Resources
Sexual assault is prevalent, but many educators find themselves ill-prepared to address it in the classroom. This article conceptualizes a trauma sensitive pedagogy that engages the psychological, social, and theological implications of sexual assault for classroom conversations about sex and sexuality. First, the article examines the impact of the classic power disparity between student and teacher as a dynamic that can trigger recall of the abuse of power inherent in sexual violence. Next the article reframes understandings of trigger warnings to consider how they can be used to support educators in taking seriously the vulnerability of those who have experienced sexual assault. The article also presents perspectives on the role of “teacher self-disclosure” in facilitating conversations that acknowledge sexual assault, followed by a teaching strategy that demonstrates pedagogical sensitivity to trauma. Suggestions on how to support students through and beyond conversations that can trigger traumatic stress conclude the article.
Many undergraduates are culturally shaped to avoid making ethical judgments. They spontaneously adopt relativist and skeptical strategies such as “It all depends,” or “Whose morality?” or “Who's to say?” as ways of fending off the challenge of making moral decisions. The current tsunami that is washing away traditional sexual norms is both a result and a cause of this cultural shift. Case studies can mitigate this decline and help students to grow in both confidence and ability to make good ethical judgments. The case method, used with a Socratic pedagogy, engages imagination and counters the deficits in empathy found in many contemporary students. It moves students toward understanding morality itself. Against skepticism, it assists students in exercising practical reason, culminating in decision. Five cases invite students to overcome extreme relativism, to look for and evaluate relevant differences, and to enter into ethical discussion with other students on the sexual issues they face in their college years.
Journal Issue.
Journal Issue.
We have an uneasy relationship with the relentless deluge of information gushing out of academia and our media outlets. To turn it off is escapist, but to attempt to cognitively grapple with it is overwhelming. In Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning, a nationally recognized master teacher gives professors and their students the means to chart a clear path through this information explosion. Humans crave explanatory patterns, and this book enables teachers to think deeply about their academic disciplines to find and articulate their core explanatory principles and to engage their students in a compelling way of thinking. An alternative title for this book could be Why the Best College Teachers Do What They Do because the author articulates a compelling rationale that will equip faculty to create and deliver transformative courses. Students in transformative courses grapple with essential questions and gain mental muscle that equips them for real world challenges. (From the Publisher)
Click Here for Book Review Breakthrough Strategies identifies effective strategies that faculty have used to help New Majority students—those from minority, immigrant, or disadvantaged backgrounds—build the necessary skills to succeed in college. As the proportion of New Majority students rises, there is increased attention to helping them gain access to college. Once enrolled, however, these students often face significant challenges of adjustment, with few resources for support. Specifically, there is little attention to students’ experiences within their college classrooms and their relationships with professors. At the same time, faculty who work with these students have little guidance on how to help them adjust to new expectations and identities as they engage with college-level work. Sister Kathleen A. Ross, a MacArthur fellow and president emerita of Heritage University, has devoted three decades to helping New Majority students get college degrees. Based on an action-research project undertaken at Heritage University and Yakima Valley Community College in Washington State, the book highlights eleven strategies to encourage student success, including: asking questions in class; navigating the syllabus; and developing an academic identity. Written in a warm, down-to-earth voice, Breakthrough Strategies is infused with the belief that faculty can become a powerful resource for students, and that classroom instruction can be an important vehicle for supporting these students’ development and success. (From the Publisher)
Journal Issue.
Sensitive issues, rife in religious studies and in theology, present a pedagogical challenge when teaching students to nuance their thinking around positions that are often sharply defined and elicit strong feelings. I developed a learning tool that I call the “Agency Paradigm.” The purpose of this tool is to help students comprehend diversity within religious traditions, particularly regarding the agencies of women who are committed to them. Drawing on the open and critical dialogue of emancipatory pedagogy, the Agency Paradigm encourages students to explore a range of ways women in world religions choose to act in varying contexts. This approach to teaching world religions increases students’ cognitive knowledge base and expands their understanding of each of the religions studied in the course, as examined through the perspective of differing women; it also assists them in developing their own agency through thoughtful reflection.
Sexual violence on campus is a major issue facing students, faculty, and administrators, and institutions of higher education are struggling to respond. This forum brings together three responses to the problem, with a focus on the religious studies classroom. The responses move from the institution to the faculty to the classroom, exploring three separate but linked spaces for responding to sexual violence. The first contribution (Graybill) critiques common institutional responses to sexual violence. The second contribution (Minister) advocates for long-term, classroom-based responses to sexual violence and describes a faculty/staff workshop response. The third contribution (Lawrence) emphasizes the classroom, examining the issues that arise when perpetrators of sexual assault are part of the student body. Read together, the pieces offer a comprehensive view of the complicated intersections of sexual violence, the university, and pedagogical issues in religious studies.
One page Teaching Tactic: To make theoretically dense, conceptually difficult readings more concrete and easier to discuss. This enables our class discussion to begin with something besides “I don't get it.”