Resources

This paper addresses a perennial question of the religious studies and, indeed, of most liberal arts classrooms: How do I get my students to read texts thoroughly and with understanding? After briefly reviewing the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data, I argue that what teachers desire is not just basic literacy, but fluency, which is the capacity to read analytically (and, for me, appreciatively), deploying the strategies of reading in a high process, improvisational mode. I unpack the elements and efficacy of one close reading classroom teaching practice I use, guided annotation, as a strategy for developing fluency. I argue that close analysis of a short, intentionally chosen passage with a guiding question builds towards reading fluency. Annotating short passages, singly and then in relation to other passages, with the author's and disciplinary concerns as the foci, practices the skills that build fluency. Annotation is akin to playing scales in music, repeating a baseline task of reading; working slowly and simply at first, but then with increasing speed and complexity, moving the student towards reading whole texts well.

We analyzed 2,621 written student comments to better understand themes which most contribute to religion classes being rated high or low in terms of the spiritual benefit students received from the class. From 2,448 religion classes taught from September of 2010 through April of 2014, comments from the top 61 (2.5 percent) and bottom 51 (2.1 percent) rated classes in terms of being “spiritually inspiring” were compared for emerging themes. The most frequent themes in higher-ranked spiritually inspiring courses were (1) intellectually enlightening and (2) applied religion to life. In lower-ranked spiritually inspiring courses the themes (1) class time was ineffective and (2) poor assessments were prevalent. We explore the practical implications from these and other findings.

In the undergraduate religious studies classroom at the University of Leeds students are introduced to the complexity of religion in locality. One of the most engaging ways to do this is through a place-based pedagogy utilizing independent fieldwork as part of the learning process. However, undergraduates, like seasoned researchers, must learn to balance and understand the way insider representations influence academic interpretations, and the way their academic interpretations and representations can lead to change in the community being studied. Place-based pedagogy has, therefore, an important ethical dimension that is not accounted for in the existing literature. Engaging with reciprocal research relations as a way to navigate this terrain introduces students to the human impacts of their research and develops their self-awareness as researchers and religion specialists. This paper will draw on the Leeds experience to build an understanding of the interaction between place-based pedagogy and reciprocal research relations which informs both teaching and research in the study of religion, and extends the existing discourse on the ethical dimensions of undergraduate research.

In this article, I address the challenge of fostering better student engagement with ancient material, and discuss my experience with designing a course around creative use of technology. In my recent course, “The Ancient Christian Church: 54–604 CE,” I employed several tactics to encourage student engagement with ancient and modern sources, which also promoted active participation at the level of pedagogy. By designing the classroom experience to allow for student-centered technology use, students were enabled to explore the ancient world in creative ways. In the end, I noticed greater student participation and higher-quality understanding of the ancient church when compared with lecture- or seminar-focused classroom experiences.

Research begins with good questions. Undergraduate students often struggle with research projects because they do not know how to pose good research questions. This note describes a teaching strategy that is collaborative and digital, and enables students to practice asking research questions and acquire skills for evaluating them collectively. Working in groups and through a digital medium, students query each other's research interests and, in turn, inhabit the kinds of conversational practices that characterize authentic scholarly discourse.

In this set of essays, three authors provide different perspectives on whether personal religious sensibilities and identities affect the ways we teach religion. Elliott Bazzano discusses how, as a white Muslim convert teaching at a Catholic college, he incorporates selective autobiographical anecdotes into his classes as a way to problematize the meaning of “insider” and “outsider,” and pushes his students to recognize the many layers of identity that any given person embodies at a given time. In the second essay, Audrey Truschke explains why she makes no reference to her own religious beliefs or affiliations in class as part of her strategy to demonstrate how students can study any religion regardless of personal convictions. In the third essay, Jayme Yeo explores the benefits of discussing personal religious identity as a means to resist the categories of “inside” and “outside,” which she sees as heterogeneous concepts that do not always offer explanatory power upon close examination.

More professors and institutions want to move from a detect-and-punish to an educate-and-prevent model for dealing with plagiarism. Understanding the causes of plagiarism, especially among international students, can aid in efforts to educate students and prevent plagiarism. Research points to a confluence of causal factors, such as time pressure, language differences, and unclear rules. Though not the primary factor, ethical differences between cultures are also germane. Overall, the plight of international students summons institutions to examine their ethical norms of attribution. Plagiarism has a cultural history tied to concepts of individual creativity, but its future may look quite different in an era with increased communal sharing of ideas and images.

This article proposes that religious studies instructors can gain pedagogical insights regarding the value and teaching of empathy from pre-professional health care and counseling fields. I present research findings from these fields to support claims that empathic skills are teachable. I then show that empathy has been established within the field of religious studies as important in order to understand the beliefs of the religious other. I conclude that religious studies educators should be concerned about how to teach empathy, and suggest that pre-professional research findings point us in the direction of how to do this. Experiential exercises such as role-playing and other simulation exercises seem to be most effective in teaching empathic skills. I present examples that demonstrate how listening exercises and the role-playing of cases can be used in the religious studies classroom and can assist in the development of empathy for the religious other.

Teaching theology within academic institutions with confessional commitments and theologically conservative students requires holding together, in creative tension, two pedagogical goals. The challenge is to promote rigorous academic inquiry by encouraging student openness to engagement with perspectives that challenge their own beliefs while simultaneously constructing a course that is experienced as a safe space where students do not feel their personal faith is under attack. This essay presents the argument that a methodological framework for introductory theology courses informed by Alasdair MacIntyre's reflections on the nature of living traditions holds great promise for achieving these objectives. The essay will also describe how a creative extended analogy drawn from the game of basketball facilitates student comprehension of this initially abstract intellectual framework. Finally, the essay will offer some representative examples of student participation in course online discussion forums in order to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach for student learning.

A special section of "Teaching Theology and Religion" that collects short essays providing snapshots of how religion is taught in the undergraduate (college/university) curriculum in 9 countries around the world: Denmark, Ireland, Turkey, Botswana, Japan, Malaysia, Japan, New Zealand, and Brazil.