Resources
Higher Education and First-Generation Students offers readers a rich understanding of the experience of students who are first in their family to attend college. This book contends that first-generation students are isolated and marginalized on many large college campuses and considers learning communities and critical multicultural pedagogies as vehicles to cultivate community, voice, and place for this new majority of students. This book is a theoretically informed study of the lived experience of FG students and draws on their voices to demonstrate how their insights interface with what we, as educators, think we know about them. What can we learn from these students? How might their insights inform and shape the learning spaces we create for them? (From the Publisher)
Learning and Teaching Across Cultures in Higher Education contains theoretical rationale, resources and examples to help readers understand and deal with situations involving contact between learners or educators from different cultural backgrounds, as well as giving insights into the new global context of higher education. (From the Publisher)
Journal Issue. Full text is available online.
In October 2008 The American Academy of Religion published the findings of an eighteen month study (conducted with funding from the Teagle Foundation) on “The Religious Studies Major in a Post–9/11World: New Challenges, New Opportunities.” Re-published here, this AAR-Teagle White Paper provides the opportunity for four respondents to raise issues and questions about the teaching of religion in their own institutional contexts. First, Jane Webster describes how the White Paper's “five characteristics of the religion major” find expression in her biblical literature course. Then James Buckley suggests some of the general level teaching issues provoked by the study and analyzes how well the White Paper aligns with how the teaching of religion is conceived in his Catholic university context. Tim Jensen draws comparisons between the White Paper and the higher education structures and goals from his university context in Denmark, raising questions about what motivates students to major in religious studies, the “utility” of a religious studies major, and whether students' religious and spiritual concerns ought to enter the classroom. And finally Stacey Floyd-Thomas finds surprising similarities between the state of the religion major and the various crises facing contemporary North American theological education.
One page Teaching Tactic: establishing a predictable structure with discussion questions at the start of each class.
One page Teaching Tactic: students learn to create models in order to increase their grasp of nuanced theological arguments.
One page Teaching Tactic: a method for improving students' sermons.
This essay presents educational principles of Mahatma Gandhi, specifically principles of character education, as a model for strengthening non-violence in students. Its major concern is to show that Gandhi's ideal of non-violent character education is important for university teaching in disciplines including religious studies, and that Gandhi offers methods for fostering non-violent character, namely the teaching of world religions, service learning, and setting an example. The effectiveness of Gandhi's views, moreover, finds some support in contemporary teaching practices, including my own experiences in the classroom.
One factor contributing to success in online education is the creation of a safe and vibrant virtual community and sustained, lively engagement with that community of learners. In order to create and engage such a community instructors must pay special attention to the relationship between technology and pedagogy, specifically in terms of issues such as course design, social presence, specially tailored assignments, learner expectations, and objectives, and facilitation of sustained engagement with the course material, fellow learners, and the instructor. Several strategies for accomplishing this goal are presented here based on the author's experiences teaching second-career students in hybrid introductory theology courses at a mainline denominational seminary.