Resources

An increasing number of female students populate preaching classes in seminaries and theological schools across the United States. Based on the analysis of female students' needs and demands in preaching courses, I propose a pedagogy for conversational learning to teach homiletics. My own teaching experience and the knowledge gained through conversations with other feminist educators and homileticians are major resources upon which the principles and strategies of conversational learning are drawn. The ultimate goal for conversational learning is to enable "transformative learning" through which students transform their sense of identity, worldviews, values, ways of thinking, and enhance their unique voices in the pulpit. For this purpose, conversational learning employs student-centered, group-oriented, and inductive approaches in an egalitarian learning environment. Conversational learning is an on-going process of learning preaching in a collaborative way.

This note presents a method for teaching students to analyze and interpret images in the religious studies classroom. The technique uses two separate exercises: first analyzing images as works of art and then as conveyors of discipline-specific information. Drawing on the work of Edmund Feldman, our technique grounds interpretation in a methodical description of the basic components and characteristics of images. By helping students to conceptualize the formal qualities of an image as a first exercise, this technique allows them to more confidently address the challenging task of relating aspects of a given image with key concepts of religious studies. This simple first step toward interpreting religious images can help students profit more from texts, videos, lectures, field trips, and further studies in the field.

Historically, the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition has placed a heavy emphasis on education and has honored teaching as an important vocation. This paper begins to explore insights and models that tradition offers to help teachers clarify their calling. The article discusses five themes in Reformed theology and how these themes play out in an educational context, providing examples from one Presbyterian college. The paper concludes by suggesting four ways to think about pedagogy in Presbyterian institutions that are both consistent with Reformed principles and practical in their relevance to teaching and learning.

As the population within our religious institutions and the United States grows increasingly diverse, the need for a greater awareness of cultural and racial differences is a challenge facing theology students who will live and work within a changing context. For European American students this challenge includes an understanding of the power dynamics inherent in "whiteness" and how the resultant social power affects persons of other races and cultures. This article focuses on the need for cultural competence among current theology students, and outlines a five-stage developmental process whereby they have an opportunity to enhance their understanding of multiculturalism and anti-racism within their own context.

Taking the theory and practice of contrastive rhetoric as a point of departure, this article identifies two rhetorical models that inform the teaching and writing of theology at two theological schools where the author directs a joint writing program. The models of correlation and liberation are drawn from the official documents and typical theological/rhetorical practices of each school, exemplified by representative student and faculty writing. In conclusion, the common ground encouraging comparative and cooperative models of writing theological culture(s) is intimated by four concluding motives that warrant wider disciplinary discussion of the rhetorics we have and those we need as religious scholars and theological educators at the beginning of the third millennium.

Theological education has traditionally required students to come together in real (and often residential) communities and to learn in classroom settings with face–to–face teaching. Until recently, this model alone has been thought to provide the opportunity for the development of personal knowledge and the formation of character necessary for those engaged in professional ministry. This paper outlines a research project on the use of the Web in theological education, using an introductory course in biblical studies, offered for the first time this year in an online environment through the University of Exeter. The course is designed to enable the creation of a virtual community where personal theological formation is fostered. This paper describes the design of the course, analyzing the complex competencies required in terms of goals and outcomes, and identifying issues for further research. It provides some preliminary results, with an eye to making recommendations for future curriculum development.

How does one teach critical thinking, the procedures of an academic discipline, and the composition of plausible interpretations and arguments to students who are more facile with visual than with written modes of expression? How does one make real to students the construction of meaning in that unfamiliar epistemological space between brute fact and mere opinion? The "argument poster," a pedagogical strategy that helps students translate their skills for critical thinking from a visual frame to a written frame, results in better quality historical essays and research papers.

Raymond B. Williams, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Wabash College, founding Director of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, long–time member of the Executive Board of the American Academy of Religion, and founding editor of the journal Teaching Theology and Religion, has moved on to what will no doubt be a very active retirement. An interview with Williams was conducted by Malcolm Warford to be published in a venue unknown to the subject, thus enabling Warford to capture the spontaneous, unguarded vocational narrative of this private, humble scholar–teacher. After Warford transcribed and edited the interview, Lucinda Huffaker, co–editor of Teaching Theology and Religion, inserted commentary to set out themes and emphases on teaching and learning (desig. – LAH). As an autobiography, the article is both a window and a mirror – revealing both the formative influences in one professor's life and providing readers with an opportunity for reflective comparison with their own vocational paths and identities.

The article is a reflection on what I perceive to be a confusion about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. My interest in the issue originated with my own confusion over persistent student resistance to certain assigned texts that I had initially felt confident would prove valuable in the classroom. The essay unfolds in three segments. In the first, I recount how this concern about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy evolved out of my own teaching. I next list three tentative conclusions about the correlation or lack of correlation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. In the concluding segment, I call for concerted resistance to the tendency of pure rationality to colonize the aesthetic and dramatic components of experience so essential to transformative teaching and learning.

The article is a reflection on what I perceive to be a confusion about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. My interest in the issue originated with my own confusion over persistent student resistance to certain assigned texts that I had initially felt confident would prove valuable in the classroom. The essay unfolds in three segments. In the first, I recount how this concern about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy evolved out of my own teaching. I next list three tentative conclusions about the correlation or lack of correlation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. In the concluding segment, I call for concerted resistance to the tendency of pure rationality to colonize the aesthetic and dramatic components of experience so essential to transformative teaching and learning.