Resources

Alasdair MacIntyre—whom Newsweek has called "one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world"—here presents his 1988 Gifford Lectures as an expansion of his earlier work Whose Justice? Which Rationality? He begins by considering the cultural and philosophical distance dividing Lord Gifford's late nineteenth-century world from our own. The outlook of that earlier world, MacIntyre claims, was definitively articulated in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which conceived of moral enquiry as both providing insight into and continuing the rational progress of mankind into ever greater enlightenment. MacIntyre compares that conception of moral enquiry to two rival conceptions also formulated in the late nineteenth century: that of Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral and that expressed in the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII Aeterni Patris. The lectures focus on Aquinas's integration of Augustinian and Aristotelian modes of enquiry, the inability of the encyclopaedists' standpoint to withstand Thomistic or genealogical criticism, and the problems confronting the contemporary post-Nietzschean genealogist. MacIntyre concludes by considering the implications for education in universities and colleges. (From the Publisher)

Higher education today suffers from lack of a clearly articulated purpose-a deficiency particularly challenging to religious-affiliated institutions. What is the relationship of secular learning to the faith that originally undergirded these institutions? This book offers the reader answers to this and other major questions currently facing denomination-affiliated institutions of higher education. Following a chapter on civil government's relationships to these institutions, 24 chapters survey the colleges, universities, and seminaries associated with denominations. Each chapter begins with an historical essay followed by annotated bibliographic entries covering primary and secondary sources dating back to 1986 on various denomination-connected institutions. There are 614 bibliographic entries, an epilogue on critical issues covered throughout the book, as well as a subject and author index. (From the Publisher)

The purpose of this volume, according to the editors, "is to provide historical perspective necessary for measuring the strength, vitality, and character as well as the weaknesses and failures of evangelical theological institutions." This study accomplishes this goal by examining the origins, distinctive contributions, and tensions within theological education in the evangelical tradition. The essays are organized by themes: a historical survey of theological training in various theological traditions, the place of spiritual formation, the role of women in theological education, the relationship between the academy and the church, and perspectives on the future of evangelical theological education. (From the Publisher)

Based on the most extensive research on community college teaching to date, this book examines the nature of teaching and the institutional forces that shape it in a variety of course settings, ranging from innovative approaches to complex subjects to conventional didactic instruction. Drawing on observations of and interviews with over 300 instructors and administrators, this book documents the idiosyncratic instructional practices of teachers who learn to teach primarily by trial and error. It argues that in order to realize their enormous potential, community colleges must take greater advantage of the many institutional influences on the quality of teaching--such as personnel policies, instructor training, and the culture established by administrators--only then will they be able to successfully carry out their many roles in both mainstream education and in workforce development. (From the Publisher)

With a mixture of autobiographical facts and literary insights, the author (English, Kalamazoo Coll.) supports her belief that the ``motherheart must be at the center of all teaching.'' Teachers should ``create an environment where human beings can grow in and toward the fullness of themselves.'' This type of teaching is exemplified by the women teachers in higher education of the mid-1800s who, as the author found following her ``calling'' to Kalamazoo College, were the leaders in a profession that often brings teacher and student together in crisis situations, situations that the author believes are better confronted from a feminist perspective. This is a well-written, often humorous account of one woman's entry into the feminist side of academe. (From the Publisher)

During the twentieth century, theological and religious perspectives have been marginalized, if not utterly excluded, in many of our colleges and universities. The essays in this book argue in different ways for the critical, appreciative, inclusion of theological and religious perspectives in higher education. The contributors believe that even in our secular, religiously disestablished era, religion and God continue to occupy an important and dynamic role in personal and social life. If our colleges and universities are to fulfill their higher aspirations of educating whole persons for the real world in all of its diversity and challenge, we need to go bravely against the flow and "give God tenure." (From the Publisher)

The colorful study of university divinity schools in America. This historical analysis of American Protestant university-related divinity schools tells their story in terms of powerful social and cultural forces that decisively influenced American education in general and Protestant theological education in particular. (From the Publisher)