Resources

Demographic and societal shifts in religion—to say nothing of higher education challenges—gnaw at North American theological education. The turbulence around the religious and educational environment is constant, and the essays in this volume acknowledge these challenges while exploring methods to move forward. The essays were written by seminary presidents and university leaders of various traditions to honor Daniel Aleshire, longtime executive director of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). The first four essays address the challenges faced by theological schools while the final two essays examine the rise of non-Christian traditions in North America. Outside of the six essays, a helpful introduction provides coherence to the book, while the honoree of the volume supplies an afterword. The first two essays by David Tiede and Martha Horne soberly name the disruptions around theological education. Tiede raises four pressing challenges and how Lutherans (ELCA) are addressing them: the digitization and marketing of everything; the cost/debt spiral; the need for leadership change; and the focus on educational results. Horne provides a call for change through the story of Desmond Tutu’s awakening to how theology is shaped by different historical, sociological, and cultural contexts. This should drive an ability for Anglican comprehensiveness, anchored in communion, worship, and mission, that allows for theological inquiry and debate. Donald Senior focuses on the type of Roman Catholic seminary candidate needed for the emerging needs of this world. Priestly formation from the work of Pope John Paul II roots this vision and is then joined with values from Pope Francis’s vision of the joy of the gospel, care for creation, and mercy. While other essays focus on curriculum or mission, Senior calls for a counter-cultural vision for theological education embodied through its people. Evangelical pragmatism and its aversion to seminary training is the focus of Richard Mouw’s essay. Mouw encourages theological schools to listen to concerns and questions of those in ministry. Theological educators must make the case for theological education, but must do so with an empathetic spirit throughout the conversation. The final two essays by Douglas McConnell and Judith Berling examine multifaith engagement and its implications for pedagogical concerns. McConnell grapples with how to engage a multifaith context from an evangelical framework. He calls for convicted civility rooted in hospitality and illustrates this through an institutional case study. Berling traces the history of multifaith theological education in mainline seminaries and explores ongoing opportunities and challenges. She raises the many ways that tradition can be both understood and shaped; this flexibility in tradition should aid in classroom pedagogy and interreligious learning. The volume as a whole encourages faculty, administators, stakeholders, and institutions to discern their core identity and mission. This, in turn, should drive what doctrines/affirmations and practices of life are central to a school’s tradition. While not prescriptive in methodology, the essays provide a quick read for busy stakeholders that can foster reflective dialogue on mission, tradition, and vision.

Academics trained in different fields are sometimes at a loss of how to conduct research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Does SoTL have its particular methodologies different from those of other fields? Who are the audiences of SoTL and how can one join the conversation? Is there a quick guide, which introduces the diverse approaches with illustrations? Can we learn from the experts, who can provide advice and point out the pitfalls? This book is helpful for beginners to think more clearly of the scope and research in SoTL, and it also provides insights for seasoned scholars who want to learn from others in diverse disciplines. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 focuses on the foundations of SoTL, including discussion of the origins of SoTL projects, ways of identifying research issues, the relationship between educational research and SoTL, and the alignment of research methods with purpose. In Part 2 contributors offer examples of specific research methods with examples. These methods include questionnaires, classroom observation, conducting interviews, close reading of student artifacts, and the use of think-aloud protocols developed by cognitive psychologists. Part 3 focuses on making impact and touches on writing and reading SoTL and participating in SoTL conferences. In putting the book together, editor Nancy L. Chick does not want to introduce SoTL in the abstract, but wishes to illumine critical moments in practice through vignettes and examples. Each chapter is like listening to a colleague reflecting on a particular issue in SoTL, drawing concrete examples from classroom practice and research. In the chapter on using questionnaire, for example, the author does not provide a step-by-step guide to creating a questionnaire. Rather, the author shows how he reflects on the big-picture conceptual issue questions related to SoTL when designing the questionnaire. Each chapter includes a helpful reference pointing to further readings. The discussion throughout the book is engaging and shows the authors’ commitment to teaching and to SoTL. It motivates us to become better teachers through engagement with the literature in SoTL. It is encouraging for those of us not trained in social-scientific methods to see that classroom observation and closing reading of student artifacts can also produce SoTL. The chapter on classroom observation explains the process of involving other colleagues to observe teaching in action. The chapter on close reading explains the difference between closing reading for SoTL and grading assignments. While the examples given are helpful, the book would be more useful if it attended to the challenges of doing SoTL research in diverse classrooms, taking into consideration race, gender, sexuality, class, and culture. It would be more up-to-date if it included discussion in SoTL on teaching generation Z students and non-traditional students, and teaching online and hybrid courses, as they are becoming more common in higher education.

Can we escape political injustice when we learn a language? Most people would say that language and justice issues are separate, but according to this book’s authors, Joan Clifford and Deborah Reisinger, learning another language cannot be completed by simply gaining a linguistic skill in a classroom. They reason that language learners cannot overlook the diverse cultural and social factors of those who live in their own language community. Therefore, the book introduces the importance of local community-based learning for second-language learners (CBLL, as the authors abbreviate) to build a better educational framework. Specifically, Clifford and Reisinger, US-based language professors, pay attention to the unique experiences of second-language student learners with relation to their local communities in America. As described in Chapter Four, speaking the dominant language in a society gives one access to the society’s dominant culture. For example, in the United States, English holds such a power. The problem is that “not all ways of speaking English are created equal in certain social spaces” (101). On the surface, second-language English speakers seem unimpeded in their access to America’s educational and health services, but actually their different accents and cultures are often undervalued “in the school system which prizes and reproduces dominant (white, English-speaking) culture” (101). That is, for second-language learners, where their living language communities are located, economically, socially, and politically, matters when they try to access America’s dominant cultural group. Although Clifford and Reisinger focus on the American learning situation and social injustice issues, their audience is not limited to American educators. Rather, by providing a better local community-based learning model, the authors hope that students will critically reflect and challenge problems which are imbued in their social structures. Regarding this, the book is not only useful for learning foreign language but also for other areas such as the missionary context where theological subjects are taught in English or in other languages. Further, within this emphasis on local communities as a learning partner, for both students and teachers, learning another language allows students to encounter something more than language. That is, it can be a place for the students to experience a “dissonance” between their previous beliefs about their own community’s problems, and those that appear through CBLL conversation. For the teachers as well, this conversation offers a chance to reconsider their cultural privilege and power, and how this might affect their students who come from diverse communities. Finally, the book means to create “brave spaces” for “genuine dialogue” between learners, educators, and communities by coping with their conflicts or tensions to deeply understand and challenge social injustice issues (140). To do this, the book structures each chapter with reflections for instructors and activities for students to provide a practical framework of CBLL. This book would be valuable for both educators and their students who are considering their communities as important learning partners with relation to their own ecclesial, social, and cultural context.

Indignant. That word sums up how I felt at a recent departmental Zoom meeting when our chair mentioned that the Dean wanted to know about–and highlight–faculty who made the transition from face-to-face to online learning well. Who, we were asked, had gone above and beyond? My indignation focused on two assumptions behind this request. The first is the failure to see that everyone who is continuing to work with students in this time is going above and beyond, and the second is that the remote options most faculty around the country were asked to throw together in less than a week are not the same thing as online learning. Let me start with the first. The remarkable capacity of my colleagues in my program and around this country to adapt quickly and effectively should be lauded. When life changed suddenly, and while struggling to figure out living situations with partners and children and parents and friends, getting access to needed equipment and bandwidth, figuring out the challenges of groceries and prescriptions, making masks, and coping with the stress, faculty mounted classes and supported students who have often been displaced, are frequently frightened, and sometimes are sick or are struggling with others who have taken ill. Even more, we kept holding virtual committee meetings to determine whether or not students should have options with regard to grades this term, to do the routine but necessary work of our departments and programs, and to consider ways to mark graduations that would be missed. No, we are not the frontline healthcare professionals, first responders, or even the “necessary” workers in our grocery stores and pharmacies, but we are keeping the educational mission of our schools alive. And at many institutions, leaders forgot to say “thank you” to the faculty for doing what was demanded and doing it in the best way folks could manage from the places where they were. Many faculty also simultaneously found out that what works well in the face-to-face environment in terms of preparation and activity is not often what works best online. I have been teaching fully online courses in a primarily face-to-face department for more than 15 years and so my classes this term were set. But what I saw at my institution and in online forums when helping others get ready to go remote was faculty quickly recognizing that the tricks of our trade in the traditional classroom do not transfer readily to the digital world. Indeed, even when faculty want to do some of the “simple” best practices, like making useful short video lessons, it is not as easy as it seems. Then, for those “live” sessions, there are the joys of losing connections or having things freeze up or drop at key moments. And lots of faculty now know that our supposedly digitally savvy students are less so than we might think. That is before you even get to structuring and pacing sound learning activities and assignments that evaluate student progress toward learning goals or planning for meaningful student interaction or group work. In pondering these pedagogical learning curves, it becomes clear that if this pandemic keeps us physically distanced from one another into the next academic year, many faculty will need more help thinking about how to mount classes that make the best use of the platforms and materials that are available to do a fully online course. And more help to feel less swamped. In addition, we are also now also seeing that the policies of many of our institutions are not geared appropriately to this effort. How we think about seat time and contact hours, faculty workload, office hours, evaluation, or even the academic calendar itself, are for a world we are not living in right now. Indeed, they are for a world that has been disappearing for a long time. These concerns prompt even more about other areas of our work life. What about the health and well-being of the journals and publication houses? What about the conferences where we interact with our colleagues and learn? What about our granting agencies? How will changes in these areas impact tenure and promotion considerations? Will this economic environment sound the final death knell for tenure? Will we have students? Will we have support from our states?  We do not know. Many of us remember all too well the struggles of education post-2008. Now we must also wonder for ourselves: Will new contracts even come? What will the post-pandemic economy hold?  We cannot control much of what happens. But many of these issues are about academic governance. And while we have all been working hard while worrying not just about our immediate health, we also must think ahead. If that future is not to be dictated solely down the administrative chain, faculty are going to have to be ready to lead, and perhaps must do this work in the near term--likely over the summer. Now is the time to realize that faculty who adapted quickly and capably in the classroom can also offer some powerful insight into how to plan for the next phase. And so indignant is my word. Indeed, I could not help but think that many of our leaders should be less worried about calling out who we should give a gold star to for the best transition, and more concerned with marshaling the expertise at their fingertips to start planning for the future. Don’t give us pats on the head. Use our knowledge, listen to our voices, and practice sharing governance. Now is the time to call us together to work toward a future in higher education. There is much to be done.

Innovations in Open and Flexible Education is a timely collection of research which examines various aspects of open and flexible education in the global community’s changing landscape of teaching and learning. The book is written for professors, academics, researchers, students, educational practitioners, and administrators to learn the latest empirical research in regard to open and flexible education. The book is organized thematically with a focus on four major themes: open/flexible curriculum and pedagogy, mobile and ubiquitous learning, digitized media and open educational resources, and tracking and analysis of student learning. The book includes qualitative and quantitative research studies, empirical and case studies, statistical analyses, descriptive surveys, and interviews. Part I flows seamlessly as the contributing authors discuss historical perspectives, student perspectives, budget planning, needs assessment, models of the flipped classroom, cross-country analysis, and massive online open courses. Part II focuses on the use of mobile devices, specifically in vocational education and training, preferences and readiness for usage, the use and design of specific apps for learning, and learning management systems. Part III of the book examines digitalized media and open educational resources including game-based learning, flipped massive online open courses, open educational resources, videos in blended learning, and media literacy. The final section of the book, Part IV, analyzes student learning including the use of big data in teaching and learning, instant messaging, application programming interfaces to track learning, reinforcement learning, and the design of data-logging devices. The findings of this book are exciting. According to Lee, the purpose of flexible learning is to “achieve equity, efficiency, and effectiveness” (31) in education. As the editors note in the introduction to the book, there is a global trend of knowledge becoming more publicly accessible and less reserved for the privileged. As education is becoming more open and consequently more flexible, education at large is more available to all people. This book highlights the latest research on this topic, which may lead to educational stakeholders creating more open and flexible landscapes in their educational communities. As Christian scholars, this must be one of our aims—to make education more inclusive and flexible to welcome and benefit all learners. The organization and structure of the book is not only informative but is enjoyable to read. The editors selected topics that are connected but remain distinctly different, which creates an interesting and diverse reading experience. Furthermore, the content in this book leads to much introspection on the part of the reader; the reader is challenged to consider what open and flexible pedagogies they have adopted in order to benefit all students. The research provides a fertile ground for discussions of education theory, pedagogy, and praxis. The book is comprised of twenty-three chapters that are written with experiences and perspectives from Asian countries (including Australia) and is a part of a research book series titled Education Innovation. For further work on this topic, it would be valuable for the editors to develop a book series that focuses on research from different continents on open and flexible education. The contents of this book demonstrate the diversity and richness of this topic, so perhaps this text could be expanded into a series.

Graduate theological education is experiencing a variety of upheavals, including learning how to navigate the digital technologies transforming the teaching-learning process. Navigating these changes necessitates that graduate theological schools and seminaries adopt the mindset of an educational technology company. Editors Sampson, Ifenthaler, Spector, and Isaías have assembled a collection of international research articles in Digital Technologies: Sustainable Innovations for Improving Teaching and Learning. The articles are organized around four themes: “Transforming the Learning Environment,” “Enriching Student Learning Experiences,” “Measuring and Assessing Teaching and Learning with Educational Data Analysis,” and "Cultivating Student Competencies or the Digital Smart Society.” The rich data found in each of the articles will assist institutions in asking good questions as they seek to discern the instructional tools they will employ to enhance learning. The essays address the use of digital technologies principally in either a K-12 environment or college-level STEM programs. Despite their focus on different educational contexts, the essays are helpful in explaining the role digital technologies are playing in the educational environment and challenging one to think imaginatively about the implications for graduate theological education. Wrestling with the articles was enjoyable but imagining how they apply to theological education was enlightening and frustrating at the same time. The articles lack a shared definition of “learning,” this combined with the ends/outcomes of education being implied made assessing the educational value for theological education difficult. In the end, imagining the implications of these articles for theological education was more like making conjectures or discussion starters rather than the bases for working hypotheses. Digital Technologies will serve as a helpful resource when evaluating digital technologies for inclusion in an institution’s educational strategy. The international character and depth of the articles help one ask good educational questions when evaluating digital learning tools. Asking good technological questions consistent with one’s theological heritage is consistent with being an educational technology company, especially as theological institutions seek to be more nimble in identifying, assessing, evaluating, and implementing sustainable digital technology to enhance learning.

This book is a collection of fourteen essays representing presentations made at the 2016 Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) conference, sponsored by the Georgetown University Department of Linguistics and the Assessment and Evaluation Language Resource Center (AELRC). These essays showcase a diverse set of ap-proaches to treating assessment and evaluation as “tools of educational transformation” for foreign-language learning (vii). They focus on primary, secondary, and undergraduate-level foreign language instruction, with none concentrating specifically on graduate-level theological education or religious studies. Nonetheless, the volume offers some novel proposals for structuring language courses that may benefit biblical or modern language sequences offered in theological schools and religious studies pro-grams. The book is organized into three sections, each representing emerging research and praxis on transformative foreign language assessment and evaluation for e-learning platforms, language course instruction, program development, and ESL student placement. Part one—Connecting Assessment, Learners, and Learning—surveys theories and practical implementations of assessment and evaluation for enhancing language learning, particularly from the perspective of student and teacher self-assessment processes. In five essays, this section establishes self-assessment as a continual process and offers practical steps for integrating self-assessment in foreign language acquisition. Part two—Innovating, Framing, and Exploring Assessment in Language Education—covers topics such as the formative use of task-based assessment “in primary schools, the implementation of technology-mediated speaking performance assessment, and validation of educational placement decisions for immigrant learners” (ix). Some of the proposals may provide seminaries and graduate-level liberal arts programs fresh avenues for (1) going about its sequence of biblical language instruction or (2) resourcing multilingual students navigating North American theological and religious education. Part three—Validity Evaluation—includes five essays that address processes for assessment validation, such as corroborating the outcomes of university entrance exams or language placement exams with student achievement and retention. These essays provide suggestions for the evaluation of overall language programs implemented by institutions. As a whole, it may supply new considerations about evaluating outcomes of language instruction for theological ESL programs. The perspectives offered in this volume present innovative research on foreign language learning from outside the academic contexts of theological education and religious studies. As a result, they reflect fresh theoretical and practical considerations that may not have, as of yet, permeated conventional resources and “common knowledge” about assessment and evaluation in theological education. While it may prove to be a beneficial read, those primarily located in theological education and religious studies who grapple with issues of language instruction—especially biblical language instruction or the implementation of theological ESL programs—may still find this a challenging read. While the scholarship is relevant at times, its application is left to the reader from theological education and religious studies to make. Despite this potential difficulty, the volume represents the kinds of knowledge and resources available to theological education and religious studies from other educational stages and learning environments that may be further along in considerations about institutional learning processes, e-learning pedagogy, foreign language classroom instruction, and support of multilingual, international students.

Caught In-Between Questions “I always figured my music came from somewhere between,” said singer-songwriter John Prine in an old interview.[1] I’ve been listening to his music as part of praying for health, and now mourning his death to this pandemic. We are in an in-between time, caught in-between mourning and making music, moving through the day and being stopped in our tracks at the sheer weight of the pandemic. Some things are falling apart. Some things are holding steady. Where does the seminary curriculum fall in this spectrum and why does it matter?  Discussing teaching and learning pastoral care amid pandemic, one student asked about the purpose of specialized training in theological education. In this moment of human solidarity does professional training serve to unite and/or separate?  Another student revealed a nagging feeling that seminary wasn’t built for them and that the curriculum isn’t as inclusive as it professes. Now that finishing a semester of disruption is taking so much energy, the student wonders if it’s worth it. Is it? I share such vocational questions: what is the purpose of professional training? To what extent are our institutions exclusive or inaccessible and can this disruption lead to expansive and deep change? What is crumbling? What is holding firm? What does all of this mean for my vocation? To what extent do I believe my courses and teaching and learning practices could resource this moment? Attending Seminary in Pandemic Crisis is an unbidden test. The COVID-19 pandemic tasks the curriculum–assessing all we have learned and taught, drawing sustenance from deep wells of knowledge and wisdom, exposing as shallow what we may have thought was deep. How could theological education resource this crisis moment? Sacred texts and philosophies speak to people across times and spaces, in good times and hard times, and mostly in-between. Text and tradition can both expose and salve wounds, make and undo worlds for whole peoples. Academic practices of digging, studying, connecting, unmasking, lingering with words are staples of theological education across the curriculum that could help give energy and direction on as we move through pandemic. How does my discipline of pastoral care resource this moment? Moving In-Between We are in-between what was and what will be. Human interaction with the novel coronavirus has begun, but not yet ended. More pointedly than most days, in pandemic we linger between life and death, searching for what will give and sustain life while minimizing and transforming, vaccinating against what kills. This is a time of in-betweens. We abide in the middle. School is not what it was and is not yet what it will be next year or in five years. We move through the in-between. Medical care, economies, policies, birthday parties, clothing ourselves for the day, visiting the sick and imprisoned while advocating for health and release, embracing at weddings, births, deaths, and other momentous life occasions–our institutions, civic practices, and religious practices and so much more are not what they were just weeks ago and are not yet where they will be. We abide in the middle. Pastoral care is a discipline that pays careful attention to the in-between that could resource the in-between-nesses of our lives in this moment of crisis and disruption. Pastoral Care Can Resource the In-Between pastoral care in-between selves and communities. It is important to honor the dignity and uniqueness of each human person while also studying the places, spaces, and communities in which individuals live. Pastoral care recognizes individual vulnerabilities and limits. Pastoral care also affirms compassionate connection. Practices of faith and religious experiences abide in-between personal piety and social justice. Practices of self-reflection, communal reflection, and conversation between selves and communities can resource lingering in this in-between. In crisis, we link “how you are, really?” to “what in the world is happening?” pastoral care in-between identity and interculturality. Not only are selves and communities constantly interacting, but identities and cultures constantly interact and affect each other. An intercultural posture recognizes that there is no such thing as an identity or a culture that is exactly one unchanging thing for all times. Practices of bordering and border crossing affect belonging. Much pastoral attention is focused on the borders of identities and the deep interactions of living cultures. Practices of storytelling, translating, learning and listening across cultures, and paying attention to borders and border crossing can resource this in-between. In crisis we link “who am I?” with “how does my story reflect and contribute to a world of difference?” pastoral care in-between roles of different levels of training, authority, and power. Pastoral care practices pay close attention to the character of relationships between parents and children, between teachers and students, between faith leaders and faith community members, between therapists and clients. People with more role-based authority have more responsibility for creating and maintaining good boundaries. We also know that role-reversals can happen where the student becomes the teacher (momentarily or in more sustained way). In many families, children become care takers of aging parents. Practices of collaborating across roles with good boundaries help attend well to in-between that characterizes much of our relational lives. In crisis that crosses borders, we ask what wisdom children bring while carefully reexamining and recommitting to boundaries that guard against abuse of power. pastoral care in-between theories and practices, in-between actions and reflections. Knowing and doing, learning and acting are deeply interconnected. Inseparable. The way we know and what counts as a source of knowledge (epistemology) is affected by and affects who we are and how we engage life practices. Likewise, practices of moving through the world help us understand and evaluate theories, often interpreting or creating new ways of thinking about what it is we do and why. Practices of integrating what we do and what we think about what we do can help to resource the in-between. In this crisis, we link questions about how to lead and teach while staying home with questions about why it matters, and in what ways it is challenging. pastoral care in-between what is and what ought to be. Practices of pastoral care are transformational, not transactional. Chaplains and other faith leaders participate in pastoral care because we believe it does something in the world, something like healing, something like liberating, something like instilling courage into the heart of fear. Crisis times can bring up all the old patterns, coping mechanisms that got us through hard times before, but may not help us be well. Systems thinking helps us recognize both life-giving and stubborn harmful patterns. Crisis times can also make new collaborations possible, help structures of injustice fall away, and fuel energies for deeper transformations. Practicing noticing patterns, remaining non-anxious, and dreaming dreams of possible futures can resource this in-between. This is a time of in-between and it makes sense to be asking questions about what matters, what is worth giving up, what must be grieved, what endures. Is theological education important in-between? To me, it’s not a question of whether, but how theological education can help resource this moment of crisis–not solve it, but help move through it. I am thankful for the ways pastoral care locates study and practices in the in-between. We’re going to need all the resources each other brings as we navigate this in-between. How is your discipline resourcing the moment?  [1] https://youtu.be/x-SKCWXoryU