Resources
Finding themselves teaching to increasingly diverse student populations, two mid-career faculty from different disciplines embarked on a common voyage to make their foundational courses more sensitive to student learning styles. Adrift in the seas of multiple intelligences and multiculturalism, the researchers quickly abandoned any hope of developing distinctive teaching portfolios for individual learning profiles. Instead, they structured the syllabus to be the passport into a common culture of teaching and learning in the classroom. Syllabus design and on-going "spot" assessments proved trusty guides in re-centering learning on the students' needs. In the process of outlining these two strategies for creating a common culture of teaching and learning, the article offers testimony that old dogs can learn new tricks! Additional materials, including syllabi used in these courses and in class assessment tools, can be found on the Web page of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion: http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/journal/greenstortz.html
In a postcolonial environment, our students will encounter multiple representations and diverse followers of various religions outside the classroom. Students need to think critically about the representations of all religions and recognize the humanity of all people. Too often, students leave courses discussing one or more world religions with an idealized view of other religions that draws strict boundaries around the components of each religion. Bringing postcolonial thought into introductory and survey courses highlights the diversity within each lived religion and encourages students to critique those strict borders and all representation of religions. Based on continuing experiments with critical theory in undergraduate classes, the six strategies presented here use the diversity of lived religions to promote critical analysis of representations of religions. These strategies move beyond the rejection of common representations by introducing set theory as an alternative framework that students can use to theorize about the complexity within religions.
Secularization, the idea that religion would gradually diminish over time, was once widely assumed to be true by scholars of religion, but the unexpected resurgence of religious traditions has called it into question. Related debates on the distinction between religion and the secular have destabilized religious studies further. What does the crisis of secularization and secularism mean for the religious studies classroom? This essay proposes a model of religious criticism in the wake of secularism. No longer simply claiming a "view from nowhere," students and instructors can (by observing standards of evidence, reason, and self-disclosure) combine criticism with learning. Drawn from aesthetic and ethical traditions of criticism, religious criticism can be practiced by "teaching the conflicts" and through the pedagogical models of Freire and hooks.
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This guide is intended for educators from all subject, discipline, and workplace/vocational areas of adult education. It has been written to help educators plan, deliver, evaluate and reflect on the uses of scenarios for learning and teaching purposes. The guide begins with a rationale for using ‘scenario-based learning’ – why educators employ it, some motivational qualities of scenarios (through their closeness to film and television), and a note on what constitutes ‘successful scenarios.’ This is followed by an in-depth look at four main scenario options, and how these can be used to achieve particular learning intentions. The guide then focuses on a systematic approach to the planning of learning scenarios including the conditions necessary to optimize success. From here attention is given to the actual delivery of scenarios and selected moments for evaluation, and reflection. (From the Publisher)
Introductory courses in theology and religion are taught at most colleges and universities across the US and UK. From public to private, non-sectarian to faith-based institutions, theology courses fulfill humanities general education requirements, and provide a foundational education for students intending further theological study. This book describes the best and most effective ways of teaching these courses. Offering practical, realistic, research-based guidance, this volume explores the best and most recent methods in teaching-theory. This book addresses the questions and concerns frequently posed by the professors and graduate students who instruct these multifaceted courses. It covers issues such as a teacher's role in defining theology and religion, the teaching and learning process, course structure, and content. The volume also examines recent case studies of theology and religious studies courses at various institutions, including a private non-sectarian university, a public research university, a Catholic masters-level university, and at a Protestant baccalaureate college. (From the Publisher)
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The reader may find the title of this excellent volume too modest for the rich presentation of American educational history it offers. Much more than a shaping of that historical record, the educational facts presented gain a special resonance from the richness of the social and economic background against which the history unfolds. (From the Publisher)
This volume allows both those teachers immersed in WAC programs and those still contemplating increasing the use of writing in their courses to peer into classrooms of those that have participated in such programs for years. Walvoord et al. report the long-term impact upon faculty of writing-across-the-curriculum programs, collecting interviews, questionnaires, classroom observations, student evaluations, and course documents from more than 700 faculty, one to fifteen years after their first WAC experiences. (From the Publisher)