is the sociology of decision-making surrounding technology among theological educators. In the final section of the article entitled, "how concerns about technology function within institutions," the author discusses how it is that these concerns are allowed to function in very different ways across the spectrum of theological education today.

In response to our increasingly global and multicultural world, undergraduate degree plans have come to include courses, which meet the Diversity requirement. While diversity may have a variety of definitions, clearly the educational institution believes that all students earning a degree should complete course work that exposes them to cultures not their own. Courses that fulfill Diversity requirements often include "Introduction to World Religions," among others. Even a traditional-style teaching of such a course will accomplish a certain degree of broadening of students' perspectives. The risk, however, is that at the end of the course the students are simply better informed about sets of people whom they would still objectify as the other. This article describes an experiential method of teaching which enables students to begin to change their consciousness, as well as their body of information, by learning to experience the other as self. The author calls this the identification/participation method.

Engaging students in a course in the Sociology of Religion can be a challenge, particularly when working with student populations in a homogeneous region of the country who have limited experience with religious diversity. We approached the course from a sociological/anthropological perspective, requiring each student to complete an in-depth participation/observation research experience and write an ethnographic account of a religion or belief system different from his or her own. While other instructors have used a similar pedagogy, using ethnography with our student population was generally successful as a learning and writing tool.

Reflective and meditative practices, whether Eastern or Western, are being taught in multiple places – retreat houses, hospitals, Zen centers – but are rarely included in the theology classroom. What would be the rationale for inclusion of reflective/meditative practices in a theology curriculum that does not include such a theory/praxis course? What might a mystical tradition/reflective practice course look like? The author first explores the implications of a three-semester pilot program – using guided imagery, spiritual journaling, iconography, and centering prayer – that was conducted with volunteers outside the classroom. Then, based on the experimental project, the author describes a course that blends global traditions with the best of the practices. The author concludes with an evaluation of the reflective/meditative practices and the praxis-inclusive course in terms of possible long-term effects on the personal development of the participants and the ministry of teaching and learning itself.

How can teaching and living abroad impact our teaching in North America? This article explores how what I do teaching religion and ethics to undergraduates at Texas Christian University has been influenced by twelve years of teaching in the two-thirds world. It is structured in terms of three insights that correlate with what I call the past, present, and future dimensions of ethics, respectively. First, we need to begin where our students are – taking their contexts seriously. Second, we should expose them to the moral and religious experience of others, so that they might be pulled by those others toward broader perspectives. Third, we should challenge them to envision new ways of living, including new self-understandings and images of society. Drawing on examples of how I use these insights in courses at TCU, I contend that we can best promote transformation in our students by holding these three insights in creative tension.

In this essay the authors describe how four seminary educators pedagogically engage students in practices of interpretation and explore how the variations in their teaching practices shape the critical thinking they seek to cultivate in their students. The piece is excerpted from an ethnographic study of Jewish and Christian seminary educator teaching practices sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination, Jossey-Bass Publishers, November 2005). The study explores how the classroom- and community-based teaching practices of seminary educators prepare students to integrate professional knowledge and skill with moral integrity and religious commitment in professional practice. In addition to the pedagogies of interpretation explicated here, we observed pedagogies that engage students in practices of formation, contextualization, and performance. Attention is also given in the study to the influence of pedagogies embedded in the traditions of seminary education on student learning and to the cultivation of spiritual and professional practices beyond the classroom in community worship and through strategies of field education and small groups.

The theological pedagogies which dominate degree-granting schools originated in the courses of study and graduate programs of the teachers. These pedagogies foster a deep rift between theology as an academic or scholarly discipline (science?) and the situations and interests of students. Students are taught to imitate what scholars do: interpreting texts, making formal arguments, and writing essays. Accordingly, theology recedes from the present and future of students including future clergy, having little to do with their religious life or career. By defining theology as scholarship, academic pedagogy obscures its primary meaning, the critical and creative thinking of the situations of life and world under the perspective of the Gospel. If theology's primary meaning is scholarly knowledge and its preoccupation with text interpretation and doctrinal exposition, the result will be to ignore religion's actual practices, especially its idolatrous tendency to literalize its own language and absolutize its institutional mediations. A pedagogy that reflects theology's primary meaning will focus on contemplation, reflection, and thinking and thus order methods, texts, and doctrines to that.