Resources
One page Teaching Tactic: a free write exercise helps students reflect on and articulate their values.
One page Teaching Tactic: using an acronym to help students remember basic biblical chronology and plot outline.
One page Teaching Tactic: students memorize and recite a selection from another tradition's scripture.
Theological educators are now fostering dialogues, projects, and practices that are designed to acknowledge the challenges and opportunities resulting from the shifting racial and ethnic demographic climate in the U.S. and Canada. As well-intentioned as these efforts are, most of the scholarship focuses on the contemporary experiences of underrepresented minorities, current institutional concerns, or practical classroom scenarios, leaving Scripture courses, which have long been the backbone of theological education, beyond the scope of critical engagement. In this article I argue that the existing scholarship on teaching and learning in general, and among biblical scholars in particular, does not adequately address the specific challenges that arise when questions about race and ethnicity are exposed in Scripture courses. Therefore, based on my own classroom experiences, I develop a pedagogy of (Emb)Racing the Bible that seeks to bridge the gap between theoretical readings and practical applications of ancient and contemporary discourses about race and ethnicity.
Although the study of the Synoptic Problem has been the focus of scholarly attention for over two hundred years, the social learning theory known as Communities of Practice is a relatively recent phenomenon. This article describes a communities of practice approach to the study of the Synoptic Problem in an upper-division undergraduate course at a private, liberal arts college. Students with little or no prior knowledge of the Synoptic Problem were introduced to the salient issues of the Synoptic Problem as well as a theoretical framework in which to interpret them. Data were collected using a variety of mixed methods, including pre- and post-treatment tests, written survey questions, interviews, field notes, and focus group sessions. The results of this study suggest that a communities of practice approach can enhance students' knowledge of the Synoptic Problem and also foster an awareness of scholarly and personal presuppositions that influence the interpretation of the gospels.
Journal Issue.
In June of 2008, teams from diverse campuses across the country came together to explore and create programs aimed at enhancing the religious literacy of their students. The Society for Values in Higher Education sponsored this Institute for Religion on Campus and Community, with funding from the Jesse Ball duPont foundation. This publication is a description of the diverse curricular and co-curricular projects developed at these institutions. Miriam Diamond and her colleagues in the Society for Values in Higher Education have produced a wonderful little volume that deals with a major contemporary problem in higher education: how to foster religious literacy across the American academic landscape. This is a vexed (and vexing) problem in the American academy, and the authors have made a major contribution – which continues the tradition of Bellah, Wuthnow, and Prothero. To quote contributor Nancy Thomas, “American civil society seems less than civil”. (From the Publisher)
Over the coming decades, every academic discipline will have to respond to the paradigm of more sustainable life practices because students will be living in a world challenged by competition for resources and climate change, and will demand that every academic discipline demonstrate substantial and corresponding relevance. This book takes as its point of departure that integrating a component of sustainability into a discipline-specific course arises from an educator asking a simple question: in the coming decades, as humanity faces unprecedented challenges, what can my discipline or area of research contribute toward a better understanding of these issues? The discipline need not be future-oriented: an archaeologist, for instance, could incorporate into a course some aspects of sustainable archaeological practices in areas threatened by rapid climate change, as well as examples of sustainable or unsustainable ways of living practiced by members of the long-gone society under investigation. This book also argues that courses about sustainability need to cross disciplinary boundaries, both because of the inter-relatedness of the issues, and because students will require the ability to use interdisciplinary approaches to thrive through the multiple careers most of them will face. The contributions to this book are presented under four sections. “Sustainability as a Core Value in Education” considers the rationale for incorporating sustainability in disciplinary courses. “Teaching Sustainability in the Academic Disciplines” presents eight examples of courses from disciplines as varied as agriculture, composition, engineering, and teacher education. “Education as a Sustainable Practice” reviews how the physical environment of the classroom and the delivery of instruction need themselves to reflect the values being taught. The final section addresses the issues of leadership and long-term institutional change needed to embed sustainable practice as a core value on campus. (From the Publisher)
Journal Issue.