Scholarship on Teaching

This article focuses on Reflective Structured Dialogue as a set of practices developed in the context of conflict resolution that are well suited to handling quotidian uneasiness and extraordinary moments of disruption in religious studies classrooms. After introducing Reflective Structured Dialogue's history, goals, and general practices, the authors consider its uses in classroom settings. They argue that a classroom in which teachers understand themselves as facilitators, and in which students are experienced in structured dialogue practices – including being comfortable in a state of intellectual “wobble” – is one more apt to be able to engage with, and more likely to benefit from, disruptive events.

A panel at the 2016 American Academy of Religion conference staged, taped, transcribed, and edited this conversation about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a “nano department” – an undergraduate religion or religious studies department (or combined religion and philosophy department) with only one, two, or three faculty members. Two things quickly become evident: one is the impossibility of coverage of the full religious studies curriculum, and the other is the necessity for collaboration with other departments. Neither of these is unique to nano departments, but there exists an intimacy between students and faculty in small departments, a necessary freedom to rethink the place of the study of religion in the liberal arts curriculum, and a disruptive value in what can be critiqued and contributed from a marginalized position. Arguably, nano departments are the canaries in the academic coal mine, charting the future of the humanities that cannot be discerned from the vantage point of Research-1 contexts.

One page Teaching Tactic: a discussion exercise on the first day of class fools students in order to disrupt their prior assumptions of what constitutes a “real religion."

One page Teaching Tactic: discussion of a classical text that moves students from description to analysis and evaluation.

One page Teaching Tactic: scaffolds progressively more nuanced student understanding of difficult religious studies theory.

An extended metaphor for teaching. This essay draws out the useful parallels between the best kind of teacher and the Good Witch of the North, Glinda, from The Wizard of Oz. Unappealing to many viewers or readers of the classic children's story, Glinda offers an inspiring reminder of four important pedagogical points: (1) the master teacher always treats her student as a peer; (2) the master teacher acknowledges and encourages her student's abilities but lets her learn how to exercise them on her own; (3) the master teacher is often not equivalent or even similar to anyone the student has encountered before; and (4) the master teacher is not a surrogate parent but a more distant figure.

This article reports on a practitioner action research project focused on developing, trialing, and reflecting upon a continuous and formative-assessment plan for a foundational New Testament survey course. Three pedagogical convictions are discussed and drive the design of the assessment. Seven to nine assessment items (depending on level of study) based on course learning outcomes and informed by Bloom's taxonomy of learning, were developed and implemented. Students provided feedback on the assessment through an anonymous online survey. The results demonstrate that students preferred continuous assessment to an exam and major essay, and that they better achieved the course learning outcomes. In conclusion, this style of assessment is effective in driving and assessing student learning and so provides a basis for further action reflection.

What does it mean to teach virtue, or to learn it? We consider this question through an institutional review board (IRB) supported research study attending to student learning experiences in undergraduate ethics courses at a Catholic university with an explicit commitment to social justice. This essay draws on and interprets qualitative data concerning the outcomes of select pedagogical approaches that involve exposing students to the experiences of others: the use of narratives; participation in structured experiential learning activities; and community engagement through deep listening and facilitated dialogue. We focus our interpretation around the implications of these pedagogies in relation to student understanding of and attitudes regarding three character traits identified as “other-regarding” virtues in theological and philosophical scholarship – altruism, compassion, and solidarity. This paper considers the implications of these pedagogies and the practical effects of different sorts of teaching strategies on students' self-understanding as moral agents

Grammar-translation pedagogy is the standard for biblical language instruction. Second language acquisition scholars have argued that grammar-translation is ineffective and not empirically justified. Moreover, evidence suggests most seminary graduates do not use biblical languages effectively in ministry. Task-based instruction is an important alternative pedagogy which focuses on the tasks students will be using the language for and designs the curriculum around those tasks. A task-based approach de-emphasizes translation and memorization of forms. Instead, the emphasis from the beginning is on biblical interpretation and exposition. Available software based resources offer new possibilities for task-based teaching, as students can identify forms and vocabulary and have access to a library of resources. A task-based pedagogy using these tools enables students to quickly develop skills in biblical interpretation that are normally reserved for the third or fourth semester of study. Task-based pedagogy offers great promise for effective and efficient biblical language pedagogy.