Resources

This book analyses the structural and institutional transformations undergone by doctoral education, and the extent to which these transformations are in line with social, political and doctoral candidates' expectations. Higher education has gone through profound changes driven by the massification and diversification of the student body, the rise of neoliberal policies coupled with the reduction in public funding and the emergence of the knowledge society and economy. As a result, higher education has been assigned new and more outward-looking missions, which have subsequently affected doctoral education. The editors and contributors examine these transformations and changes at the macro, meso and micro levels: wider and more structural changes as well as doctoral candidates' experience of the degree itself. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of doctoral education and the transformation of the university more widely. (From the Publisher)

This book provides a practical philosophy for promoting students' sophisticated thinking from Early Childhood to PhD in ways that explicitly interconnect across the years of education. It will help teachers, academics and the broader learning and teaching community to understand and implement these connections by introducing a conceptual framework, the Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT). By covering the nature, philosophy, practice and implications of MELT for teachers and students alike, the book will help teachers to facilitate students’ awareness of, and increasing responsibility for, the thinking demanded by subject and discipline-specific learning as well as interdisciplinary learning, whether face to face, online or in blended modes. The book will also provide educators with ways to effectively engage with complex, and sometimes conflicting, contemporary educational concepts, and with a diverse variety of colleagues involved in the learning and teaching enterprise. The book provides guidance that allows curriculum improvement, teacher action research and larger-scale research to be reported on from a common perspective, bridging the gap between those readers focused on research and those focused on teaching. The book shares valuable insights and ways of addressing the contemporary issue of discipline-based learning versus transdisciplinary learning, reducing the dichotomy and enabling the two approaches to complement each other. (From the Publisher)

Theological education in the United States finds itself in untested circumstances today. Rapid social change is creating an increasing multicultural, multiracial, and multireligious context for leadership formation. At the same time, international enrollment, cross-border educational initiatives, student and faculty exchanges, and more are connecting US theological schools with a global community of Christian teaching and learning. How do US theological institutions “locate” themselves within this global ecology of theological formation so as to be both responsible participants and creative shapers within it? That is, how do they discern their proper place and role? It is questions like these that the contributors to this volume explore. Building on the decades-long discussion about the globalization of US theological education, this book argues that, in engaging such questions, US theological institutions have much to gain from a sustained conversation with the burgeoning literature on the internationalization of American higher education. This research offers theological institutions a trove of insights and cautionary tales as they seek to discern their rightful place and role in educating leaders in and for a global Christian church. (From the Publisher)

n this learning design, the book of Ruth is read closely and critically in order to foster dialogue about political issues in the classroom. Using bell hooks’ model of engaged pedagogy, political issues such as feminism, immigration, gender, sex, and consent are carefully addressed through the pedagogical strategies described. Teachers may use all of the strategies in a full unit on Ruth, or they may choose one or two to implement in a single class. Cobb suggests the use of polling, creative expression through drawing, videos, small group discussions, and maps to incite thoughtful conversation about relevant political issues and the book of Ruth.

This is an annotated lesson plan for a class discussion and activity about Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans in an “Introduction to the New Testament” undergraduate course. The primary aim of this lesson plan is to help students develop a vocabulary to discuss ethnicity and belonging. In the first part of the activity, students closely read Galatians and Romans and were able to articulate how Paul differentiates between Jews and Gentiles, and further, how their differences are important for how each group achieves the crucial status of righteousness. In the second part, students drew comparisons between Paul’s seemingly universalizing statement in Galatians 3:26-29 and contemporary political discourses that employ universalizing/particularizing dichotomies. Specifically, they analyzed the #AllLivesMatter response to #BlackLivesMatter and how Paul might respond to both.

After the 2016 elections, students at Macalester College, a small private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, encouraged the faculty and staff to combat hate, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and white supremacy in and out of the classroom. These students inspired me to reconsider the way that I taught my introductory New Testament course. In this essay, I present the process by which I redesigned the course to explore not only the historical context of the New Testament texts but also our present political context and the ways it shapes biblical interpretation. The redesigned syllabus includes scholarship representative of the feminist, post-colonial, African American, Latinx, Asian-American, Jewish, queer, and other liberationist and identity-based approaches to the study of the New Testament.

Professors have an obligation to respond in real time to politically charged events in society, whether they are in the news or in our students' lives on campus (or both). So how do we do that without replicating our own biases and/or confirming our students’ worst stereotypes of us as teachers? In a Twitter thread, with research h-based supporting materials, I discuss the reasons why we should engage our students in conversations about politically-charged events and some of the best practices that I have discovered for doing it. I apply my practices to four complex, controversial current events: national anthem protests at sporting events, the Indigenous Peoples' March confrontation, and a racist incident on my own campus.

Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Tennessee requires creativity, confidence, and compassion. The forty-person upper-level “Introduction to the New Testament” course that I teach every year is my most challenging and most pedagogically interesting class, and also the most rewarding. My goal in this class is to make space for a variety of responses to the material while teaching the context and history of the New Testament texts as well as how to think critically about the politics of their interpretation. The challenge is to take the diverse passions that my students bring to the class and help them all to engage together critically with both the historical study of early Christianity and the politics of its interpretation that are so visible in the world around them.