Resources
Journal Issue.
A survey of 36 leading seminaries and rabbinical schools, evaluated on criteria for a sexually healthy and responsible seminary. These criteria measure sexuality content in the curriculum; institutional commitment to sexuality and gender equity (e.g., the existence of anti‐discrimination, sexual harassment and full inclusion policies); and advocacy and support for sexuality‐related issues.
Is it possible to teach pastoral care online? McGarrah Sharp and Morris describe their process of transforming a residential on-campus pastoral care course into the first online offering of the course at their seminary. They begin by describing a series of pedagogical choices made with the intent of facilitating dynamic movement between peer-to-peer, small group, and whole class discussions throughout the semester. Before and during the course, anxieties arose at many levels of instruction for the professor, teaching assistant, and students. Anecdotes and examples from the online course show how the online course design and facilitation was able to name and respond to anxieties as part of integrating pastoral care course content and practice – a key learning goal for the course. The authors are persuaded that online pedagogy can help identify how anxieties create space for developing empathy as much, if not more than, a traditional on-campus format.
Journal Issue.
Journal Issue.
If leaders are made, not born, what is the best way to teach the skills they need to be effective? Today's complex times require a new kind of leadership--one that encompasses a mind-set and capabilities that can't necessarily be taught by conventional methods. In this unique leadership book, Sharon Daloz Parks invites readers to step into the classroom of Harvard leadership virtuoso Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues to understand this dynamic type of leadership and experience a corresponding mode of learning called "case in point." Unlike traditional teaching approaches that analyze the experiences of past leaders, case in point uses individuals' own experiences--and the classroom environment itself--as a crucible for learning. This bold approach enables emerging leaders to work actively through the complex demands of today's workplace and build their skills as they discover theory in practice. Through an engaging, you-are-there writing style, Parks outlines essential features of this approach that can be applied across a range of settings. In the process, Leadership Can Be Taught reveals how we can learn, practice, and teach the art of leadership in more skilled, effective, and inspired forms. Sharon Daloz Parks is director of leadership for the New Commons--an initiative of the Whidbey Institute in Clinton, WA. She has held faculty and research positions at the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. (From the Publisher)
Video. Four extended video presentations, from the Merlot Elixer Initiative, showing faculty in various disciplines (NOT in religion or theology) addressing the issue of how to foster students’ abilities to integrate learning–over time, across courses, and between academic, personal, and community life.
Christian Hospitality and Pastoral Practices in a Multifaith Society - Reports and Reflections (pdf)
Journal Issue. Full text is available online.
Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Practice, praxis, traineeship, internship, or practicum - these are all names for the specific arrangements where students from universities engage in real life experiences; in arrangements where they leave the secure tranquility of the university and enter into the chaotic world of work. Practicum is a very good way of learning, and it can be very interesting for all parties involved. The students appreciate it, even if it is cumbersome, frustrating, and requires a lot of work - work that is different from what they know in their previous encounters with the education system. This book asks a simple question in relation to practicum, paraphrasing Tom Paxton's song: What Did You Learn in the Real World Today? The question is asked without the irony of Paxton's original one, in order to find out what is learned in the practicum. The chapters in this book shed some light on this simple question. The question is confronted from philosophical and pedagogical perspectives, while investigating a number of cases of students' learning experiences in the real world. (From the Publisher)