Faith in the Classroom

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory and the Induced-Compliance Paradigm pose some interesting questions for those teaching religious studies in publicly funded colleges and universities. Given that religious beliefs can be challenged by the historical-critical study of scriptures, for example, and that the cognitive dissonance generated when this occurs can result in unconscious alteration of beliefs and attitudes, it is vital to make explicit the potential for manipulation of student beliefs. The author asks what, if any, responsibilities are implied for the instructor.

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Does education have any relation to theology? How do the educator's worldview commitments speak to his or her practice of education? James Michael Lee brought a definite answer to these questions -- a firm no to the relations question, and an advocacy for empirical findings over and against any speculative or theoretical positions in reply to the commitments question. Lee claimed to have a universal, neutral metatheory for all religious education, a theory that would apply to all religious educators in any and every religion. But in proposing his theory he overlooked the way that empirical facts express worldviews. This book is a detective story, tracing commitments that lay underneath empirical "neutrality." In the process the reader will see avenues that unmistakably link education to theology. Education turns out to be a thoroughly worldview - conditioned process. This new work is essential reading for professors and students in both religious and general education. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

ch. 1 James Michael Lee's Religious Instruction Theory
ch. 2 Empiricism's Metaphysical Commitments
ch. 3 The Theology of James Michael Lee
ch. 4 Conclusions

Bibliography

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What is contemplative pedagogy and how is it practiced in Religious Studies classrooms? Contemplative pedagogy cultivates inner awareness through first-person investigations, often called “contemplative practices.” Contemplative teaching practices range widely: silent sitting meditation, compassion practices, walking meditation, deep listening, mindfulness, yoga, calligraphy, chant, guided meditations, nature observation, self-inquiry, and many others. Since narrative is a mode of instruction prevalent in contemplative literature, the article includes first-hand reflections from students and a narrative account of how an initially skeptical professor came to incorporate contemplative teaching methods into her courses. It expands from the personal narratives to highlight the work of many contemplative professors in the field. These real-life examples are put into the context of recent publications on shifts in higher education and meditation research. The article seeks to demonstrate the power of contemplative teaching to fulfill many hopes for liberal arts learning. Of particular importance is its emphasis on interior qualities of lifelong impact, such as self-knowledge and ethical cultivation.

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Contemplative Pedagogy is a new and sometimes controversial pedagogical practice. Faculty often have basic questions about how to implement the pedagogy in their classrooms, in addition to questions that challenge the educational value and appropriateness of the practice. Assembled here are the most frequently asked questions about Contemplative Pedagogy, with responses from six contemplative professors, each from a different institutional and philosophical location. The respondents are founding members of the Contemplative Studies Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. The diversity of views expressed by the respondents invites the reader to see that there is no single theory or praxis of contemplative pedagogy.

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Much debate exists regarding the purpose of education. This article explores the idea that religious education can be used to inspire change and action in the lives of students beyond the classroom. We describe a study of students who took a required religion class at a private religious university. The intended outcomes of the class centered on encouraging students to make the following changes in their lives: to develop a habit of regular scripture study, to use new methods to study the scriptures, and to make positive choices in their lives. Specific assignments were designed to encourage these outcomes. At the end of the semester, students were surveyed as to whether they had made changes in their lives in these three areas. The vast majority of students reported that they had made changes in their lives because of assignments given in the class. Implications and limitations are discussed.

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Praise for The Heart of Higher Education

Palmer and Zajonc have issued a compelling call for change and renewal in higher education. They show us how colleges and universities can be transformed by taking a more integrated approach to teaching and learning that focuses on the inner lives of their students and faculty.

At a moment when many are dreaming of an integrative form of higher education that unites intellectual rigor with compassion and love, Palmer and Zajonc invite us to engage in conversations designed to infuse the academy with meaning, purpose, and soul. For those who yearn to transform colleges and universities from sterile, vacuous spaces to places of hope, possibility, and respect for everything human, this is the book you have been waiting for.

Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc call for a renewal of our commitment to inspiring deeper thinking and educating the whole person. This book should and will inspire debate about our larger purpose, about how we can go beyond the traditional silos in which we work for the sake of individual and institutional transformation.

What should be at the center of our teaching and our students' learning? Palmer and Zajonc take up this simple but daunting question and provide the most solid ground yet on which to hold a conversation about the heart of our enterprise. They reimagine higher education in a way commensurate with the magnitude of our problems and offer us practical paths toward implementation. Integrative education is the most important reformation of higher learning since the rise of the modern university. This book can help us achieve it. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword
Gratitudes
The Authors
Introduction

ch. 1 Toward a Philosophy of Integrative Education
ch. 2 When Philosophy Is Put into Practice
ch. 3 Beyond the Divided Academic Life
ch. 4 Attending to Interconnection, Living the Lesson
ch. 5 Experience, Contemplation, and Transformation
ch. 6 Transformative Conversations on Campus

Afterword

About the Appendices: Experiments in Integrative Education
Appendix A In the Classroom
Appendix B Beyond the Classroom
Appendix C Administrative and Campuswide Initiatives

Notes
Index

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A smart, compassionate look at the important and often bewildering questions young adults face in their search for purpose, meaning and faith, and a clarion call to concerned adults to actively mentor the next generation. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Young Adulthood in a Changing World: Promise and Vulnerability.
ch. 2 Meaning and Faith.
ch. 3 Becoming at Home in the Universe.
ch. 4 It Matters How We Think.
ch. 5 It All DepAnds . . . . On Belonging.
ch. 6 Imagination: The Power of Adult Faith.
ch. 7 The Gifts of a Mentoring Environment.
ch. 8 Mentoring Communities: Higher Education: A Community of Imagination
ch. 9 Culture as Mentor.

Notes.
The Author.
Index.

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 The Christian College Experience and the Development of Spirituality Among Students
ch. 2 Spiritual Integration as a Predictor of Persistence at a Christian Institution of Higher Education
ch. 3 Explanatory Styles Among Undergraduate Students in a Christian and a State-supported Institution of Higher Education Part 2: A Comparative Analysis
Book Reviews

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A key study for understanding the transformation of meaning in young adults. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

ch. 1 The Elusiveness of Adulthood
ch. 2 Meaning-Making: An Activity of Faith
ch. 3 Developmental Theories: Insights into the Motion of Faith
ch. 4 The Journey Toward Mature Faith: A Model
ch. 5 Young Adult Faith: Promise and Vulnerability
ch. 6 Imagination: The Power of Adult Faith
ch. 7 Higher Education: A Community of Imagination
ch. 8 Culture as Mentor

Appendices
Notes
Index

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Click Here for Book Review
Abstract: Professors and Their Politics tackles the assumption that universities are ivory towers of radicalism with the potential to corrupt conservative youth. Neil Gross and Solon Simmons gather the work of leading sociologists, historians, and other researchers interested in the relationship between politics and higher education to present evidence to the contrary. In eleven meaty chapters, contributors describe the political makeup of American academia today, consider the causes of its liberal tilt, discuss the college experience for politically conservative students, and delve into historical debates about professorial politics.

Offering readable, rigorous analyses rather than polemics, Professors and Their Politics yields important new insights into the nature of higher education institutions while challenging dogmas of both the left and the right. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

Part I - The Lay of the Land
ch. 1 The Social and Political Views of American College and University Professors (Neil Gross and Solon Simmons)

Part II - Explaining Professional Liberalism
ch. 2 Political Liberalism and Graduate School Attendance: A Longitudinal Analysis (Ethan Fosse, Jeremy Freese, and Neil Gross)
ch. 3 Nations, Classes, and the Politics of Professors: A Comparative Perspective (Clem Brooks)
ch. 4 Political Bias in the Graduate School Admissions Process: A Field Experiment (Ethan Fosse, Neil gross, and Joseph Ma)

Part III - The Student Experience
ch. 5 The Effect of College on Social and Political Attitudes and Civic Participation (Kyle Dodson)
ch. 6 “Civil” or “Provocative?” Varieties of Conservative Student Style and Discourse in American Universities (Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood)

Part IV - Formative Periods
ch. 7 Naturalizing Liberalism in the 1950s (Andrew Jewett)
ch. 8 Challenging Neutrality: Sixties Activism and Debates over Political Advocacy in the American University (Julie A. Reuben)

Part V - Institutional Change and Its Limits
ch. 9 Activism and the Academy: Lessons from the Rise of Ethnic Students (Fabio Rojas)
ch. 10 Rationalizing Realpolitik: U.S. International Relations as a Liberal Field (Patrick Thaddeus Jackson)
ch. 11 The Merits of Marginality: Think Tanks, Conservative Intellectuals, and the Liberal Academy (Thomas Medvetz)

Conclusion
Appendix: Sample Student Emails
References
Contributors
Index

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Praise for Helping College Students Find Purpose

A generous and inspiring book! In the spirit of 'convocation,' Nash and Murray call together both university faculty and student affairs professionals to provide them new means for helping more college students realize the highest purpose of higher education—that, in pursuing the means to make a living, one comes to make a meaning worth living for.

Educators across campuses—faculty and administrators alike—will find in this book not only the importance of helping their students construct meaning upon which to base their academic and life ambitions, but also practical suggestions for doing so. Ultimately, those who will benefit most from this book are students whose education inside and outside the classroom is informed by the type of cross-campus, interdisciplinary approach to meaning-making put forth by the authors.

This comprehensive compendium is a must-read for any higher education professional interested in responding to students' ubiquitous concerns about existential issues concerning purpose and meaning. It brings together classical and contemporary thought, conceptual depth, and concrete suggestions for practice. This scholarship is enriched and enlivened by the authors' personal perspectives and experiences, and by student voices and vignettes. Buy it and keep it handy as a source of wisdom and good counsel.

A thoughtful, provocative, moving, yet practical guide for any teacher seeking to make the college classroom a space for inspiration and hope. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword
Preface
About the Authors

Part I: Making Meaning in the Quarterlife
ch. 1 Is the Quarterlife Generation Ready for Meaning-Making?
ch. 2 Exploring the Meaning of Meaning: Existentialism and Postmodernism
ch. 3 Finding Meaning in Religion and Spirituality: Why Can’t My Faith Be Cool?

Part II: Putting Meaning-Making to Work: Tools of the Trade
ch. 4 A Pedagogy of Constructivism: Deep-Meaning Learning
ch. 5 Make Room for Meaning: Practical Advice
ch. 6 The Ethics of Meaning-Making
ch. 7 Meaning Maxims for Both Inside and Outside the Classroom

Part III: Our Own Attempts to Make Meaning
ch. 8 Two Personal Reflections for Our Readers

Resources for Meaning-Making Educators
Resource A: Four Therapeutic Approaches to Meaning-Making
Resource B: Crossover Pedagogy

References
Index

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As the number of people of South Asian heritage in America has greatly increased over recent decades, the study and teaching of Hinduism has come under ever greater scrutiny. During this time, the number of students of Indian background has vastly increased in some schools in some parts of the United States. This increased presence and scrutiny has had some salutary effects, including greater attention to and accountability in our field, but has also led to some unwelcome conflict and feelings of misrepresentation by both academics and adherents. Some of us are in the perplexing position of being keenly aware of and in conversation about tensions elsewhere, yet still having few (or no) Hindu students in our own classrooms. This essay will discuss two matters given this background: first, I will describe how I present Hindu religious traditions in my local context, and then I will offer some more general reflections on teaching and researching Hinduism in the United States today.

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This is the final volume in a trilogy of works that examine the impact of writing and reading about traumatic subjects. "Diaries to an English Professor" (1994) explores the ways in which undergraduate students use psychoanalytic diaries to probe conflicted issues in their lives. "Surviving Literary Suicide" (1999) investigates how graduate students respond to suicidal literature-novels and poems that portray and sometimes glorify self-inflicted death.

In Risky Writing, Jeffrey Berman builds on those earlier studies, describing ways teachers can encourage college students to write safely on a wide range of subjects often deemed too personal or too dangerous for the classroom: grieving the loss of a beloved relative or friend, falling into depression, coping with the breakup of one's family, confronting sexual abuse, depicting a drug or alcohol problem, encountering racial prejudice. Berman points out that nearly everyone has difficulty talking or writing about such issues because they arouse shame and tend to be enshrouded in secrecy and silence. This is especially true for college students, who are just emerging from adolescence and find themselves at institutions that rarely promote self-disclosure.

Recognizing the controversial nature of his subject, Berman confronts academic opposition to personal writing head on. He also discusses the similarities between the "writing cure" and the "talking cure," the role of the teacher and audience in the self-disclosing classroom, and the pedagogical strategies necessary to minimize risk, including the importance of empathy and other befriending skills. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Introduction

ch. 1 Risky Writing: Theoretical and Practical Implications
ch. 2 Seeing Ourselves through the Eyes of Others
ch. 3 The Dark Side of Diversity
ch. 4 Sexual Disclosures Revisited
ch. 5 Unmasking Shame
ch. 6 Writing under the Influence
ch. 7 Pedagogy of Risk

Afterword
Appendix
Works Cited
Student Writers
Index

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This paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as “contemplative pedagogy.” Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first-person experience as an essential means of knowing that has historically been overshadowed and dismissed by an emphasis on analytical reasoning. In this essay, I examine four problematic claims that appear frequently in descriptions of contemplative pedagogy: (1) undergraduate students have a kind of spiritual hunger; (2) pedagogies focused on cognitive skills teach students only what, not how, to think; (3) self-knowledge fosters empathy; and (4) education needs a new epistemology centered on spiritual and emotional, rather than intellectual, experience. I argue that these claims underestimate the diversity of undergraduate students, the complexity of what it means to think and know, the capacity for self-knowledge to become self-absorption, and the dangers of transgressing the boundaries between intellectual, psychological, and religious experiences. [See as well “Response to Kathleen Fisher's ‘Look Before You Leap,’” by Andrew O. Fort and Louis Komjathy, published in this issue of the journal.]

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White Paper and the Working Group Papers for a 2008 Teagle funded conference with participants from Bucknell University, Macalester College, Vassar College, and Williams College.
 Asking: how secular assumptions both enable and limit the questions of meaning and purpose that are central to liberal arts education. 

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This article provides two short responses to Kathleen M. Fisher's essay “Look Before You Leap: Reconsidering Contemplative Pedagogy,” published in this issue of the journal.

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This article revisits the pedagogical dilemma of maintaining neutrality in the religious studies/theology classroom. I argue that if the boundary between teaching about religion and actually teaching spirituality seems to be vanishing, it is because the boundary was inappropriately constructed in the first place. To the extent that the religious concepts, even when compressed into religious studies categories, inherently inspire personal transformation, how can a boundary exist between the ideas students encounter and the power of those ideas to transform? Spiritual guidance emerges naturally in the academic study of religion, and those of us who teach in the field might as well get used to it. In explaining my position, I draw on my experience as a teaching assistant in Professor Walter Capps's course, "Religion and the Impact of the Vietnam War." I, then, develop a pragmatic teaching strategy, neutral enthusiasm, which preserves the important neutrality of classroom presentation in religious studies courses, yet recognizes the unavoidable evocative power present in the intellectual territory that is religion. Neutral enthusiasm allows the content to do the work.

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This article emphasizes the need for religious educators to address the issue of divine violence in Scripture with students, and it offers various pedagogical strategies for doing so. The focus is on violent Old Testament texts, with special attention given to the issue of Canaanite genocide. A general framework for structuring class time around divine violence in Scripture is proposed which includes (1) encouraging students to encounter violent biblical texts firsthand, (2) helping them understand why people find these passages problematic, and (3) offering various options for dealing with the potential problems these passages raise. In the second half of the article, significant attention is devoted to a number of practical considerations that should be taken into account when talking about this sensitive issue in class. A brief word about assessment is offered at the end.

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Spiritual formation is both an opportunity and a challenge for educators in Christian colleges and seminaries. How can students be nurtured and guided in developing spiritually within the curriculum? Drawing on a number of educators, studies, and arguments, this article develops a rationale for engaging in spiritual formation and for the use of practical assignments or "soul projects." A selection of such projects is grouped into genres, followed by a brief exploration of best practices and an evaluation of such assignments.

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The increasing religious diversity in educational space has raised a legitimate question on how Catholic theology/catechesis must be taught in Philippine Catholic universities given the institutional mandate to educate students “into the faith of the Church through teaching of Christian doctrine in an organic and systematic way” (Wuerl, 2013, 1). On this note, the paper makes reference to “centered pluralism” (CP), a positional posture espoused by Georgetown University in dealing with this predicament. In an attempt to (re)appropriate CP into local context, there is a need to explore the Filipino conception of self/others as enveloped within the indigenous concept of kapwa. Hereon, the paper finds that CP is not just feasibly suitable in local context but with kapwa's more inclusive description of the relationship of self and others, a CP‐based teaching paradigm in theology/catechesis is a promising project in the educational scene of the Philippines.

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This study ventures to sketch the dimensions of stress in religious thinking among young Muslims studying theology in Turkish universities and the ways in which these tensions are handled in educational institutions. As a result of a review of related literature, together with the use of a questionnaire with 382 respondents and interviews with 15 participants, the extent of experienced intense religious stress, the source, the content, the ways of resolution, the duration, and the period of religious stress were identified. Finally, the cognitive, educational, theological, and socio-cultural challenges to which young Muslims were exposed were delineated and possible ways to overcome these problems were outlined, with some suggestions for educational settings.

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The return of religious ways of knowing in the academy could be called a "post-secular revolution." "This paper is a guided tour of the movement to reconnect religion and knowledge, a group portrait of the individuals and organizations behind the growing prominence of religious scholarship." Extensive bibliography.

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Describes the emergence of powerful fields of consciousness that influence students’ learning and personal transformation.
This pioneering work in teaching and transpersonal psychology explores the dynamics of collective consciousness in the classroom. Combining scientific research with personal accounts collected over thirty years, Christopher M. Bache examines the subtle influences that radiate invisibly around teachers as they work—unintended, cognitive resonances that spring up between teachers and students in the classroom. While these kinds of synchronistic connections are often overlooked by traditional academics, Bache demonstrates that they occur too frequently and are too pointed to be dismissed as mere coincidence. Drawing upon Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic fields, Bache proposes that well-taught courses generate “learning fields” around them, forms of collective consciousness that can trigger new insights and startling personal transformations. Moving beyond theory, this book is rich with student stories and offers practical, hands-on strategies for teachers who want to begin working with these learning fields to take their teaching to a more conscious level. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

Part I The Emergence of Fields of Consciousness
ch. 1 Resonance in the Classroom
ch. 2 Group Fields, Group Minds
ch. 3 The Science of Fields

Part II Working with Fields of Consciousness
ch. 4 Working with Fields
ch. 5 Cafe Conversations

Part III Teaching in a Living Universe
ch. 6 Waking Up in the Classroom
Student Stories
Introduction
ch. 7 Where We Begin
ch. 8 Healing through Writing
ch. 9 Spiritual Experiences
ch. 10 Conversion Experiences
ch. 11 Touched by Death
ch. 12 Personal Discoveries

Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Journal Issue

Table Of Content:
Contributors

Ch 1. Contemplative Pedagogy and the Religious Studies Classroom (Sarah Jacoby)
Ch 2. Why I Do Not Use Contemplative Pedagogy in the Public University Classroom (Candy Gunther Brown)
Ch 3. Making Reading Relevant: Critical Thinking as Contemplative Practice (Kathleen M. Fisher)
Ch 4. Contemplating the Smartphone Dis/Connect (Daniel A. Hirshberg)
Ch 5. Critical, Creative, Contemplative (Karolyn Kinane)
Ch 6. Simplicity: Portals to the Contemplative (Anne Carolyn Klein)
Ch 7. Contemplative Pedagogy (Harold D. Roth)
Ch 8. Teaching Contemplation in 3D (Michael Sheehy)
Ch 9. Reading with a Fresh Mind: Contemplative Reading Exercise (Judith Simmer-Brown)

Collected Resources

Appendix

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Contemplative Studies—meaning both standard “third-person” study of contemplative traditions in history and various cultures as well as actual “first-person” practice of contemplative exercises as part of coursework—is a new field in academia, and aspects have been controversial in some quarters, seen as not completely compatible with the rigorous “critical inquiry” of liberal arts study. While there are agendas within contemplative studies (CS) that go beyond the traditional questions and issues of liberal education, I want to argue that CS has, for a number of reasons, a place right at the heart of such inquiry. CS can be approached from many disciplines, including psychology, medicine, and neuroscience, as well as literature and visual, fine, and performing arts, but here I will focus on its place in liberal arts generally, and in religious studies specifically.

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The Religion in the Academy (RITA) project focuses on the many ways that religion, spirituality, and big questions of human meaning and purpose can enhance learning at colleges and universities.

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One page Teaching Tactic: Scaffolded activities and assignments beginning the first day of class to help students engage significant life questions in the Bible.

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Religious Advocacy and American History explores the general question of bias and objectivity in higher learning from the perspective of the role of religious convictions in the study of American history. The contributors to this book, many of whom are leading historians of American religion and culture, address primarily two related questions. First, how do personal religious convictions influence one's own research, writing, and teaching? And, second, what place should personal beliefs have within American higher education? (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword
Introduction

ch. 1 Christian Advocacy and the Rules of the Academic Game (George M. Marsden)
ch. 2 Traditional Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge (Mark A. Noll)
ch. 3 On Critical History (Bruce Kuklick)
ch. 4 Advocacy and Academe (Murray G. Murphey)
Marxism, Christianity, and Bias in the Study of Southern Slave Society (Eugene D. Genovese)
ch. 5 Advocacy and the Writing of American Women's History (Elizabeth Fox. Genovese)
ch. 6 In Search of the Fourth "R": The Treatment of Religion in American History Textbooks and Survey Courses (Paul Boyer)
ch. 7 What's So Special about the University, Anyway? (D.G. Hart)
ch. 8 Understanding the Past, Using the Past: Reflections on Two Approaches to History (Grant Wacker)
ch. 9 A Transcendentalist's Aristotle: Non-evangelical Reflections on Conviction and the Writing of History (Catherine L. Albanese)
ch. 10 Seldon's Choice: Variations on a Theme by Asimov (Paul A. Carter)
ch. 11 One Historian's Sundays (Leslie Woodcock Tentler)

Afterword

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A groundbreaking book on using meditation in education and how it can enhance teaching and learning.

Meditation and the Classroom inventively articulates how educators can use meditation to educate the whole student. Notably, a number of universities have initiated contemplative studies options and others have opened contemplative spaces. This represents an attempt to address the inner life. It is also a sign of a new era, one in which the United States is more spiritually diverse than ever before. Examples from university classrooms and statements by students indicate benefits include increased self-awareness, creativity, and compassion.

The religious studies scholars who have contributed to this book often teach about meditation, but here they include reflections on how meditation has affected them and their teaching. Until recently, though, even many religious studies professors would find sharing meditation experiences, let alone teaching meditation techniques, a breach of disciplinary and academic protocols. The value of teaching meditation and teaching about meditation is discussed. Ethical issues such as pluralism, respect, qualifications, power and coercion, and avoiding actual or perceived proselytization are also examined. While methods for religious studies are emphasized, the book provides valuable guidance for all those interested in this endeavor. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Introduction

I. Why Contemplatives Pedagogy? The Religious Studies Dialogue
ch. 1 The Convergence of Liberal Education and Contemplative Education—Inevitable?
ch. 2 Meditation and Education: India, Tibet, and Modern America
ch. 3 Contemplative Studies: Can It Flourish in the Religious Studies Classrom?
ch. 4 Contemplative Studies and the Art of Persuasion: The Institutional Challenge

II. The Contemplative Professor
ch. 5 From Content, to Context, to Contemplation: One Professor’s Journey
ch. 6 The Collective Dynamics of Contemplative Practice
ch. 7 The Mindful Teacher as the Foundation of Contemplative Pedagogy
ch. 8 Compassion Beyond Fatigue: Contemplative Training for Educators and Other Helping Professionals
ch. 9 Field Notes from a Daoist Professor

III. Critical Issues In Contemplative Teaching
ch. 10 Training the Heart Responsibly: Ethical Considerations in Contemplative Teaching
ch. 11 Invitation and Coercion in Contemplative Pedagogy
ch. 12 Interiority and Higher Education: The Neurophenomenology of Contemplation

IV. Contemplative-Based Courses
ch. 13 Embodied Contemplative Learning: Aikido as a Case Study
ch. 14 Reflections on Theory and Practice: The Case of Modern Yoga
ch. 15 Sustaining Life: Contemplative Pedagogies in a Religion and Ecology Course
ch. 16 Adab: Courteous Behavior in the Classroom
ch. 17 Experiencing Medieval Christian Spirituality

V. Contemplative Exercises For The Classroom
ch. 18 Awareness Practices in an Undergraduate Buddhism Course
ch. 19 Contemplative Inquiry: Beyond the Disembodied Subject
ch. 20 Love of Wisdom Puts You on the Spot: The Warrior Exam
ch. 21 A Meeting of the Minds in Cyberspace: Eco-contemplative Methods for Online Teaching
ch. 22 Mindfulness in the History Classroom: Teaching as Interbeing
ch. 23 Two Contemplative Practices That Animate the Study of Religion
ch. 24 Mindfulness and Contemplative Practice in Art and Religion

VI. Conclusion: Does It Work? Evaluations From Our Students
ch. 25 Emotional Learning: Re-cognizing Emotion and Thought in a Buddhism Course
ch. 26 Meditation in the Classroom: What Do the Students Say They Learn?

Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

Additional Info:
Key Findings from the First National Longitudinal Study of Undergraduates' Spiritual Growth, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA
www.spirtuality.ucla.edu

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At the end of his 1994 book, The Soul of the American University, George Marsden advanced a modest proposal for an enhanced role for religious faith in today's scholarship. This "unscientific postscript" helped spark a heated debate that spilled out of the pages of academic journals and The Chronicle of Higher Education into mainstream media such as The New York Times, and marked Marsden as one of the leading participants in the debates concerning religion and public life. Marsden now gives his proposal a fuller treatment in The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, a thoughtful and thought-provoking book on the relationship of religious faith and intellectual scholarship. More than a response to Marsden's critics, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship takes the next step towards demonstrating what the ancient relationship of faith and learning might mean for the academy today. Marsden argues forcefully that mainstream American higher education needs to be more open to explicit expressions of faith and to accept what faith means in an intellectual context. Contemporary university culture is hollow at its core, Marsden writes. Not only does it lack a spiritual center, but it is without any real alternative. He argues that a religiously diverse culture will be an intellectually richer one, and it is time for scholars and institutions to take the intellectual dimensions of their faith seriously and become active participants in the highest level of academic discourse. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

ch. 1 Why Christian Perspectives Are Not Welcomed
ch. 2 The Arguments for Silence
ch. 3 Christian Scholarship and the Rules of the Academic Game
ch. 4 What Difference Could It Possibly Make?
ch. 5 The Positive Contributions of Theological Context
ch. 6 Building Academic Communities

Getting Specific: A Readable Appendix
Notes
Index

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Recent research by Barbara Walvoord suggests a perceived disparity between faculty learning objectives and students' desire to engage “big questions” in the introductory religion classroom. Faculty opinions of such questions are varied, ranging from a refusal to employ any approach that diverts attention away from critical thinking, to a willingness to integrate personal questions of meaning and purpose into the introductory religion course. This essay argues that, in light of work currently being done by such developmental theorists as Sharon Daloz Parks and Marcia Baxter Magolda, the integrative approach has much to commend it. It concludes with suggestions for how religion faculty can expand this approach through learning covenants, service learning, and seeing the religion classroom as a gateway to various mentoring communities on campus.

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Many college students are interested in spirituality and the "big questions" about life's meaning and values, but many professors seem not to know how to respond to that interest. In this article, the author offers several strategies to help students confront the "big questions". One way is to structure assignments and discussions so that students can have a chance to bring critical thinking directly into relationship with their own experiences and beliefs.

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What is the relationship between the academic knowledge of the guild and the formation of students in the classroom? This Forum gathers four essays originally presented at a Special Topics Session at the 2009 conference of the American Academy of Religion (Atlanta, Georgia), with a brief introductory essay by Fred Glennon explaining the genesis of the panel. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen clarify some of the issues at stake in undergraduate liberal arts classrooms by distinguishing between four dimensions of what they refer to as “the (in)formation teaching matrix: institutional context, course content, faculty roles, and student outcomes. John Thatamanil argues that all learning necessarily presupposes formation. Amanda Porterfield argues against using the word “formation” because it complicates and undermines her teaching goals to historicize religion and narratives about it through open-ended inquiry. And, finally, Mary Elizabeth Moore explores the interactive processes linking formation, information, reformation, and transformation.

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In this excerpt from Kugel's controversial "How to Read the Bible," the author argues—with rich citation and documentation—that academic biblical studies is rife with an "unmistakably apologetic tone" of which even its most self-avowedly "critical" practitioners are largely unaware. The implication is that academic biblical studies, practiced as it is overwhelmingly by people of faith, does not achieve the honesty about the texts' "strangeness" characteristic of other corpus-oriented disciplines. (2014)

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A useful 2016 teaching piece for students of faith adjusting to academic religious studies. In this blog post, Tabor addresses the objection, often raised by students or religious laypeople, that (biblical) historians "exclude the miraculous" in their investigations. Not "suppressing" claims of the supernatural (e.g., miracles), historians welcome all such claims as contributing to our understanding of times and events, but refrain from adjudicating such claims beyond what is accessible to historical means.

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Alluding to several then-recent episodes of professors being forced from posts at evangelical institutions of learning, Enns asks whether schools dedicated to defending propositions grounded in private revelation and confessional dogma can be "truly academic" (and truly just to their instructors and students).

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Over the past twenty years there has been a ferment of reflection on the integration of faith and learning -- yet relatively little notice has been paid to the integration of faith and teaching in the Christian university. In Teaching and Christian Practices twelve university professors describe and reflect on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape and redirect their pedagogical strategies. Whether using spiritually formative reading to enhance a literature course, table fellowship to reinforce concepts in a pre-nursing nutrition course, or Christian hermeneutics to interpret data in an economics course, the authors present a practice of teaching and learning rooted in the rich tradition of Christian practices -- one that reconceives classrooms and laboratories as vital arenas for faith and spiritual growth. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword (Criag Dykstra; and Dorothy C. Bass
Caknowledgments
Introduction: Practces, Faith, and Pedagogy (David I. Smith; and James K. A. Smith)

ch. 1 Pedagogical Rhythms: Practices and Reflections on Practice (Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung)
ch. 2 Reading Practices and Christian Pedagogy: Enacting Charity with Texts (David I. Smith)
ch. 3 The Rough Trail to Authentic Pedagogy: Incorporating Hospitality, Fellowship, and Testimony into the Classroom (Carolyne Call)
ch. 4 Eat This Class: Breaking Bread in the Undergraduate Classroom (Julie A. P. Walton; and Matthew Walters)
ch. 5 From Curiosity to Studiousness: Catechizing the Appetite for Learning (Paul J. Griffiths)
ch. 6 From Tourists to Pilgrims: Christian Practices and the First-Year Experience (Ashley Woodiwiss)
ch. 7 Keeping Time in the Social Sciences: An Experiment with Fixed-Hour Prayer and the Liturgical Calendar (James K. A. Smith)
ch. 8 How Christian Practices Help to Engage Students Morally and Spiritually: Testimony from a Western Civilization Course (Glenn E. Sanders)
ch. 9 Thrill Rides and Labyrinths: The Pedagogical Logic of Freedom and Constraint (Matthew Walhout
ch. 10 Christian Practices and Technical Courses: Making Integral Connections (Kurt C. Schaefer)
ch. 11 Recruiting Students’ Imaginations: Prospects and Pitfalls of Practices (David I. Smith)

Contributors

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The author recounts his experience, as a young observant Jew, of James Kugel's academic biblical studies course at Harvard. The piece focuses specifically on how Kugel reconciles his religious faith  with his academic understanding, and how Jewish biblical scholars disagree with one another on what is involved in such a reconciliation. May be of special value for Christian learners undergoing a similar disruption, located as it is "safely" in a non-Christian context.

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A website for the seven-year study conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA examining the role that college plays in facilitating the development of students' spiritual qualities.

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Biblical studies professors in Christian liberal arts colleges typically face greater hostility from students nurtured in fundamentalist churches than they do from those who attend mainline churches. Guiding them through their first academic study of the Bible poses many challenges. To avoid the course becoming a battlefield, and to facilitate integration on a higher level, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral provides a middle way between right-wing and left-wing extremes. This approach gives priority to the Bible as the primary source for determining theology and practice, but relies heavily on tradition, reason, and experience as well. It also promotes interaction with the spiritual, moral, and ethical concerns expressed in the biblical texts. To adopt the Quadrilateral involves active concern for character formation, inspiring students to become better people. If we merely dispense historical-critical or literary information without considering contemporary relevance, we bore students and fail in our duties as educators.

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This article explores the disconnection between ethical theory and ethical practice in ethics courses at secular U.S. colleges and universities. In such contexts academic ethics focuses almost exclusively on “ethical reasoning” and leaves the business of practical moral formation of students in the realm of “student life.” I argue this disconnection is inevitable given the dominant understanding that moral formation must be guided by a consistent ethical theory, and must eventuate in certain prosocial behaviors, while norms of pluralism and free inquiry mandate that academic courses not attempt to dictate certain views or behaviors as normative. Drawing on the Confucian model of moral cultivation expressed by the early Chinese figure Mengzi, I argue for a different understanding of moral formation that focuses on open-endedness, self-direction, and the acquisition of skills in directing attention and will. This approach avoids the most serious challenges to practical moral formation in secular contexts, and I suggest some broadly applicable principles for implementing these ideas in ethics courses.

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This classroom exercise developed out of an effort to make the methodology and practical techniques of our field come alive for students of New Testament at a variety of undergraduate levels. Adapting the controversial "voting" technique of the Westar Institute's "Jesus Seminar," students vote with colored beads on the authenticity of Jesus' sayings in Matthew's Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–12). The point of the exercise is not to judge or dismiss Biblical text, but to work actively and thoughtfully with the critical tools and methods of New Testament scholarship, to ponder the implications of academic assessments of "authenticity" when it comes to Biblical text, and to stimulate discussion concerning how we, as professional scholars of the Bible, approach the Gospels.

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One of the most illuminating finds in Barbara E. Walvoord's Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses (2008) is what she calls “the great divide,” a mismatch between instructors’ goals for their courses, which are academic, and the students’ reasons for taking them, which relate to their personal interests and development. Motivation – or, rather, the lack thereof – is not explicitly considered as a potential victim of this mismatch. This article will turn its attention squarely to this issue. First, I will review data about the “great divide” and link them to the common practice of asking our students to bracket the personal when they take our courses. The article will juxtapose this practice with what research tell us about motivation, which will allow us to further explore why the divide Walvoord and others have identified is so problematic. The article will conclude with pedagogical strategies that can help instructors intentionally influence motivation in religion courses. Ultimately, I suggest that we may be doing students – as well as ourselves, as the purveyors of our discipline – a disservice, if we do not attend to (or, worse, if we actively avoid) what we know motivates students to learn.

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Recently scholars of religion have disputed whether theology properly belongs to the study of religion in institutions of higher education (McCutcheon 1997a, 1997b; Cady 1998; Brown and Cady forthcoming). At the same time, religious authorities have increasingly censored the work of theologians in seminaries and church-related schools; witness the loyalty oaths required of scholars in religious studies programs at some Protestant denominationally related colleges and the Catholic Church's recent stand expressed by Ex Cordae Ecclessiae. Both scholars who would exclude theology as a field from the study of religion and ecclesiastical authorities who would censor it fail to acknowledge the emergence of academic theology as a field that does not depend on institutional religious affiliation or personal confession of faith, a field that by its nature does depend for its continued existence on academic freedom. This article suggests a working definition of academic theology and then poses three questions: What might studying different kinds of theology academically teach us about religion? How, properly speaking, is theology as performed in a non-sectarian environment now a nomad wandering within the formal study of religion? What are the implications of this shift in status for how academic theologians teach? The article is a revision of the inaugural address, by the same title, given for the Margaret W. Harmon professorship in Christian Theology and Culture at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, November 18, 1999.

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Executive Summary of the HERI (UCLA) study of the Spiritual Life of College Students.

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Introductory courses in theology and religion are taught at most colleges and universities across the US and UK. From public to private, non-sectarian to faith-based institutions, theology courses fulfill humanities general education requirements, and provide a foundational education for students intending further theological study. This book describes the best and most effective ways of teaching these courses. Offering practical, realistic, research-based guidance, this volume explores the best and most recent methods in teaching-theory. This book addresses the questions and concerns frequently posed by the professors and graduate students who instruct these multifaceted courses. It covers issues such as a teacher's role in defining theology and religion, the teaching and learning process, course structure, and content. The volume also examines recent case studies of theology and religious studies courses at various institutions, including a private non-sectarian university, a public research university, a Catholic masters-level university, and at a Protestant baccalaureate college. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

ch. 1 Faculty and Student Goals for Learning: The Great Divide
ch. 2 Were the Goals Met? Students’ Academic and Spiritual Development
ch. 3 Pedagogies: What Influenced Student Learning?
ch. 4 Case Studies: Large Classes
ch. 5 Case Studies: Small Classes in World Religions, Introduction to Religion
ch. 6 Case Studies: Small Classes in Theology, Bible, Christian Formation

Appendix A: Faculty Demographics
Appendix B: Student Demographics
Appendix C: IDEA Surveys
Appendix D: Discipline-Specific Surveys Administered to Highly Effective Classes
Appendix E: Choosing Highly-Effective Faculty
Appendix F: Data Tally for Highly-Effective Classes
Appendix G: Prompts for Student In-Class Reflections
Appendix H: Suggestions for Leading Faculty Workshops

References
Index

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Results of the second phase in an ongoing major study of the spiritual lives of college students was released in a report called "The Spiritual Life of College Students." The study was conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), a research center of higher education based in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It is a groundbreaking attempt to gain insight into the spiritual lives and concerns of students and improve how faculties and administrators at US colleges and universities address this part of their students' lives.

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Explores the correlation between religion and liberal education in the U.S. Influence of spiritual or religious practices on student learning; Effect of spirituality on liberal learning; Ways in which religious practices affect learning. INSET: MEASURES OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT.

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Two theologians teaching religion at the same college engage in a dialogue about differences in their understandings of teaching religion in order to explore serious pedagogical and theological issues. Their reflections on their teaching touch on issues of learning goals, institutional identity, student freedom, faculty self-revelation, and the liberal arts that most teachers of religion face. Along the way, they explore the relation of pedagogy to theological topics like grace and ecclesiology. We invite readers to join the conversation begun in this article by engaging Webb, Placher, and one another through the public discussion list we've created for this article on the Wabash Center Discussion Forum at http://ntweb.wabash.edu/wcdiscus/.

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This note examines some pedagogical strategies for the formation of students who read the Bible both confessionally and critically. Some students in both church-related and secular colleges and universities enter courses with confessional views of the Bible that inspire a literal interpretation of the text, what the author calls a flat reading. Teachers struggle to lead students to a more nuanced view of the text in a way that is both sensitive to the students' development and academically responsible. The author indicates how he approaches this challenge through: (1) a discussion of texts that have been used to enable students to see the nature of the biblical text and to transform their understanding of it; (2) a description of techniques and exercises that work toward the same goal; and (3) reflection on the application of sociological research on group change in the transformation of individuals.

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An early review of Barbara Walvoords’ study showing a "great divide" in the introductory religious-studies classroom, especially at schools with a religious affiliation: While instructors want to prioritize the development of critical thinking, students want discussion that will develop their own religious beliefs and their moral & ethical values. (This is less true at secular colleges, where students are more on board with putting critical thinking first.)

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By reclaiming the role of confession in the classroom, we can rethink the fundamental question of what it means to teach religion. That is, the project of thinking about the religious dimension of pedagogy should also force us to rethink religious studies in general. Pedagogy, after all, is not an incidental expression of religious commitments but is instead one significant place where the religious imagination takes shape and form. All religious reflection is confessional, because scholarship is only one form of pedagogy, and teaching is the act of saying who we are, where we are from, and where we are going.

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"How . . . do we represent religious experience, in all of its various forms from apostasy to rapture, in ways that remain faithful to the rules of careful historical scholarship, but without inadvertently denigrating the experience as such by making it seem subordinate to other goals?"

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Noted literary critic Patricia Meyer Spacks has gathered together a group of both liberal and conservative professors to answer the question of whether or not a teacher can still bring passionate commitment to an idea into the classroom as a way of engaging students in a meaningful way. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction

ch. 1 The Professional Obligations of Classroom Teachers (Myles Brand)
ch. 2 The Political Magic of Claims to Neutral Universalisms, Or: How to Appear Fair While Converting Substantive Challenges to Political Advocacy (Troy Duster)
ch. 3 Fear and Loathing in the Classroom: Faculty and Student Rights in Comparative Context (Michael A. Olivas)
ch. 4 Choosing Voices (Ernestine Friedl)
ch. 5 A Brief History of Academic Freedom (Geoffrey R. Stone)
ch. 6 First Amendment and Civil Liberties Traditions of Academic Freedom (Nadine Strossen)
ch. 7 The Open Classroom and Its Enemies (Michael Root)
ch. 8 The New Advocacy and the Old (Gertrude Himmelfarb)
ch. 9 The New Ethicism: Beyond Poststructuralism and Identity Politics (Whitney Davis)
ch. 10 Culture and Advocacy (Louis Menand)
ch. 11 Defining "True" Knowledge: Consensus and the Growing Distrust of Faculty Activism, 1880s-1920s (Julie A. Reuben)
ch. 12 Academics, Advocacy, and the Public Schools: A View from the 1930s (Mark C. Smith)
ch. 13 A Full Circle: Advocacy and Academic Freedom in Crisis (Richard Mucahy)
ch. 14 "Judge" or "Advocate"? Scholars, War, and Protest in the Anti-Vietnam War Teach-Ins of 1965 (Tom Jehn)
ch. 15 Advocacy and Explanation: The Problems of Explaining Adversaries (John O. Voll)
ch. 16 Professional Advocates: When Is"Advocacy" Part of One's Vocation? (Michael Bérubé)
ch. 17 Feminism: A Long Memory (Carolyn G. Heilbrun)
ch. 18 Unveiling the Myth of Neutrality: Advocacy in the Feminist Classroom (Helene Moglen)
ch. 19 Academic Skepticism and the Contexts of Belief (C. Jan Swearingen)
ch. 20 Teachers, Not Advocates: Toward an Open Classroom (Jeffrey Wallen)
ch. 21 The Politics of Aesthetic Distance (Lambert Zuidervaart)
ch. 22 The Internalization of Disinterestedness (Hilde Hein)
ch. 23 The Open Secret: Dilemmas of Advocacy in the Religious Studies Classroom (Susan E. Henking)
ch. 24 "A Teacher Is Either a Witness or a Stranger" (Penny S. Gold)
ch. 25 Theory and Politics of Art History (Felicia Ackerman)
ch. 26 Be Reasonable and Do It My Way: Advocacy in the College Classroom
ch. 27 The Limits of Appropriate Advocacy (Peter Markie)
ch. 28 Some Implications of the Faculty's Obligation to Encourage Student Academic Freedom for Faculty Advocacy in the Classroom (Ernst Benjamin)
ch. 29 When Academic Speech Hits the Courtroom: How Lawyers Might Argue (and Judges Might Decide) - Three Semihypothetical Cases(Martha Chamallas, Richard Seeburger, and Peter M. Shane)
ch. 30 A Different Take on Advocacy in the Public School Classroom (Jyane E. Sbarboro)
ch. 31 Fight Training in the High School Classroom (Ray Linn)
ch. 32 Students Becoming Their Own Advocates (Judith Entes)
ch. 33 A Personal Account of a Struggle to Be Evenhanded in Teaching About Abortion (Samuel W. Calhoun)
ch. 34 Teaching College Students, Teaching Workers (Michael D. Yates)
ch. 35 What Does a Black University Advocate? Student and Faculty Viewpoints (Janice McLane)
ch. 36 Advocacy in the Classroom: The Counseling Perspective (Angela Anselmo)
ch. 37 Ethnography as Advocacy: Allowing the Voices of Women Prisoners to Speak (Shawny Anderson)
ch. 38 Advocacy in the Classroom - Or the Curriculum? A Response (Gerald Graff)
ch. 39 Afterthoughts on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom (Andrea A. Lunsford)

Biographies

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Sociological look at religious belief and practices among college students

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The Soul of Higher Education: Contemplative Pedagogy, Research and Institutional Life for the Twenty-first Century contributes to an understanding of the importance and implications of a contemplative grounding for higher education. It is the sixth in a series entitled Advances in Workplace Spirituality: Theory, Research and Application, which is intended to be an authoritative and comprehensive series in the field. This volume consists of chapters written by noted scholars from both Eastern and Western traditions that shed light on the following questions:
• What is an appropriate epistemological grounding for contemplative higher education? How dues the current dominant epistemology in higher education mitigate against contemplative teaching, learning, and research? What alternatives can be offered?
• How can a contemplative culture be nurtured in the classroom? What difference does that culture make in teaching and learning? What is the role of individual and institutional leadership in creating and sustaining this culture?
• What is contemplative research? How can the emerging field of contemplative studies fit into the twenty-first-century university?
• What can faculty and students learn from contemplative practices about how to find peace of mind in a world of higher education characterized by increasing complexity, financial pressures, and conflicts?
• What does a contemplative organizational structure look like in higher education? How can committees, faculty meetings, and administrative teams use contemplative practices to work more effectively together?
• How can contemplative decision-making processes be used in higher education? Given hierarchies, turf wars, and academics’ propensity for using argument as a weapon, is it possible to introduce contemplative practices into decision-making situations in appropriate ways? (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
PART I: EPISTEMOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
Ch 1. Epistemological Foundations for Contemplative Higher Education: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm (Margaret Benefiel)
Ch 2. Contemplative Method and the Spiritual Core of Higher Education (Mary Frohlich)

PART II: CONTEMPLATIVE TEACHING, LEARNING, AND RESEARCH
Ch 3. The Contemplative Classroom, or Learning by Heart in the Age of Google (Barbara Newman)
Ch 4. Lectio Divina (Stephanie Paulsell)
Ch 5. The Compassionate Christ in the Classroom: Ignatian Spiritual Reading (Bo Karen Lee)
Ch 6. What are People For? Cultivating Connection and Challenging Self-Interest (Dan Barbezat)
Ch 7. Transitioning Contemplative Practices From the Safety of the Classroom Into Secular Organizational Environments (André L. Delbecq)
Ch 8. On the Emerging Field of Contemplative Studies and Its Relationship to the Study of Spirituality (Jacob Holsinger Sherman)

PART III: CONTEMPLATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES
Ch 9. “Only a Feather”: Contemplative Organizational Life (Margaret Benefiel)
Ch 10. Maharishi University of Management: A Community for Consciousness (Dennis P. Heaton)

About the Editors

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This essay asks: What are the ethics of engaging self-identified "conservative" students in topics and processes of learning that may unravel their world-view and possibly their personal lives? We should take their concerns, fear, and distrust seriously and not simply dismiss them as ignorant. We should strive to be "trustworthy" educators, guiding students through the consequences of transformative education. This paper argues that conservative students are critically examining and reacting to the liberal academy by leveling critiques similar to those found within feminist, post-colonial and post modern pedagogies. This essay reviews contemporary postmodern, postcolonial, and feminist pedagogies, which analyze bias and power in the classroom and have sought to represent marginalized voices in the classroom in order to challenge the way education often simply serves and protects the interests of the privileged. Pedagogies centered on subject or disciplinary method cannot secure a trustworthy pedagogy since method, thinking skills, and subjects are themselves bias-laden. But critical pedagogy offers insights to help us achieve the goal of becoming trustworthy educators for students coming from a wide spectrum of religious perspectives.

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Click Here for Book Review
Abstract: Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World is an insightful collection that articulates how Jesuit colleges and universities create an educational community energized to transform the lives of its students, faculty, and administrators and to equip them to transform a broken world. The essays are rooted in Pedro Arrupe’s ideal of forming men and women for others and inspired by Peter-Hans Kolvenbach’s October 2000 address at Santa Clara in which he identified three areas where the promotion of justice may be manifested in our institutions: formation and learning, research and teaching, and our way of proceeding.

Using the three areas laid out in Fr. Kolvenbach’s address as its organizing structure, this stimulating volume addresses the following challenges: How do we promote student life experiences and service? How does interdisciplinary collaborative research promote teaching and reflection? How do our institutions exemplify justice in their daily practices? Introductory pieces by internationally acclaimed authors such as Rev. Dean Brackley, S.J.; David J. O’Brien; Lisa Sowle Cahill; and Rev. Stephen A. Privett, S.J., pave the way for a range of smart and highly creative essays that illustrate and honor the scholarship, teaching, and service that have developed out of a commitment to the ideals of Jesuit higher education. The topics covered span disciplines and fields from the arts to engineering, from nursing to political science and law. The essays offer numerous examples of engaged pedagogy, which as Rev. Brackley points out fits squarely with Jesuit pedagogy: insertion programs, community-based learning, study abroad, internships, clinical placements, and other forms of interacting with the poor and with cultures other than our own. This book not only illustrates the dynamic growth of Jesuit education but critically identifies key challenges for educators, such as: How can we better address issues of race in our teaching and learning? Are we educating in nonviolence? How can we make the college or university “greener”? How can we evoke a desire for the faith that does justice?

Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World is an indispensable volume that has the potential to act as an academic facilitator for the promotion of justice within not only Jesuit schools but all schools of higher education. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Fruitful New Branch

Part I: Formation and Learning
ch. 1 Beauty Limned in Violence: Experimenting with Protest Music in the Ignatian Classroom
ch. 2 Teaching Poverty in America through the Arts
ch. 3 Encuentro Dominicano: Creighton University's Commitment to Education for Transformation
ch. 4 Teaching Social Analysis through Academic Immersion
ch. 5 Adopting the Mission of Social Justice in a Political Science Department

Part II: Research and Teaching
ch. 6 Social Justice Themes in the Foreign Language Classroom
ch. 7 Coffee for Justice
ch. 8 Personal Transformation and Curricula Change
ch. 9 Doing Well by Doing Good: The Application of Ignatian Principles to Legal Education
ch. 10 Promoting Social Justice: Closing the Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality

Part III: Our Way of Proceeding
ch. 11 Opening Remarks to the Jesuit Justice Conference, June 18, 2009
ch. 12 Transforming Ourselves in Order to Transform the World
ch. 13 Nonviolently Transforming the Road to Jericho
ch. 14 The Ethic of Environmental Concern and the Jesuit Mission
ch. 15 Companions, Prophets, Martyrs: Jesuit Education as Justice Education

Conclusion: Further and Deeper

Notes
References
List of Contributors
Index

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"Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult and Higher Education is written from the unique perspective of teacher, researcher, and author Elizabeth Tisdell, who has extensive experience dealing with culture, gender, and educational equity issues in secular adult and higher education classrooms, and formerly in pastoral and religious education settings on college campuses. This book discusses how spiritual development is informed by culture and how this knowledge is relevant to teaching and learning. For educators, an understanding of how spirituality is informed by culture, and how spirituality assists in meaning-making, can aid in their efforts to help their students' educational experiences become more transformative and culturally relevant." Throughout this book, Elizabeth Tisdell shows higher and adult educators how they can draw on both psychological and sociocultural aspects of spirituality to facilitate ongoing knowledge construction in their students - and themselves. For example, educators and students can use classroom activities that incorporate image, symbol, music, and art forms that focus on both the commonalities and differences of human experience. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Preface
About the Author

Pt. I Breaking the Silence: Spirituality and Culture in Adult Meaning-Making and Education
ch. 1 Introduction: Culture, Spirituality, and Adult Learning
ch. 2 Breaking the Silence: Defining Spirituality in a Culturally Relevant Education Context
ch. 3 Spirituality, Religion, and Culture in Lived Experience: Overlaps and Separations
ch. 4 Between the Cultural and the Universal: Themes and Variations of Spiritual Experience

Pt. II Claiming a Sacred Face: Identity and Spiritual Development
ch. 5 The Great Spiral: Spiritual Development as a Process of Moving Forward and Spiraling Back
ch. 6 Gender, Culture, and Spiritual Identity in Midlife Integration
ch. 7 The Role of Spiritual Experience in Developing a Positive Cultural Identity
ch. 8 Searching for Wholeness: Crossing Culture, White Identity, and Spiritual Development

Pt. III Spirituality in a Culturally Relevant and Transformative Teaching Practice
ch. 9 Approaching Transformative Teaching Grounded in Spirituality and Cultural Relevance
ch. 10 A Theory-in-Progress of a Spiritually Grounded, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Philosophical Underpinnings and New Directions
ch. 11 Stories from the Field: Spirituality and Culture in Adult Higher Education Classrooms
ch. 12 The Possibilities and Challenges of Spiritually Grounded, Culturally Relevant Teaching

Epilogue: Final Reflections
App.: Research Methodology
References
Index

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Click Here for Book Review
Abstract: The death of a student, especially to gun violence, is a life-changing experience that occurs with more and more frequency in America’s schools. For each of these tragedies, there is a classroom and there is a teacher. Yet student death is often a forbidden subject, removed from teacher education and professional development classes where the curriculum is focused instead on learning about standards, lesson plans, and pedagogy. What can and should teachers do when the unbearable happens? An Empty Seat in Class illuminates the tragedy of student death and suggests ways of dealing and healing within the classroom community. This book weaves the story of the author’s very personal experience of a student’s fatal shooting with short pieces by other educators who have worked through equally terrible events and also includes contributions from counselors, therapists, and school principals. Through accumulated wisdom, educators are given the means and the resources to find their own path to healing their students, their communities, and themselves. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Prologue: A Teacher Holds on to a Dying Student

Introduction

ch. 1 Improvising
ch. 2 The Mystery - The Literacy of Loss: Youth Creation of RIP T-Shirts (Lanette Jimerson)
ch. 3 Taking Care of the Caregivers - 1/30. Bloodroot. After Tupac (Molly Raynor)
ch. 4 Wrong Steps - Notes on a Classroom Responding to the Death of a Student (Jaimie Stevenson)
ch. 5 White Teacher
ch. 6 Good Guys, Bad Guys - On Losing Students (Crystal Laura) A Letter (David Stovall)
ch. 7 Our Worst Nightmare - Instinctually, Teachers Are Eternal Optimists (Lee Keylock)
ch. 8 Mortality in Its Many Forms - Losing Kyle—Automobile Accident (Hasmig Minassian) Remembering Angél (Godhuli Bose)
ch. 9 Teacher Education - Addressing the Issue in the Academy (Leora Wolf-Prusan) Youth Poetry Teacher: Losing a Student and a Friend (Donte Clark)
ch. 10 What Schools Can Do

Afterword: From the Counselor and Therapist (Cori Bussolari)
References
Index
About the Author

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An undergraduate liberal arts education can help students be not simply shaped by tradition but also shapers of tradition. Specifically, undergraduate theological education, aimed at ministry preparation in a liberal arts setting, can seek to graduate students who are responsible shapers of the traditions that shape them, that is, who are tradents. The work of a tradent involves active engagement that requires skills and capacities well beyond simply passing on the past formulations of a tradition. The pedagogical question, then, is how to engage in undergraduate theological education if this image of the tradent is what we have in mind for our students. Three aspects of this image can serve as pervasive or recurrent themes across the structure of a major or program. One aspect is the interpretive nature of the tradent's work, a second is facility with traditions, and a third is the creative, constructive work of thinking theologically. Whatever particular traditions characterize a department's context, the image of students as tradents can help focus pedagogical reflection on the department's work: teaching students as shapers of the traditions that shape them.

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In the face of a mounting mental health crisis among college students, professors have an opportunity and responsibility to respond to their students’ psychological distress. Psychological and historical scholarship suggests that the proliferation of modern media and breakdown in traditional sources of existential meaning like religion are significant factors in young adults’ declining mental health. In response to this crisis, this article examines the crucial role of the imagination in constructing meaning and proposes an imagination‐centered pedagogical process by means of which teachers can assist students in recovering meaning and integration in their lives.

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Prayer is a primary spiritual discipline for Christians. Nonetheless, few contemporary scholarly discussions have ventured into exploring the role of prayer in college teaching. This paper extends the conversation by reviving three themes in writings about prayer and academics and making application of those themes to teaching and learning today. (From the Publisher)

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One page Teaching Tactic: structure, prompts, and evaluation rubric for final summative exams conducted orally with individual students.

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This study investigated the impact of the Christian college educational environment, both academic and nonacademic, on student spirituality. Nine hundred fifty-three self-reported surveys, representing 18 U.S. Christian colleges and universities, were used. The typical respondent was female, Caucasian, and a resident upperclassman. For the purposes of this exploratory study, spirituality was operationally defined as “spiritual formation,” referring to one’s growth towards spiritual maturity, which is reflected in one’s relationships with God, self, and others. Findings reveal interesting trends about factors associated with spirituality on campus, and relate student perceptions of spirituality and the Christian college experience. Results indicate that students perceived many factors of their Christian college experience as positive. In particular, the nonacademic aspects of college life were perceived to be more influential on spiritual formation than the academic. For example, students rated their peer relationships as being most significant to their spiritual growth. Results also illustrate demographic differences in perceptions of the various aspects of the Christian college experience. Practical applications suggest assessing the existing range of college academic and nonacademic offerings and training for faculty development in class assessments. Other applications include providing programs for students experiencing emotional crises or pain. Recommendations for further research include studying other factors such as sports, counseling services, church involvement, family support, maturation factors, and the impact of computers. Research may also benefit from focusing on certain survey items more specifically, such as various kinds of peer relationships and cultural diversity. (From the Publisher)

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In this issue, the authors argue that adult educators must find ways to add a spiritual dimension to their practice if they are to take a truly comprehensive approach to adult education, one that meets all of adult learners needs. They show how an integral part of adult education is helping learners discover a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, a feeling of connection with something larger than themselves. The contributors discuss how mentoring, self-directed learning, and dialogue can be used to promote spiritual development, and advocate the learning covenant as a way of formalizing the sanctity of the bond between learners and educators. They draw on examples from settings as varied as continuing professional education, community development, and health education to show how a spiritual dimension has been been successfully integrated into adult education programs. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 A Spirited Epistemology: Honoring the Adult Learner (Jane Vella)
ch. 2 Reckoning with the Spiritual Lives of Adult Educators (Linda J. Vogel)
ch. 3 Spiritual Dimensions of Informal Learning (Leona M. English)
ch. 4 The Learning Covenant (R.E.Y. Wickett)
ch. 5 Continuing Professional Education: A Spiritually Based Program (Lynda W. Miller )
ch. 6 Learning from Native Adult Education (Jeffrey A. Orr)
ch. 7 Community Development and Adult Education: Locating Practice in Its Roots (Wilf E. Bean)
ch. 8 The Spiritual Dimensions of Lay Ministry Programs (Catherine P. Zeph)
ch. 9 Controversy, Questions, and Suggestions for Further Reading (Marie A. Gillen, Leona M. English)

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The latest addition to our continuing 147 Tips series, 147 Practical Tips for Using Experiential Learning, explores the many options and strategies available in the exciting world of experiential learning. Editors Timpson, Foley, Kees, and Waite have gathered a myriad of practical and insightful tips and brought them together in a delightful and easy-to-use guide that illuminates a pivotal and rewarding subject.

In this book you’ll discover valuable tips on topics including:
Learning outside the classroom

Exploring alternative approaches

Tapping into the creative arts

Addressing diversity issues

Developing leadership skills

Whether you are a new teacher starting out on the experiential learning journey for the first time, or a veteran educator looking to revitalize your practice for the next leg of the road, this volume will provide you with priceless pointers and examples. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword
Introduction: Our Experiences

ch. 1 See The Bigger Picture
ch. 2 Learn About Underlying Concepts
ch. 3 Understand Developmental Principles
ch. 4 Know How The Brain Interprets Experience
ch. 5 Rethink Classroom Instruction
ch. 6 Learning Outside Classrooms
ch. 7 Develop Group Facilitation Skills
ch. 8 Develop Teamwork
ch. 9 Build Climate With Experience
ch. 10 Communicate Effectively and Process Experiences
ch. 11 Develop and Use Emotional Intelligence
ch. 12 Teach Holistically
ch. 13 Deepen Learning
ch. 14 Encourage Discovery and Creativity
ch. 15 Explore Alternate Approaches
ch. 16 Tap Into The Creative Arts
ch. 17 Make Use of Storytelling
ch. 18 Promote Positive Values and Moral Development
ch. 19 Work Directly With Data
ch. 20 Focus On The Present Moment
ch. 21 Utilize Historical Perspectives
ch. 22 Address Diversity Issues
ch. 23 Develop Leadership Skills
ch. 24 Promote Ongoing Professional Development
ch. 25 Apply Experiential Learning To The Business World
ch. 26 Study Change and Face The Future
ch. 27 Teach Mindfulness and Nurture Conscious Awareness

References

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Offers a view on teaching Islam. Reason instructors do not look to Muslim scholarship; Role of the instructor in the modern university; Impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on teaching the religion.

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Professional societies in religious studies negotiate academic practices and confessional commitments. Here, Lester narrates one episode in the Society of Biblical Literature's understanding of "critical" biblical studies.

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Inside Higher Ed narrates the dismissal of venerable biblical scholar Bruce Waltke after his remarks concerning evolution, and discusses issues around academic freedom at confessional seminaries.

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Inside Higher Ed narrates the dismissal of biblical scholar Christopher Rollston after his HuffPo opinion piece about the marginalization of women in biblical texts. The article discusses the relationship of tenure and donor support at a confessional seminary.

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An essay describing how to plan for controversy in the classroom, and to teach students to think critically.

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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.

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An essay describing steps teachers can take to prevent “incidents” from escalating into a crisis that derails a course. Practicing effective interpersonal communication techniques can handle “hot moments” effectively.

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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.

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Role‐playing games have been a part of scholarly conversations about pedagogy for several decades. However, more work is needed in understanding how gaming pedagogy can best fit with and augment particular disciplines. After providing two examples of role‐playing games that have been used successfully in teaching the New Testament, this article argues that role‐playing games contribute to theological and religious studies classrooms by forming positive values (e.g. openness to multiple viewpoints, civility, and empathy) and assisting students in integrating their faith and learning. Because of the low‐risk settings that games provide, students can practice skills that increase their achievement of learning outcomes and contribute to their value formation and faith formation.

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Abstract: Explores the nature and role of wisdom in education.

Modern scholarship has struggled to come to terms with the meaning of wisdom and its significance in the field of education. This book examines the importance of pursuing wisdom in schools by turning to ancient and medieval sources for clarification concerning the nature of wisdom. Sean Steel argues that our current emphasis on the development of rigorous critical-analytic thinking skills, on assessment, and on accountability in education has negatively impacted the ability of schools to foster an environment in which both students and teachers might pursue wisdom. Although in recent times efforts have been made to incorporate the pursuit of wisdom into schools through Philosophy for Children (P4C) and contemplative education programming, such initiatives have missed their mark. Steel therefore recommends not more accountability in education for the purpose of ensuring global competitiveness, but rather the institutional promotion of periods of leisure or schole in the school day.

Drawing upon his own experiences as a teacher who has tried to encourage students to search for wisdom, the author discusses some of the challenges and pitfalls of wisdom seeking. He also offers examples of various wisdom-seeking activities that might bear fruit in the classroom. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Introduction

ch. 1 Stating the Problem: The Loss of Wisdom in the Modern World
ch. 2 Aristotle’s Understanding of Wisdom and Wisdom’s Pursuit
ch. 3 Boethius: The Relevance of Philosophy and the Need for a Wisdom Atmosphere in Education
ch. 4 Moses Maimonides’s Warnings against the Pursuit of Wisdom in Schoolsv ch. 5 Thomas Aquinas and the Gift of Wisdom
ch. 6 “Forget about Wisdom! Let’s Innovate!” A Critique of Current Trends in Education Reform
ch. 7 The Same Old Story: A History Lesson with St. Augustine about Education Reform
ch. 8 The Problem of Introducing Schole into Schools Today
ch. 9 Gareth Matthews’s Defense of Philosophizing with Childrenv ch. 10 Matthew Lipman and the P4C Movement
ch. 11 What Philosophy Is Not
ch. 12 A Brief Statement on the Unity between the Philosophic and Contemplative Traditions
ch. 13 Technological Education and the Need for Contemplation
ch. 14 The Challenge of Contemplative Education Programming in Schools
ch. 15 Examples of Contemplative Education in Schools
ch. 16 A Proposal for “Metaxic” Education, or an Education of the In-Between

Notes
Bibliography
Index

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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.

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A non-profit organization working to transform higher education by supporting and encouraging the use of contemplative/introspective practices and perspectives to create active learning and research environments that look deeply into experience and meaning for all in service of a more just and compassionate society.

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This book examines various intersubjective approaches to contemplative learning and inquiry in higher education. It would interest contemplative studies scholars, and instructors with a previous background in contemplative pedagogy. - Beverley McGuire, University of North Carolina Wilmington

A first of its kind, this book maps out current academic approaches in higher education to second-person contemplative education, which addresses contemplative experience from an intersubjective perspective. Until recently, contemplative studies has emphasized a predominantly first-person standpoint, but the expansion and embrace of second-person methods provides a distinctive learning context in which collective wisdom and shared learning can begin to emerge from dialogue among students and groups in the classroom. The contributors to this volume, leading researchers and practitioners from a variety of institutions and departments, examine the theoretical and philosophical foundations of second-person contemplative approaches to instruction, pedagogy, and curricula across various scholarly disciplines. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Opening the Field: Second-Person Approaches to Contemplative Learning (Olen Gunnlaugson, Charles Scott, Heesoon Bai, and Edward W. Sarath)

Ch 1. A Conversation on Intersubjective Approaches to Contemplative Inquiry (Mirabai Bush and Olen Gunnlaugson in Conversation)
Ch 2. A Radical Approach to Second-Person Contemplative Education (Jorge N. Ferrer and Olga R. Sohmer)
Ch 3. Critical Integral Education: School Counseling (David Forbes)
Ch 4. Intersubjectivity and Blended-Learning: Turning Learning Spaces to Wisdom’s Place? (Joanne Gozawa)
Ch 5. Intersubjective Insights from Teaching Contemplative Leadership (Lyn Hartley)
Ch 6. From Me to We: An Experiment in Critical Second-Person Contemplative Pedagogy (Peter Kaufman and Terry Murray)
Ch 7. Teaching (and) Being We (and) Not Me: Making Room for Multiple Subjectivities in Teaching Education (David Lee Keiser)
Ch 8. Per-(Me-Thou)-ability: Foundations of Intersubjective Experience in Contemplative Education (Patricia Morgan)
Ch 9. Nature, Human Nature, Human-as-Nature: For Cecil (Deborah Orr)
Ch 10. On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Toward a Nondual, Integral Understanding of Intersubjectivity as Primordial in Cosmos (Edward W. Sarath)
Ch 11. Bhakti Yoga as Intersubjective Contemplative Practice (Charles Scott and Heesoon Bai)
Ch 12. “Listening Dangerously”: The Inner Dimensions of Dialogue Training (Judith Simmer-Brown)
Ch 13. Writing the Cauldron as Intersubjective Practice (Susan Walsh and Heesoon Bai)

Contributors
Index

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A rich collection of essays about the inner, shared experiences of participants engaged in second-person approaches to contemplative practice.

Catalyzing the Field presents a diverse series of applied case studies about the second-person dimension of contemplative learning in higher education. As a companion volume to the editors’ previous book, The Intersubjective Turn, the contributors to this book explore various pedagogical scenarios in which intentional forms of practice create and guide consciousness. Their essays demonstrate that practice is not only intellectual, but somatic, phenomenological, emotional, and spiritual as well. Along with their first book, Contemplative Learning and Inquiry across Disciplines, the editors craft an essential body of work that affirms the fundamental importance of contemplative practice in institutions of higher learning. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction (Olen Gunnlaugson, Charles Scott, Heesoon Bai, and Edward W. Sarath)

Ch 1. Mindfulness in Education: Contemplative Inquiry in a Community of Learners (Kathryn Byrnes and Jessica S. Caron)
Ch 2. Meditating Together, Speaking from Silence: The Theory and Practice of Interpersonal Mindfulness (Nancy Waring)
Ch 3. Intersubjectivity in the Holistic Teaching of the Sociology of Religion at Glendon College in Toronto (Véronique Tomaszewski)
Ch 4. Being with Horses as a Practice of the Self-with-Others: A Case of Getting a FEEL for Teaching (Stephen J. Smith and Karen LaRochelle)
Ch 5. A Disciplined Practice of Collaboratively Working on Teaching as Contemplative Professional Practice (Thomas Falkenberg and Michael Link)
Ch 6. Awakening to Wholeness: Aikido as an Embodied Praxis of Intersubjectivity (Michael A. Gordon)
Ch 7. Self, Other, and the System (Ian Macnaughton)
Ch 8. Walking Steps: Contemplative Wanderings with Humanbecoming (Deborah Sally Thoun, Anne Bruce, and Coby Tschanz)
Ch 9. Contemplative Learning: A Second-Person Approach to Physical Fitness (Sally K. Severino and M. Andrew Garrison)
Ch 10. Teaching Creativity and Building Community in the Undergraduate Classroom: Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Character through Relational and Contemplative Practice (Sean Park)
Ch 11. A Three-Tiered Monastic Approach to Intersubjective Dialogue for Application within Higher Education (Mary Keator)
Ch 12. No Mind in Community: Cultivating “Fields in Good Heart” in an Intellectual and Professional Praxis-Enhancing Commons (Arden Henley)

Contributors

Index

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There seem to be two irreconcilable approaches to reading the Bible, and these often collide in an undergraduate's first college class in religion. Students from a devotional background find the scholarly approach a disappointment compared with their preferred way of reading. Yet upon closer examination the limits of an exclusively devotional way or an exclusively academic way soon become apparent. A way beyond this impasse is described as an incarnational approach, which seeks to honor the integrity of the literary, cultural, and historical features of the Bible while also taking seriously the personal faith of both student and instructor. This strategy is not original of course, but is a case study of a way in which the Christian tradition may address the quarrel between two competing ways of reading and turn it into a conversation.

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A pervasive, yet under-discussed, problem in religious studies classrooms is the presence of faith crisis. Many students face a type of cognitive dissonance when faced with the critical-analytical approach in the academic study of religion. This essay, in an open and conversational tone, addresses the learning opportunity underlying such crisis moments. The discussion begins with a delimitation of what constitutes the secular university's goals in pedagogy and research. After arguing that a reductive limitation of knowable knowledge construction is to be the focus of the university, the discussion moves to the presence of cognitive stages of development, or liminal rites of passage as analogous for explicating the learning process in which crisis moments emerge. Finally, the discussion concludes with a reflection on the coherence of reductive limitation and collaborative pedagogy.

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A brief essay by a religious studies teacher asking: “how does my religious faith affect my teaching? how does one negotiate religious bias when teaching about religions? as an insider on a religion, what criteria guide and shape my scholarly life?” He argues that because he teaches at a state institution he is obligated to be neutral in the advocacy of one religion over another. but he wonders how his faith affects how he approaches the subject matter.

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The contributors to "Spirituality and the Curriculum" explore ways in which spirituality can be diverted from its confinement as an academic subject and be incorporated into education to help children develop in this important area of human endeavour. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Series Editor's Foreword
The Contributors

ch. 1 Theology, Spirituality and the Curriculum - An Overview (Adrian Thatcher)
ch. 2 Christian Theology, Spirituality and the Curriculum (Mary Grey)
ch. 3 Values - Secular or Christian?: A Response to Mary Grey (Adrian Thatcher)
ch. 4 Spirituality as an Academic Discipline (Philip Sheldrake)
ch. 5 Educators as Mystics: Resurrecting the Contemplative (David Nixon and Vanessa Parffrey)
ch. 6 Non-conformist Approaches to Spiritual and Moral Development (Andrew Bolton)
ch. 7 Poor in Spirit? The Child's World, the Curriculum and 'Spirituality' (A. Elizabeth Ramsey)
ch. 8 Spiritual and Moral Development: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Clive Erricker and Jane Erricker)
ch. 9 Response to Clive and Jane Erricker (Ian Markham)
ch. 10 'Spiritual and Moral Development' and Religious Education (John Beck)
ch. 11 After Spirituality: Some Connections between Theology and Philosophy (Paul Grosch)
ch. 12 Awaking the Dragon - Chaplains' Perspectives on Spiritual Development (David Nixon)
ch. 13 Bread Not Stones - Nurturing Spirituality (Catherine Bowness and Marian Carter)

Name Index
Subject Index

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On this site you will find links to many articles, Web sites, and other resources to help you in the process of integrating your faith with the knowledge claims you will encounter at college or the university.

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Increasing numbers of college students enrolling in religion courses in recent years are looking to develop their religious faith or spirituality, while professors of religion want students to use and appreciate scholarly tools to study religion from an academic perspective. Some scholars argue that it is not possible to satisfy both goals in the classroom, while authors in this journal have given suggestions on how to bridge the gap between faith and scholarship. I argue that such authors are correct and that, in my experience, historical-critical methods can help devout students understand the original texts in their own religion better, comprehend why changes in interpretation have occurred over time, and appreciate the values in religions other than their own. Not all devout students are comfortable with an academic study of religion, but many can attain a more mature faith by such an approach.

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A study of sixty-six highly effective teachers of introductory theology and religion courses in various types of institutions reveals very complex challenges for instructors. The majority of students have as a goal their own religious and spiritual development. Faculty members’ most frequent goal is critical thinking. Students much less frequently mention critical thinking, and their expectations and voices may be more appropriate for a place of worship or a counseling center. To meet these complex challenges, faculty encourage four student “voices”: the questioner, the applier, the thinker/arguer, and the autobiographer. These voices can help students explicitly to bring their own experiences and beliefs into relationship with course material and critical thinking. Careful planning and guidance for students are the key to making these voices work well.

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These three articles deal with the issue of faith in the classroom – whether one should teach “to,” “for,” or “against” faith. While their institutional settings and experiences are different, the authors all contend that more serious reflection needs to be given to the matter of how religious commitment plays out in our diverse pedagogical settings. The initial article by Carolyn Medine surveys the current climate regarding student spirituality in the classroom, the broader governmental concerns, and, the tensions that inform the choices available to a professor. Todd Penner's essay analyzes faith-as-ideology in the undergraduate classroom, and Marjorie Lehman's contribution analyzes how the issue manifests differently in Jewish Studies.

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Can one uphold a call from an ecclesiastical body while teaching in a college classroom? This paper will argue that the dual roles of pastor and professor can be integrated by the adoption of faith development as a learning goal. This goal seems to stand at odds with three important aspects of academic teaching: the demographic reality of religious pluralism, the ethical requirement to preserve student autonomy, and the overarching goal of a university education to promote critical thinking. My argument will be that, far from violating these three areas, faith development as a broad learning goal can actually provide a valuable deepening of pluralism, autonomy, and critical thought in the educational experience of students. The method of exploration will be autobiographical. I will show how it is that in my dual roles as an ELCA pastor called to a faculty post I articulate and use faith development as an overarching learning goal in the context of (1) a theological pedagogy based on an interfaith logos theology, (2) a value-laden pedagogy vis-à-vis consumerist self-formation, and (3) an adaptation of stages of faith development to the classroom.

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When faculty unexpectedly encounter students' religious ideologies in the classroom, they may respond with apprehension, frustration, dread, or concern. Instructors may view this exchange as a confrontation that threatens the very heart of empirical study, and worry that this will lead to a dead-end in the learning process.
The purpose of this book is to explore what happens—and what can happen—in the higher education, and even secondary school, classroom when course content meets or collides with students' religious beliefs. It also considers the impact on learning in an environment where students may feel threatened, angry, misunderstood, or in which they feel their convictions are being discredited.
This is a resource that offers ways of conceptualizing, engaging with, and responding to, student beliefs. This book is divided into three sections: student views on the role of religion in the classroom; general guidelines for responding to or actively engaging religious beliefs in courses (such as legal and diversity considerations); and specific examples from a number of disciplines (including the sciences, social sciences, humanities and professional education). Professors from public, private, and religious institutions share their findings and insights.
The resounding lessons of this book are the importance of creating a learning space in which students can express their beliefs, dissonance, and emotions constructively, without fear of retribution; and of establishing ground rules of respectful discussion for this process to be valuable and productive.
This is an inspirational and practical guide for faculty navigating thecontroversial, sensitive—yet illuminating—lessons that can be learned when religion takes a seat in the classroom. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword (Art Chickering)
Introduction - Faith in Learning: An Overview (Miriam Rosalyn Diamond, and Christina Copre)

Pt. 1 Society, Learning, and Religion
ch. 1 Faith and Reason
Higher Education's Opportunities and Challenges (Nancy L. Thomas, and Ann Marie B. Bahr)
Appendix Wingspread Declaration on Religion and Public Life

Pt. 2 Student and Faculty Perspectives
ch. 2 Undergraduate Perspectives About Religion in Higher Education (Lois Calian Trautvetter)
ch. 3 Faith in Graduate Education
Perspectives of Students and Faculty in Student Affairs Preparation Programs (Judy L. Rogers, and Patrick G. Love)

Pt. 3 Considerations
ch. 4 Blinking in the Sunlight
Exploring the Fundamentalist Perspective (Peggy Catron)
ch. 5 What I Think I Believe
Using the Change Method to Resolve Cognitive Dissonance (Tamara H. Rosier)
ch. 6 Bringing Faith and Spirituality Into the Classroom
An African American Perspective (Mark S. Giles , Odelet Nance, and Noelle Witherspoon)
ch. 7 Religion in the Classroom
Legal Issues (Barbara A. Lee)

Pt. 4 Disciplinary Approaches
ch. 8 Exploring Religion and Spirituality Through Academic Service Learning (Kent Koth)
ch. 9 Philosophy and Religious Disagreements in the College Classroom (Dona Warren)
ch. 10 When Faith and Science Collide (Mana Singham)
ch. 11 Teaching Secular Bible Reading to Religiously Committed Students (Roger G. Baker)
ch. 12 The Role of Religion and Spirituality in theLaw School Classroom (David Hall)
ch. 13 Teaching About Religious and Spiritual Pluralism in a Professional Education Course (Robert J. Nash, and Sue M. Baskette)

Afterword (Miriam Rosalyn Diamond)
About the Authors
Index

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The latest from an internationally recognized thinker at the intersection of faith and pedagogy

Christian teachers have long been thinking about what content to teach, but little scholarship has been devoted to how faith forms the actual process of teaching. Is there a way to go beyond Christian perspectives on the subject matter and think about the teaching itself as Christian? In this book David Smith argues that faith has a critical role in shaping pedagogy and the learn-ing experience.

Smith’s scholarly exploration of education combines both theory and practice. With clever and sometimes funny examples, he shows how teachers of every subject and age group can be atten-tive to how their students are experiencing and interpreting learning. From desk arrangement to discussion questions, there are myriad opportunities to design classes that are deeply rooted in Christian practices. On Christian Teaching provides fresh insight into Christian education that expresses faith and community. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Preface

Ch 1. The Pedagogy Gap

Ch 2. The Whole Nine Minutes

Ch 3. Patterns That Matter

Ch 4. The Movement of the Soul

Ch 5. Motivated Design

Ch 6. See, Engage, Reshape

Ch 7. The Work of Imagination

Ch 8. Life Together

Ch 9. Designing Space and Time

Ch 10. Pedagogy and Community

Ch 11. The State of Christian Scholarship

Notes

Index