Teaching Religion

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

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Note
Foreword

Articles
Ch. 1 Identification Questions
Ch. 2 Critical Representations
Ch. 3 On Teaching Religion: A Symposium
Ch. 4 The Voice of Theology: Rethinking the Personal and the Objective in Christian Pedagogy
Ch. 5 Three-Ring Circus at a Combustible Crossroads: Teaching Religion as Core Curriculum
Ch. 6 Moments of Transformation: The Process of Teaching and Learning
Ch. 7 "Stumbling Along between the Immensities": Reflections on Teaching in the Study of Religion
Ch. 8 Postscript

Responses and Rejoinders
Ch. 9 Ethics, Biblical and Denominational: A Response to Mark Smith
Ch. 10 Pederasty and Romans 1:27: A Response to Mark Smith
Ch. 11 Paul and Ancient Bisexuality: A Rejoinder

Book Reviews
Abe, Masao, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue
Boccaccini, Gabriele, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.
Bounds, Elizabeth M., Coming Together, Coming Apart: Religion, Community and Modernity
Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336
Campbell, June, Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism
Dawson, Lorne L. ed. Cults in Context: Readings in the Study of New Religious Movements
Deutsch, Nathaniel, The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism
Gardell, Mattias, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam
Goodblatt, David, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity
Ingraffia, Brian, Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God's Shadow
Katz, Jonathan G., Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muhammad al-Zawawi
Keenan, John P., The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading
Kuschel, Karl-Josef, Abraham: A Sign of Hope for Jews, Christians and Muslims
Lindley, Susan Hill, You Have Stept Out of Your Place: A History of Women and Religion in America
Lucas, Phillip Charles, The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy
Mugambi, J.N.K., From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War
Parkhill, Thomas, The Forrest Setting in Hindu Epics: Princes, Sages, Demons
Peterson, Richard T., Democratic Philosophy and the Politics of Knowledge
Russell, L. M., and J. S Clarkson, eds., Dictionary of Feminist Theologies
Schuon, Frithijof, The Transfiguration of Man
Villa-Vicencio, Charles, The Spirit of Freedom: South African Leaders on Religion and Politics

Books Received
Index To Volume

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One page Teaching Tactic: a worksheet to help students place each new theological text into its broader conversation partners.

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This essay analyzes a critical incident that took place in a hybrid distance-learning Hebrew language class that was adapting interactive, immersion-style, kinesthetic pedagogy during the week-long face-to-face intensive portion of the class – including Total Physical Response techniques in which students respond to the language with whole-body actions, entering into the world created by the language and the particular biblical text. Memorization, performance, interactive games, songs, and skits also contribute to the immersion-style learning environment. A snafu on the final day of the week led to a serendipitous solution that demonstrated Parker Palmer's idea of subject centered pedagogy. A brief description and analysis of the critical incident is followed by two short responses.

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This essay provides a brief overview of an educational board game developed by the author for use in upper division Old Testament classes. The game, extending in stages across the semester, heightens student learning by requiring strategic thinking about various historical, political, and geographical relationships. Appendices and links to online material provide full details necessary to adapt the game in local classrooms.

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One page Teaching Tactic: students write tweet 140 character summaries of the week’s reading.

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This article considers the “create your own religion” or “fictive religion” assignment as a pedagogical tool, contextualizing it within the scholarship of teaching and learning, and positioning it as a tool for broad adoption in a variety of courses. I argue that we ought to conceptualize the fictive religion assignment as an instructional game, and make use of scholarship on teaching through games as a foundation for my analysis. While I offer the example of my own fictive religion assignment as a case study, the overall argument is a theoretical one, namely that the assignment works because of the nature of games.

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One-page Teaching Tactic that sends students walking around campus to take photos that fit prompts sent by the professor using What'sApp.

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One page Teaching Tactic: an in class exercise in which students to apply course material to a local issue on the  college campus.

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The article discusses two versions of a complex role‐playing exercise in undergraduate courses on Buddhism. The pedagogical exercise demonstrated how imagination cultivated through creative writing could be used to enhance learning about history, culture, and religion. Students were also challenged to generate an understanding of religious practice that arose from both cognitive and sensory learning. The project showed that by interacting with a form of engaged pedagogy that worked with the imagination, without leaving the classroom students developed a deep care for and active engagement with communities located spatially and temporally far from home. With empathy and critical reflection, they came to see how religious meaning is constructed at a communal level through embodied action and emotional sensibility.

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This volume, like its series companions, goes beyond simple "how-to" to discuss the implementation of service-learning within religious studies and what that discipline contributes to the pedagogy of service learning. The volume contains both theoretical and pedagogical essays by scholar-teachers in religious studies education, plus a resource guide. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreward (Raymond Brady Williams)
About This Series (Edward Zlotkowski)
Introduction (Richard Devine, Joseph A. Favazza, and F. Michael McLain)
Part I: Service-Learning and the Discipline of Religious Studies
ch. 1 Service-Learning and the Dilemma of Religious Studies: Descriptive or Normative? (Fred Glennon)
ch. 2 Creating the Engaged University: Service-Learning, Religious Studies, and Institutional Mission (Charles R. Strain)
Part II:Service-Learning and Its Communities
ch. 3 Making Meaning: Reflection on Community, Service, and Learning (Keith Morton)
ch. 4 On En/Countering the Other (Elizabeth M. Bounds, Barbara A.B. Patterson, and Tinna Pippin)
ch. 5 Service-Learning and Community Partnerships: Curricula of Mutuality (Peter M. Antoci and Sandra K. Smith Speck)
ch. 6 Expanding the Horizon of Engagement: Pioneering Work at the University of Denver (M. Elizabeth Blissman)
Part III Course Chapters
ch. 7 Toward an Assessment-Based Approach to Service-Learning Course Design (Thomas G. McGowan)
ch. 8 Service-Learning in an Introduction to Theology Course (Robert Masson)
ch. 9 "God and Human Suffering" as a Service -Learning Course (Chris Johnson)
ch. 10 "Religion and Social Engagement: Labor and Business Ethics" (John Leahy and Kim Bobo)
ch. 11 Making a Difference with Service-Learning: "Christian Ethis and Modern Problems" (Walter H. Schuman)
ch. 12 The Interweaving of "World Religions" and Service-Learning in a Community College Setting (Raj Ayyar)
ch. 13 The Role of Service-Learning in the Transformation of "Islam: Faith and Practice" (Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus)
ch. 14 "The History and Religion of Ancient Israel": An Introductory Course to the Hebrew Bible (Bradley D. Dudley)
ch. 15 "Fieldwork in the Jewish Community" (Terry Smith Hatkoff)
Print and Electronic Resource Guide
Contributors to this Volume

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Fifty Years Since
ch. 1 Public School Bible Courses in Historical Perspective: North Carolina as a Case Study (Mark A. Chancey)
ch. 2 James Vincent Panoch: An Unheralded Pioneer of Public School Religion Studies (Nicholas Piediscalzi)
ch. 3 An "Unfortunate Metaphor": The Establishment Clause Jurisprudence of the Vinson Court (Chris Hickman)
ch. 4 Testing the Limits of Free Exercise and Establishment: Collective Religious Identity in South Carolina (Benjamin Bindewald, Suzanne Rosenblith, Robert P. Green)
ch. 5 Navigating Religious Expression in Public School: A Case Study (Cynthia X. Beekley)

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One page Teaching Tactic: student writing assignments in which they are forbidden to use direct quotations but required to provide a citation for every sentence that uses information from one of their sources.

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Comprehensive annotated guide to internet resources on religion and theology; helpful for research, class-use, student research, and e-texts.

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Click Here for Book Review
This book supports students engaged in the study of religions by helping them understand key processes particular to the field, including bracketing and comparison, and general humanities skills, like critical thinking and close reading. The authors offer useful examples throughout the book and augment those with further exercises available online. - Molly H. Bassett, Georgia State University

Studying religion in college or university? This book shows you how to perform well on your course tests and examinations, write successful papers, and participate meaningfully in class discussions. You'll learn new skills and also enhance existing ones, which you can put into practice with in-text exercises and assignments.

Written by two award-winning instructors, this book identifies the close reading of texts, material culture, and religious actions as the fundamental skill for the study of religion at undergraduate level. It shows how critical analytical thinking about religious actions and ideas is founded on careful, patient, yet creative “reading” of religious stories, rituals, objects, and spaces.

The book leads you through the description, analysis, and interpretation of examples from multiple historical periods, cultures, and religious traditions, including primary source material such as Matthew 6:9-13 (the Lord's Prayer), the gohonzon scroll of the Japanese new religion Soka Gakkai, and the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). It provides you with typical assignments you will encounter in your studies, showing you how you might approach tasks such as reflective, interpretive or summary essays. Further resources, found on the book's website, include bibliographies, and links to useful podcasts. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgements

Introduction: How to Use This Book

Ch 1. Religion in Higher Education
Ch 2. The Syllabus and Course Expectations
Ch 3. Learning Through Bracketing
Ch 4. Close Reading
Ch 5. Critical Thinking
Ch 6. Comparison
Ch 7. Writing About Religion
Ch 8. Beyond the Classroom

Index

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This interview was recorded and transcribed in November 2015. Stephen Prothero is a professor of religious studies at Boston University, where he has taught since 1996. His publications include several that directly address teaching about religion, most notably Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn't, which made an argument regarding K-12 education. In this manuscript he pulls the conversation into his own undergraduate classrooms – providing a vivid glimpse of his teaching practices, including how he conducts large lecture classes and seminars, how he works with teaching assistants, and how he conducts discussions even in very large courses. He also shares his broader reflections on the nature and importance of religious literacy and its place in American education.

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While teaching a course on religion and consumer culture in the United States, the author was intensely preoccupied with holding the interest of her undergraduate students during class sessions. Inspired in part by the subject matter of the course, she reflects here upon the extent that her courses on American religion drew upon the semiotics of commercial entertainment. While acknowledging the limitations and distortions possible in thinking of the teacher as an entertainer, this paper explores the teaching metaphor of the Vaudevillian Performer, arguing that if put in context with the work on reception in cultural studies, it can be a helpful model in the classroom.

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This essay explores a midrange teaching and learning issue regarding the teaching of biblical languages and one strategy for addressing the issue. Seminary students do not yield a great enough return in exchange for the investment they are required to make in learning biblical languages. Students invest great time and money, but they do not learn to use the biblical languages to think critically about the Bible. This essay argues that a fruitful strategy for addressing this midrange issue is to require students to write in English about the Hebrew language. This strategy fosters students' ability to think critically about the biblical text. It also fosters their ability to use their budding knowledge of a biblical language to engage questions of meaning and issues of interpretation.

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This book presents novel and interesting ways of teaching archaeological concepts and processes to college and university students. Seeking alternatives to the formal lecture format, the various contributions seek better ways of communicating the complexities of human behavior and of engaging students in active learning about the past. This collection of imaginative exercises designed by 20 master instructors on three continents includes role-playing, games, simulations, activities, and performance, all designed to teach archaeological ideas in interesting and engaging ways. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Lectures as Usual? Teaching Archaeology for Fun (Claire Smith and Heather Burke)

Part 1 - Role Play
ch. 2 Seven Degrees of Archaeology, or Diverse Ways of Interpreting the Past (Heather Burke and Claire Smith)
ch. 3 The Great Debate: Archaeology, Repatriation, and Nationalism (Morag Kersel)

Part 2 - Games
ch. 4 Grasp, or Happy Families, the Archaeological Way (Gail Higginbottom)
ch. 5 The Skin Game: Teaching to Redress Stereotypes of Indigenous People (Claire Smith and Heather Burke)
ch. 6 The Big Dig: Theoretically Speaking (Gail Higginbottom)
Part 3 - Simulations
ch. 7 The Game of Context: Teaching the History of Archaeology Without Foregone Conclusions (John Carman)
ch. 8 The Simulated Excavation: An Alternative to Archaeological Site Destruction (Bradley F. Bowman and Glenna Dean)
ch. 9 Digging Your Own Grave: Generic Skills from an Archaeological Simulation (Clive Orton)

Part 4 - Hands-on Activities
ch. 10 Playing with Ochre: Some Problems Associated with the Analysis of Indigenous Rock Markings (Michael Diplock and Abigail Stein)
ch. 11 Perspectives from a Pot: IntroducingArchaeological Theory Through Visual Interpretation (Melinda Leach)
ch. 12 Culture of Litterbugs (M. Jay Stottman, Sarah E. Miller and A. Gwynn Henderson)
ch. 13 Toilets as Tools of Teaching (H. Martin Wobst)
ch. 14 Simple Ideas to Teach Big Concepts: 'Excavating' and Analyzing the Professor's Desk Drawer and Wastebasket (Larry J. Zimmerman)

Part 5 - Creative Construction and Performance
ch. 15 The Draw-an-Archaeologist Test: Eliciting Student's Ideas About Archaeology (Susan D. Renoe)
ch. 16 Using the Fictional Tale as a Learning Tool (Caryn M. Berg)
ch. 17 Telling Stories About the Past: Archaeology and Museum Interpretation (Jane Lydon)
ch. 18 Scenarios for Archaeologists: A Teaching Tool (Mitch Allen)

Part 6 - Critical Reflection
ch. 19 The Scrapbook Exercise: Teaching Archaeology of Death as Critical Thinking (Patricia Rubertone)
ch. 20 Brain Candy (K. Anne Pyburn)

Index
About the Contributors

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This article explores a set of practices in the teaching of Talmud called “the pedagogy of slowing down.” Through the author’s analysis of her own teaching in an intensive Talmud class, “the pedagogy of slowing down” emerges as a pedagogical and cultural model in which the students learn to read more closely and to investigate the multiplicity of meanings inherent in the Talmudic text, thus bridging the gap between an ancient text and its contemporary students. This article describes the specific techniques in the pedagogy of slowing down, and the ways in which this teaching practice contributes both to students’ becoming more attentive readers and to the ongoing development of their religious voices.

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This interview was recorded in November 2012 in Jonathan Z. Smith's Hyde Park graystone. Professor Smith offers insights into how he thinks about his classroom teaching and his students' learning through descriptions of various assignments and classroom activities he has developed over more than forty years of teaching. The discussion ranges broadly over such topics as: how students read, the failure to adequately prepare graduate students as teachers, students' faith commitments, the use of newspapers (and humor) in the classroom, and the role of definition, de-familiarization, and critique of the study of religion in introductory classes. The discussion presents vivid glimpses into Jonathan Smith's teaching practice and his teaching persona, including the time a student brought a minister to class to do an exorcism because she thought he was the Devil.

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The article is a response to this journal's call for papers on metaphors for teaching, and also draws from a previous publication in which Kent Eilers developed a methodology for teaching global theologies. In this methodology, the ultimate goal was the development of “hermeneutical dispositions of empathy, hospitality, and receptivity toward culturally diverse voices” (2014, 165). This article considers the goals of Eilers' methodology, and others like his, and how it is that the metaphors of “leaving home” and “communal imagination” highlight the importance of the ambient and interpersonal features of a classroom and their effect on the attainment of the above goals. In so doing, it extends the conversation beyond content and methodology in teaching theology and religion into the realms of philosophy of education, as well as the fields of moral and values education. It is contended that the metaphors informed by these areas of study facilitate the attainment of such goals, and similar ones, by demonstrating that the cultivation of an ambience of care, trust, and compassion within the classroom constitutes an essential foundation for learning in which students “leave home” and cultivate “communal imagination.” The article finishes with practical suggestions for educators in theology and religion.

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One page Teaching Tactic: students learn some of the difficulties of translation when interpreting the bible.

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This essay describes a transformation in my experience as an adjunct teaching underprepared students from one of shame toward a desire to assert the value of this work. Insights from my feminist theological training helped me to affirm the importance of encouraging transformative learning in teaching the academically marginalized and prompted my analysis of student writing in an introductory World Religions course, in order to determine whether or not the course was a site of transformative learning. I argue that despite many contextual limitations, the movement toward deepening self-awareness and increasing openness to religious diversity seen in student writing demonstrates that transformative learning began in this course, and that is valuable for students' lives whether or not they are academically successful.

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How to Talk About Hot topics on Campus fills a gap in the literature by providing a resource that shows how to construct and carry out difficult conversations from various vantage points in the academy. It offers a theory-to practice model of conversation for the entire college campus that will enable all constituencies to engage in productive and civil dialogue on the most difficult and controversial social, religious political and cultural topics.
How to Talk About Hot Topic on Campus covers teaching highly controversial, potentially, provocative, subject matter as well as creating an institutional culture that welcomes and nourishes difficult conversations throughout campus life. The book speaks to faculty student affairs staff, administrators and students in all campus venues. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Part I Laying the Theoretical Groundwork for Moral Conversation
ch. 1 Igniting the Fire of Moral Conversation
ch. 2 Promoting a Spirit of Pluralism on College Campuses

Part II Practicing the Moral Conversation
ch. 3 A Faculty Member's View on Moral Conversation from the Classroom
ch. 4 An Administrator's View on Moral Conversation from the Division of Student Affairs
ch. 5 A Senior Administrator's Systemic View on Facilitating Moral Conversations Across Campus

Part III Final Words on Moral Conversation
ch. 6 Opportunities, Risks, and Caveats for Moral Conversation

App. A A Step-by-Step How-To Guide for Facilitators and Participants When Doing Moral Conversation
App. B Additional Text References and Internet Resources
App. C Western Stereotypes About Islam from Both the Left and the Right
App. D A Whole-Campus Teaching and Learning Rationale for Moral Conversation: Inspired by the 2004 NASPA Report Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience
App. E Naturalistic and Narrativistic Paradigms in Academia: Implications for Moral Conversation

References
Index

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This article explores congregational studies as a valuable teaching tool for contextualizing theological education across disciplines. As a form of pedagogy, congregational studies situates learning in a particular local ministry context. In addition, such a pedagogy apprentices learners within a particular "community of practice" – namely, that of professional church leaders of various types (lay, clergy, professional educators, etc.) having the knowledge and skills that allow them to read diverse contexts of ministry and improvise appropriate and faithful strategies of action within those contexts. After describing one seminary teaching experience in which congregational studies methods formed the pedagogical framework for an interdisciplinary course on the Bible and religious education, the article puts forward a practice-based theory of adult learning to explain why congregational studies methods are particularly helpful to adult learners engaged in theological education. The article concludes by briefly addressing some problems and limitations to pedagogical processes based upon congregational studies. (The research for this article and its writing were supported by a grant from the Wabash Center for which I am deeply appreciative. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion's Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section.)

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One page Teaching Tactic to determine the level of knowledge and understanding students have of a particular subject (in this case, in a Hebrew Bible course).

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Click Here for Book Review
Abstract: For many aspiring academics, the transition from doctoral student to classroom teacher is a challenging one. The classroom culture, the needed pedagogical skills, and the expected level and type of work are significantly different in the two environments. Nevertheless, most doctoral students go on to teach in undergraduate or seminary classrooms. To prepare the PhD students at McMaster Divinity College to negotiate this transition successfully, the faculty holds a biennial colloquium covering the major dimensions, both theoretical and practical, of a Christian teaching vocation. On the basis of the presentations of the colloquium, the essential topics have been addressed in essays prepared for this volume for the benefit of all who aspire to excellence in their teaching, especially those in Christian higher education. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
List of Contributors
Introduction: Teaching as Theological Vocation (Stanley E. Porter)

ch. 1 Developing a Philosophy of Education (Stanley E. Porter)
ch. 2 Pedagogy and Course Objectives (Michael P. Knowles)
ch. 3 Designing and Evaluating Learning Experiences for Courses (Mark J. Boda)
ch. 4 Developing a Syllabus (Cynthia Long Westfall)
ch. 5 Sculpting a Lesson: The Art of Preparing a Classroom Learning Experience (Lee Beach)
ch. 6 Teaching Introductory New Testament Greek (Lois K. Fuller Dow)
ch. 7 Teaching Biblical Hebrew: Practical Strategies for Introductory Courses (Paul Evans)
ch. 8 Leading Intentional Theological Reflection in the Classroom: The Merging of Mind and Heart (Wendy J. Porter)
ch. 9 From Doctoral Program to Classroom (Steven M. Studebaker)
ch. 10 The Upside-Down Professor: The Professor in a Christian Institution (Gordon L. Heath)
ch. 11 Spirituality of Teaching and Theological Integration (Phil C. Zylla)

Modern Authors Index

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One page Teaching Tactic: active learning strategy in which students use e-tools to research and represent how historic religious events have been portrayed.

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This book offers an orientation in Christian theology, broadly conceived. Its subject is not that single discipline in the theological curriculum to which the title of 'theology' is nowadays often reserved, but rather the whole curriculum, or the whole range of disciplines which together constitute the enterprise of Christian theology, and whose study constitutes theological education. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Preface
ch. 1 Toward understanding our context
ch. 2 Theology as critical inquiry
ch. 3 Three dimensions of theology
ch. 4 Vision and discernment
ch. 5 Theological inquiry and theological education
Index

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Special Focus Section: Religion, Law and Higher Education
Special Section Guest Editor

Guest Edito's Preface

ch. 1 Religious Freedom in America Catholic Higher Education (Charles J. Russo, Paul E. McGreal)
ch. 2 Faculty Religious Speech in Class (Suzanne Eckes)
ch. 3 The Rights of Student Religious Organizations after Christian Legal Society v. Martenz (William E. Thro)
ch. 4 Transformational Multicultural Spiritual Framework for Educating Youth: Spiritual Development for Children and Adolescents (Alex S. Hall)
ch. 5 Theology, Law and the Australian Legal Academy (Paul Babie)
ch. 6 Freedom of Religion and Postsecondary Education in Canada: Resolving Competing Claims (Paul Clarke)

Article
Women Faculty at an Evangelical University: The Paradox of Religiously Driven Gender Inequalities and High Job Satisfaction (Brad Christerson, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Shelly Cunningham)

Resource Review
Catholic Higher Schools: Facing the New Realities

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Abstract: Religion, Education, Dialogue and Conflict analyses the European Commission-funded REDCo project, which addressed the question of how religions might contribute to dialogue or conflict in Europe. Researchers in education from eight countries – the UK, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Russian Federation, Norway and Spain – studied how young Europeans of different religious, cultural and political backgrounds could engage in dialogue in the context of the school.

Empirical studies conducted with 14-16 year old students included them offering their own perspectives and analyses of teaching and learning in both dialogue and conflict situations. Although there were some different national patterns and trends, most students wished for peaceful coexistence across differences, andbelieved this to be possible. The majority agreed that peaceful coexistence depended on knowledge about each other’s religions and worldviews, sharing common interests and doing things together. The project found that students who learn about religious diversity in school are more willing to discuss religions and beliefs with students of other backgrounds than those who do not.

The international range of expert contributors to this book evaluate the results of the REDCo project, providing examples of its qualitative and quantitative studies and reflecting on the methods and theory used in the project as a whole.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Religious Education. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Notes on contributors

ch. 1 Preface (Bruce Grelle)
ch. 2 Religion, education, dialogue and conflict: an introduction (Robert Jackson)
ch. 3 Reflections on the Redco project (Wolfram Weisse)
ch. 4 Young people’s talk about religion and diversity: a qualitative study of Norwegian students aged 13-15 (Marie von der Lippe)
ch. 5 Under the shadow of Al-Andalus? Spanish teenagers’ attitudes and experiences with religious diversity at school (Aurora Alvarez Veinguer, F. Javier Rosón Lorente, and Gunther Dietz)
ch. 6 Laïcité in practice: the representations of French teenagers (Bérengére Massignon)
ch. 7 Religion and religious education: comparing and contrasting pupils’ and teachers’ views in an English school (Joyce Miller, and Ursula McKenna)
ch. 8 The interpretive approach as a research tool: inside the Redco project (Robert Jackson)
ch. 9 The ‘contextual setting approach’: a contribution to understanding how young people view and experience religion and education in Europe (Thorsten Knauth, and Anna Körs)
ch. 10 Influences on students’ views on religions and education in England and Estonia (Sean Neill, and Olga Schihalejev)
ch. 11 European religious education teachers’ perceptions of and responses to classroom diversity and their relationship to personal and professional biographies (Judith Everington, Ina ter Avest, Cok Bakker, and Anna van der Want)
ch. 12 Russian Redco findings in support of dialogue and hermeneutics (Fedor Kozyrev)
ch. 13 Investigating the impact of religious diversity in schools for secondary education: a challenging but necessary exercise (Gerdien D. Bertram-Troost)

Index

Additional Info:
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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Abstract: This volume presents findings from recent research focusing on young people and the way they relate to religion in their education and upbringing. The essays are diverse and multidisciplinary - in terms of the religions they discuss (including Christianity, Islam and Sikhism); the settings where young people reflect on religion (the classroom, youth club, peer group, families, respective religious communities and wider society); the different perspectives which relate to religious education and socialisation (the teaching of RE, the role of teachers in pupils’ lives, the way teachers’ personal lives shape their approach to teaching, school ethos and social context, and the place and rationale of RE); the contexts within which the authors work (different national settings and various academic disciplines); and the methodology used (qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches).

The authors make important contributions to the debate about the role of religious education in the curriculum. They demonstrate the crucially important formative influence of religious education in young people’s lives which reaches well into their adulthood, shaping religious and other identities, and attitudes towards the ‘other’ - whatever that ‘other’ may be.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Beliefs & Values. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Citation Information
Notes on Contributors
Preface
Introduction: Religion in education: findings from the Religion and Society Programme

ch. 1 Relationships between local patterns of religious practice and young people’s attitudes to the religiosity of their peers (Julia Ipgrave)
ch. 2 Contextuality of young people’s attitudes and its implications for research on religion: A response to Julia Ipgrave (Olga Schihalejev)
ch. 3 Young people’s attitudes to religious diversity: quantitative approaches from social and empirical theology (Leslie J. Francis, S. Croft, Alice Pyke, Mandy Robbins)
ch. 4 Religious diversity, empathy, and God images: perspectives from the psychology of religion shaping a study among adolescents in the UK (Leslie J. Francis, Jennifer S. Croft and Alice Pyke)
ch. 5 Failures of meaning in religious education (James C. Conroy, David Lundie and Vivienne Baumfield)
ch. 6 More purpose than meaning in RE: a response to James Conroy, David Lundie, and Vivienne Baumfield (Christina Osbeck)
ch. 7 Seeing and seeing through: Forum theatre approaches to ethnographic evidence (David Lundie and James C. Conroy)
ch. 8 ‘We’re all in this together, the kids and me’: beginning teachers’ use of their personal life knowledge in the Religious Education classroom (Judith Everington)
ch. 9 Teachers only stand behind parents and God in the eyes of Muslim pupils (Jenny Berglund)
ch. 10 Keeping the faith: reflections on religious nurture among young British Sikhs (Jasjit Singh)
ch. 11 Christian youth work: teaching faith, filling churches or response to social need? (Naomi Stanton)
ch. 12 Religious young adults recounting the past: narrating sexual and religious cultures in school (Sarah-Jane Page and Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip)

Index

Additional Info:
Currently, the recent history of the field shapes the content of introductions to the philosophy of religion. In order to substantively engage students, whose experiences and destinies are already shaped by global realities, such teaching must undergo revision. A shift from introducing philosophical theology towards active learning analyses of ostensibly religious phenomena is the means by which the field can regain its relevance for students. This article first explores the rationale for teaching differently, and then works out a pedagogy that has students themselves practicing a global philosophy of religion.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

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The capstone course is supposed to serve as the final building block of our students’ education. Faculty in the religious studies department at Hendrix College felt the need to supplement the capstone metaphor with an additional one: “springboard.” We wanted to connect with recent trends in higher education that help students understand the ways in which they are prepared for employment and for life. To this end, we developed a senior colloquium course that integrates the various educational experiences of the students and, in partnership with our career services department, springboards them into their future lives. This article explains the process we went through and the three content areas covered in the course: intellectual autobiography, career preparation, and the research project.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses. Wendy Wiseman taught Humanities courses at Ozyegin University in Istanbul from 2008-2013, taught Religious Studies at Indiana University the following year, and returned to Istanbul to teach at Beykent University. Burak Kesgin is Chair of Sociology at Beykent University, with a focus on political economy and sociology of religion.

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One page Teaching Tactic to help students understand the contingencies of historical documents.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
I. Introduction (Walter Harrelson)
A. Origin of Study
B. Procedures
C. Purpose of Study
D. The Basic Problem

II. Biblical Languages in the Theological Curriculum (Walter Harrelson)
A. The Authority of the Bible and Biblical Languages
B. Languages and Exegesis
C. Openness to the “World”
D. Language, Word of God, and Theology—the “New Hermeneutic”

III. What is Happening
A. In the Seminary Curricula (Eugene V. N. Goetchius)
B. In the Classroom (Eugene V. N. Goetchius)
C. In the Colleges (George M. Landes)
D. In the Work of Seminary Graduates (George M. Landes)
E. In Continuing Education (George M. Landes)

IV. New Developments in Language Teaching (Eugene V. N. Goetchius)
A. The Objectives of Biblical Language Teaching
B. Modern Linguistics
C. Teaching Aids

V. An Assessment of the Situation
A. What Can and Cannot Be Done in the Regular Academic Curriculum (Eugene V. N. Goetchius)
B. What Can and Cannot Be Expected From College Language Work (George M. Landes)
C. How Alumni Assess the Importance of Language Study (George M. Landes)
D. What Colleagues Outside the Biblical Field Expect From Languages Study (George M. Landes)
E. Prospects for Required Language Study (George M. Landis)
F. The Need For Specialists (Eugene V. N. Goetchius)
G. Proposed Summer Programs (Eugene V. N. Goetchius)

VI. Recommendations (Walter Harrelson)
A. State Purposed and Objectives Clearly
B. Provide Flexibility in Curriculum to Enable Students to learn one or more biblical languages well to use the language(s) in exegetical work
C. Cooperate with College and University Teachers of Religion in the Development of Undergraduate Courses in the Biblical Language
D. Cooperate in Summer Programs
E. Continue and Accelerate Experimentation
1. in teaching method
2. in the use of modern linguistics
3. in philosophical and theological analyses of language

Notes to:
Administrators (Paul M. Robinson)
Trustees (Harry M. Moffett)
Seminary Staff Officers (Roland C. Matthies)
Librarians (Calvin H. Schmitt)
Professors (David S. Schuller)

Additional Info:
This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface
Guest Editor's Introduction

ch. 1 Where Religion Faculty Meet Students' Worlds: Lessons from the GTU Preparing Future Faculty Project
ch. 2 Engaging the Institution: Mentoring Future Faculty, Big Questions of Vocation, and the Reality of Assessment
ch. 3 Reengineering the Teaching Machine: Big Questions from the Inside Out and the Outside In
ch. 4 The Stakes Involved in 'Going Spiritual': Mentoring Future Faculty toward Meaning and Value
ch. 5 Big Questions of Vocation, Professional Identity, and Classroom Practice: A Conversation Between Colleagues
ch. 6 Conflations and Confrontations: Spirituality, Religion, and Values in the Liberal Arts Classroom
ch. 7 The Spectre of Spirituality: On the (In) Utility of 'Spirituality' as an Analytical Category
ch. 8 Spirituality in Higher Education?
ch. 9 The Question is the Answer
ch. 10 Pedagogy of Reverence: A Narrative Account
ch. 11 Does Spirituality Have a Place in Higher Education?: A Response
ch. 12 Spirituality in Higher Education: Problem, Practices, and Programs: A Response
ch. 13 Spirituality in Higher Education: Toward a Holistic Approach to the Development of Future Faculty in Theology and Religion
ch. 14 Fuzzy But Not Warm: On the (Continuing) Descriptive and Analytical Inutility of 'Spirituality'
ch. 15 A Contemplative Response: The Part Is the Whole

Contributors

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Special Issue on Warren A. Nord's
Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in Our Schools and Universities

Editor's Preface

Essays
ch. 1 Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in Our Schools and Universities: An Excerpt (Warren A. Nord)
ch. 2 Taking Warren Nord Seriously (Charles C. Haynes)
ch. 3 Even So, Keep Looking at That (MArtin E. Marty)
ch. 4 Teaching About Religion in Public Schools: Where Do We Go From Here? (Melissa Rogers)
ch. 5 Educational and Legal Perspectives: How Do They Differ? (Kent Greenawalt)
ch. 6 The Place of Religious Studies in Warren Nord's Does God Make a Difference (Bruce Grelle)
ch. 7 The Examined Life (Emile Lester)
ch. 8 Does Warren A. Nord Make a Difference? (Robert J. Nash)
ch. 9 Taking Religion Seriously: Another Approach (James C. Carper, Thomas C. Hunt)

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This Forum collects the papers presented at a 2010 panel at the Society of Biblical Literature, an outcome of a Wabash Center funded grant project. The project examined the unique dimensions and experiences of teaching Biblical exegesis at the six historically black theological schools (HBTSs), including discussion of the unique needs of HBTS students and their communities, and appropriate learning goals and effective teaching practices for this context. None of the biblical studies faculty were prepared as graduate students for the unique challenges that they have encountered teaching at a HBTS, so they have all had to “learn on the job” how best to approach the unique needs of the student body. The brief statements collected here summarize the findings from the project, describe and analyze some effective teaching strategies, and offer suggestions for continuing the conversation.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

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"Teaching Difficult Texts." 1000 word essay scaffolding student engagement with difficult texts from non-Western Christian contexts.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Additional Info:
"Teaching Difficult Texts." 1000 word essay describing role playing exercise to help students engage a challenging text.

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This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Additional Info:
For generations, most seminary teaching of the Bible has focused on the historical-critical method. While this method has been the assumption in almost every seminary curriculum, the actual effects of this approach to Scripture have hardly been examined. From studying the biblical studies courses at ten different seminaries and divinity schools, Dale Martin learned what faculties were doing and what students were hearing. This book presents his discoveries, offering the best-ever inside look into the teaching of the Bible for ministry. Going beyond mere description, Martin argues for a new emphasis on interpreting Scripture within the context of church history and theology. Such a reading would be more theological, more integrated into the whole theological curriculum, and more theoretical (as it would focus on whats at stake in interpretation); however, Martin surprisingly argues, it would be more practical at the same time. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Preface and Acknowledgments
The Bible in Theological Education
Readers and Texts
Premodern Biblical Interpretation
Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Curricular Dreams
Notes
Bibliography
Scripture Index
Author and Subject Index

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"Teaching Difficult Texts." 1000 word essay describing scaffolding to help students engage a challenging text.

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In 2014, a roundtable on pedagogy appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion with an initial piece by Vanessa Sasson. Although neither Sasson nor the respondents explicitly situated her article as a part of the broader body of work known as the “ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (SoTL), readers would reap benefit from such a contextualization. In this article, after first exploring what SoTL is and how it has interacted with the field of religious studies, I explore three main elements of this particular kind of scholarship: research with human subjects and the Institutional Review Board, a foundation in other scholarship, and assessment. In these three areas, I uncover special questions, considerations, and resources for all religious studies instructors interested in embarking upon a SoTL project with the aim of contributing to the ongoing conversation about pedagogy.

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Good outline of what to expect when dealing with an emotionally intense issue, and how to structure and lead class so as to increase learning. Applicable beyond the specifics of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

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John Bracke and Karen Tye, a biblical scholar and a religious educator, have come together to offer a vital new work of practical insight into the task of teaching the Bible in the church. Intended for pastors, church educators, lay teachers, and those in seminary, this book provides a blueprint for effective teaching that lead beyond just conveying information to opening oneself and the learner to transformation through the text. It is teaching the Bible in its most faithful form, as an invitation to fully encounter the scriptures and the God who empowers transformation. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Introduction

ch. 1 Teaching the Bible: How We Learn
ch. 2 Teaching the Bible: How We Teach
ch. 3 Teaching the Bible: An Intercultural Education Experience
ch. 4 Teaching the Bible: Issues of Interpretation
ch. 5 Teaching the Bible: Putting It All Together

Notes

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Contributors

ch. 1 Let’s Get Physical: Using Sports, Yoga, and Dance to Teach about Religion (Fred Glennon)
ch. 2 From Durkheim to Game Day: Sports as a Bridge for Introducing Religious Studies (Arthur Remillard)
ch. 3 Religion and Sports (Philip P. Arnold)
ch. 4 Using Sport to Teaching American Religious History (Annie Blazer)
ch. 5 Using Case Studies to Teach Religion and Sports (Rebecca T. Alpert)
ch. 6 Yoga in Theory and Practice: Pedagogical Strategies (Patton Burchett)
ch. 7 Sensing the Gods: Utilizing Embodied Pedagogy to Understand Hindu Devotion (Katherine C. Zubko)

Resources

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Click Here for Book Review
Practice-oriented educational philosopher Elie Holzer invites readers to grow as teachers, students, or co-learners through “attuned learning,” a new paradigm of mindfulness. Groundbreaking interpretations of classical rabbinic texts sharpen attention to our own mental, emotional, and physical workings as well as awareness of others within the complexities of learning interactions. Holzer integrates pedagogical pathways with ethical elements of transformative teaching and learning, the repair of educational disruptions, the role of the human visage, and the dynamics of argumentative and collaborative learning. Literary analyses reveal that deliberate self-cultivation not only leads to ethical and spiritual growth, but also offers a corrective for the pitfalls of the contemporary calculative modalities in educational thinking. The author speaks to the existential, humanizing art of learning and of teaching. This book can serve as a companion volume for A Philosophy of Havruta: Understanding and Teaching the Art of Text Study in Pairs, adding a new dimension of its model of joint learning. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Attuned Acknowledgments

Part One: Conceptual Frameworks
ch. 1 The Concept of Attuned Learning
ch. 2 Reading Rabbinic Texts for Education

Part Two: Co-Learners’ Attuned Learning
Introduction: Collaborative Learning in Rabbinic Literature
ch. 3 Self-Refinement in Argumentative Learning
ch. 4 Study Partners’ Learning

Part Three: Teachers and Students’ Attuned Learning
Introduction: Teaching in Rabbinic Literature
ch. 5 Learning Transformations
ch. 6 Disruptions and Repairs
ch. 7 The Visages of Learning Interactions

Part Four: Attuned Learning and Educational Thought
ch. 8 Attuned Learning in Contemporary Contexts

Glossary of Technical and Foreign Terms and Language Usage
Bibliography
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 essay seeks to illumine the teaching and learning of the practice of forgiveness by relating a range of theoretical perspectives (theological, psychological, and socio-cultural) to the process of cultivating the practical wisdom needed for forgiveness. We discuss how a Trinitarian "epistemology of the cross" might lead one to a new way of perceiving life's constraints and possibilities and relate this theological epistemology to three psychological approaches for understanding forgiveness – a narrative approach, object-relations theory, and consciousness development theory. Our discussion of these theoretical perspectives is explicitly related to the practice of teaching and learning forgiveness, outlining learning activities we have used in a course we taught (which ranged from case studies and film to lectures and discussions based on close readings of biblical and theological texts) and reporting highlights in our students' work.

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Most courses in colleges and universities are taught by only one instructor. This is often necessitated by the financial exigencies of educational institutions, but is also due to an academic tradition in which the ideal is a single expert teaching in a single discipline. The rapidly changing realities of both the higher education and job markets, however, have called the traditional ideal into question. Interdisciplinary collaborative teaching is one way to adapt to the needs of twenty-first-century students, by modeling lifelong learning for students and inviting instructors to be more deliberately reflective about disciplinary assumptions, learning styles, and pedagogies.

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One page Teaching Tactic: low-stakes writing assignments to improve students engagement with texts.

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One page Teaching Tactic: on the first day of class, students discuss course content by discussing classification strategies

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Preaching's most able practitioners gather in this book to call for a radical change in how Christian preaching is taught. Arguing that preaching is a living practice with a long tradition, an identifiable shape, and a broad set of norms and desired outcomes, these scholars propose that teachers initiate their students into the larger practice of preaching-the habits of mind, patterns of action, and ways of being that are integral to the ministry of preaching. The book concludes with designs for a basic preaching course and addresses the question of how preaching courses fit into the larger patterns of seminary curricula. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Sect. I Preaching as a Christian practice
ch. 1 A new focus for teaching preaching (Thomas G. Long)
ch. 2 Why the idea of practice matters (James Nieman)
ch. 3 Teaching preaching as a Christian practice (David J. Lose)

Sect. II The components of the practice of preaching
ch. 4 Interpreting texts for preaching (James W. Thompson)
ch. 5 Exegeting the congregation (Leonora Tubbs Tisdale)
ch. 6 Interpreting the larger social context (James Henry Harris)
ch. 7 The use of language (Teresa Fry Brown)
ch. 8 The preaching imagination (Anna Carter Florence)
ch. 9 Creation of form (Lucy Hogan)
ch. 10 Cultivating historical vision( Joseph R. Jeter, Jr.)
ch. 11 Voice and diction (Teresa Fry Brown)

Sect. III Assessment and formation
ch. 12 Marks of faithful preaching practice (Paul Scott Wilson)
ch. 13 Methods of assessment (Daniel E. Harris)

Sect. IV Preaching in the curriculum
ch. 14 Designing the introductory course in preaching (Barbara K. Lundblad)
ch. 15 Finding support from school, denomination, and academy (Gregory Heille)

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Using the research of feminist literary critics and building upon the work of feminist biblical scholars, Emily Cheney offers three strategies for women whose ecclesiastical traditions expect them to base their sermons on biblical texts, and for women who want their sermons to reflect a feminist consciousness and compassion. The strategies focus on gender reversal, analogy, and women as exchange objects, all tested on several texts without female characters from the Gospel of Matthew. A concluding section reflects upon what role the authority of the text plays when readers use these strategies. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
ch. 1 The Need for Reading Strategies
ch. 2 Scholarship of Feminist Literary Critics
ch. 3 Gender Reversal
ch. 4 Analogy
ch. 5 Women as Exchange Objects
ch. 6 Application of the Strategies to Mt. 1:18-25
Conclusion
Appendix: Sample Sermon
Notes
Bibliography of Works Cited
Scripture Index
General 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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Journal Issue. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Theology as Critical Inquiry (Paul E. Capetz)
ch. 2 Reenacting Ancient Pedagogy in the Classroom (Marjorie Lehman)
ch. 3 Forming a Critical Imagination (Karen-Marie Yust)
ch. 4 Critical Thinking and Prophetic Witness, Historically-Theologically Based (Glen H. Stassen)
ch. 5 Social Theory as a Critical Resource (Paul Lakeland)
ch. 6 Ethnography as Critical Theological Resource (Mary McClintock Fulkerson)
ch. 7 Contextualizing Womanist/Feminist Critical Thought and Praxis (Rosetta E. Ross)
ch. 8 Critical Perspective in Biblical Studies (Robert Coote)
ch. 9 Liturgical Theology as Critical Practice (Bruce T. Morrill)
ch. 10 The Parish Context: A Critical Horizon for Teaching and Learning Ethics (Cheryl J. Sanders)
ch. 11 Critical Reflection and Praxis in Developing Ministerial Leaders (Emily Click)
ch. 12 New Wine in Old Vessels: Enabling Students to Enter an Age-old Conversation (Norman J. Cohen)

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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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Journal Issue. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Called to Educate (Lee H. Butler)
ch. 2 Daring to Engage the World (Daisy L. Machado)
ch. 3 The Cultivation of Imagination as Literacy for Theological Education (Emily Click)
ch. 4 Theological Literacy through World Religions (Elizabeth Conde-Frazier)
ch. 5 The Challenge of Theological Illiteracy for Teaching Comparative Theology (John J. Thatamanil)

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A group of eminent African American scholars of religoius and theological studies examines the problems and prospects of Black scholarhip in the theological academy. They assess the role that prominent African American scholars have played in transforming the study and teaching of religion and theology, the need for a more thorough-going incorporation of the fruits of black scholarship into the mainstream of the academic study of religion, and the challenges and opportunities of bringing black art, black intellectual thought, and black culture into predominantly white classrooms and institutions. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction (Nancy Lynne Westfield)
Views

ch. 1 Visible/Invisible: Teaching Popular Culture and the Vulgar Body in Black Religious Studies (Carol B. Duncan)
ch. 2 Using Novels of Resistance to Teach Intercultural Empathy and Cultural Analysis (Arthur L. Pressley)
ch. 3 E-Racing While Black (Stephen G. Ray, Jr.)
ch. 4 Called Out My Name, or Had I Known You Were Somebody: The Pain of Fending Off Stereotypes (Nancy Lynne Westfield)
ch. 5 Reading the Signs: The Body as Non-Written Text (Anthony B. Pinn)
ch. 6 Emancipatory Historiography as Pedagogical Praxis: The Blessing and the Curse of Theological Education for the Black Self and Subject (Juan M. Floyd-Thomas and Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas)
ch. 7 Black Rhythms and Consciousness: Authentic Being and Pedagogy (Lincoln E. Galloway)
ch. 8 From Embodied Theodicy to Embodied Theos (Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas)
ch. 9 Teaching Black: God-Talk with Black Thinkers (Arthur L. Pressley and Nancy Lynne Westfield)

Responses
ch. 10 Teaching Black, Talking Back (Carolyn M. Jones)
ch. 11 Together in Solidarity: An Asian American Feminist's Response (Boyung Lee)
ch. 12 Influences of "Being Black, Teaching Black" On Theological Education (Charles R. Foster)

Notes
Select Bibliography

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In this article, I explore an ethical and pedagogical dilemma that I encounter each semester in my world religions courses: namely, that a great number of students enroll in the courses as part of their missionary training programs, and come to class understanding successful learning to mean gathering enough information about the world's religious “traditions” so as to effectively seduce people out of them. How should we teach world religions – in public university religious studies courses – with this student constituency? What are/ought to be our student learning goals? What can and should we expect to accomplish? How can we maximize student learning, while also maintaining our disciplinary integrity? In response to these questions, I propose a world religions course module, the goal of which is for students to examine – as objects of inquiry – the lenses through which they understand religion(s). With a recognition of their own lenses, I argue, missionary students become more aware of the biases and presumptions about others that they bring to the table, and they learn to see the ways in which these presumptions inform what they see and know about others, and also what they do not so easily see.

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This note from the classroom explores teaching new or alternative religions within the context of a Roman Catholic Liberal Arts College. The essay will specifically focus on a section of a course entitled "Modern Religious Movements" in which students were asked to consider different methodological approaches to the teaching and study of Scientology and the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. This note from the classroom details how this rather unexpected comparison prompted students to reconsider the category cult and argues that encouraging self-reflexivity in a largely Catholic classroom can become a crucial means for engaging a broader discussion of new religions, cult discourse, and the academic study of religion itself.

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Letters from the Council on Islamic Education

ch. 2 In Search of an Establishment Principle: The Original Understanding, Pre-Game Prayers, and Aid to Religious Schools

ch. 3 A "Perfect Standard?" Exploring Perceptions of Student Life and Culture at Wheaton College

ch. 4 Hecate Does Harvard: Notes on Academic Criticism of Wiccan Practice

ch. 5 An End to the Heckler's Veto: Good News Club v. Milford Central School

ch. 6 Thayer S. Warshaw - A Tribute

ch. 7 Does Why Religion Matters Really Matter?

Contributors

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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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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Preface

ch. 1 Constructing a Spirituality of Teaching: A Personal Perspective

ch. 2 A Vision of Schools with Spirit

ch. 3 Building a Comfort Zone: Teacher Training and Standards-Based Education about Religion

ch. 4 Ex Corde Ecclesiae and American Catholic Higher Education: Dead on Arrival?

ch. 5 Spiritually Committed Public School Teachers: Their Beliefs and Practices Concerning Religious Expression in the Classroom

ch. 6 Cognitive Emotions and Emotional Cognitions

Field Notes

Contributors

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 How September 11, 2001 Transformed My Course on Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and Education

ch. 2 The Peripatetic Class: Buddhist Traditions and Myths of Pedagogy

ch. 3 John Dewey and His Religious Critics

ch. 4 The Role of Religion in Korean Higher Education

ch. 5 How Do We Respond When All Our Ways of Knowing Converge on Subversive Truths?

ch. 6 Nord's Net: "Ways of Knowing" for the Science Classroom

ch. 7 Response to: A 'Perfect Standard'

ch. 8 Review of Whose Kids Are They Anyway?" Religion and Morality in America's Public Schools

Books Received

Contributors

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 The School Voucher Decision

ch. 2 School Vouchers and the Original Understanding of the Establishment Clause

ch. 3 Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris: Remarks from a National Press Club Panel

ch. 4 Our Public Schools: Inclusive Mission Brings Us All Together

ch. 5 Chuang Tzu as Teacher: Pedagogical Insights from the Chuang Tzu

ch. 6 Openly Addressing the Reality: Homosexuality and Catholic Seminary Policies

ch. 7 The Living Color of Student's Lives: Bringing Cajitas into the Classroom

ch. 8 Two Preachers, a Trial Lawyer, ad Aristotle

ch. 9 Maintaining a Christian Institutional Identity while Embracing Religious Diversity

Contributors

Additional Info:
Sensitive issues, rife in religious studies and in theology, present a pedagogical challenge when teaching students to nuance their thinking around positions that are often sharply defined and elicit strong feelings. I developed a learning tool that I call the “Agency Paradigm.” The purpose of this tool is to help students comprehend diversity within religious traditions, particularly regarding the agencies of women who are committed to them. Drawing on the open and critical dialogue of emancipatory pedagogy, the Agency Paradigm encourages students to explore a range of ways women in world religions choose to act in varying contexts. This approach to teaching world religions increases students’ cognitive knowledge base and expands their understanding of each of the religions studied in the course, as examined through the perspective of differing women; it also assists them in developing their own agency through thoughtful reflection.

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Inviting Atheists to the Table: A Modest Proposal for Higher Education

ch. 2 Teaching Spirituality in Public Higher Education

ch. 3 Spirituality and Religion: Through the Eyes of the "Hidden Educators"

ch. 4 Understanding Women's Spirituality in the Context of a Progressive Campus-Based Catholic Community

ch. 5 Faith and Public Education: Immigrants, Iowa, and the Biblical Mandate to Welcome the Stranger

ch. 6 'Moral Victories': Ronald Reagan and the Debate over School Prayer

Contributors

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The Serve Program at Ignatius University combines academic study of theology with a year-long community service project focused on combating poverty. An analysis of the Serve Program during the 2008-09 academic year revealed that participating students demonstrated a significant increase in their interest in theology; a greater desire to enroll in theology coursework; and a deeper interest in theology than classmates not participating in the service-learning program. Interviews with Serve participants revealed that their exposure to poverty and inequality through their service placements led them to read the program’s assigned theological texts with a particular focus on the authors’ messages about individual and social responsibility for struggling fellow citizens.

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Religion and Public Schools: A Forty Year Retrospective

ch. 2 Defining Spirituality in Public Education: A Response to R. J. Nash from a Spirituality Engaged Atheist

ch. 3 Challenges To Discernment in Religious Education

ch. 4 The Austin TEA Party: Homeschooling Controversy in Texas, 1986-1994

ch. 5 The Sense of Spiritual Calling Among Teacher Education Program Students

Contributors

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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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Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Taking the Tournament of Worldviews Seriously in Education: Why Teaching about Religion Is Not Enough

ch. 2 Fostering Spiritual Depth in a Trans-traditional Context: Communicating Across Differences

ch. 3 God's People and Fundamentalist Ideology in the Classroom: an Examination of Free Presbyterian Schooling in Northern Ireland

ch. 4 In the Matter of Race, Memory and Transformation: The Use of Sacred Sites to Teach Social Justice

ch. 5 Spirituality and School Leaders: The Value of Spirituality in the Lives of Aspiring School Leaders

ch. 6 Evangelical Students in Public Schools: They Don't Stand Out, But Don't Fit In

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One page Teaching Tactic: students work in groups to study on line presence of African-American religious groups.

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This essay provides an overview of the distinctive challenges presented to teaching and learning in religious and theological studies by the conditions and characteristics of “millennial” students. While the emerging literature on this generation is far from consistent, it is still instructive and important to engage, as students that are immersed in technology and social networking have different facilities and difficulties that educators would do well to carefully address and critically employ. Teachers in theological and religious studies are distinctly positioned to grapple with such conditions, particularly around the practices of identity formation, media literacy, and embodiment. Attention to the development of such practices engages key issues for both the millennial students and the religious and theological studies teacher: virtual reality, spiritual identity, globalization and violence, critical consumption and ethical creativity, focused and contemplative thinking, and intercultural and interpersonal respect.

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Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Studying Religious Diversity in Public Education: An Interpretive Approach to Religious and Intercultural Understanding

ch. 2 The Complex and Rich Landscape of Student Spirituality: Findings from the Goucher College Spirituality Survey

ch. 3 Being Religious at Knox College: Attitudes Toward Religion, Christian Expression, and Conservative Values on Campus

ch. 4 Religious Autonomy and World Religious Education

ch. 5 Comparing the Influence of Religion on Education in the United States and Overseas: A Meta-Analysis

ch 6. The Religious Free Speech Rights of Public School Teachers: Wigg vx. Sioux Falls School District

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Evangelicals on Campus: An Exploration of Culture, Faith and College Life

ch. 2 The Big Chill: Are Campuses Turning a Cold Shoulder to Religious Students?

ch. 3 Jesus, the Enlightenment and Teaching World History: The Struggles of an Evangelical Scholar

ch. 4 Listening to Teacher Voices: Religion in Schools in the Rural South

ch. 5 In The World But Not of It? Voices and Experiences of Conservative Christian Students in Public Schools

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Coming in Future Issues

Books Received

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

Special Focus Section


Rethinking Religion, Education, and Pluralism in Europe and the United States

ch. 1 Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Public Religious Education

ch. 2 Religion, Pluralism, and Public Education in America

ch. 3 Defining and Promoting the Study of Religion in British and American Schools

ch. 4 Engaging the Believer A Contribution to the Discussion of Robert Jackson's Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality

ch. 5 The Study of Religion in American Schools Response to Robert Jackson's Religious Education and Plurality

ch. 6 European and Danish Religious Education: Human Rights, the Secular State, and Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality

ch. 7 Recasting Agreements that Govern Teaching and Learning: An Intellectual and Spiritual Framework for Transformation

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By “Decoding” what an expert does so that he or she does not get stuck at the bottleneck, we can spell out crucial operations, the “critical thinking” of a discipline.

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

Special Issue Spirituality in Higher Education

ch. 1 Guest Editor's Preface

ch. 2 Learning With Heart And Mind: Embracing Wholeness in Learning Communities

ch. 3 Integrating Religion and Spirituality in Higher Education: Meeting the Global Challenges of the 21st Century

ch. 4 Equanimity and Spirituality

ch. 5 How Colleges Differ in their Efforts to Promote Moral and Ethical Development in College

ch. 6 Understanding the "Interior" Life of Faculty: How Important is Spirituality?

ch. 7 The Dynamics of Spirituality and the Religious Experience

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Journal Issue. (This issue, and all "Spotlight on Teaching" issues prior to 1999, are not available on the AAR website.)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Insider, Outsider, and Gender Identities in the Religion Classroom (Laurie L. Patton) ch. 2 Crossovers and Cross-ups: A Cautionary (NancyFalk)
ch. 3 Mindfield or Mindfield: Teaching Religion in a Multicultural Classroom (Zayn R. Kassam)
ch. 4 Taking Myself Seriously: Transformation of a Working Pedagogical Model (Marcia Y. Riggs)
ch. 5 Spotlight on Teaching: Insider/Outsider (Francisca Cho)
ch. 6 Holy Shock at Sacred Cities: "Rocks Are not my Problem" "Why aren't Women Allowed to make the Pilgrimage to Mecca?" (Kimberly Patton)
ch. 7 Teaching Critical Theory (Miriam Peskowitz)

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In this essay I reflect on my experience thus far of teaching Islam as a non-Muslim at Metropolitan State University and at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. I begin by narrating a conversation about conversion that I had with one of my Muslim students. Then I introduce the theme of multiplicity as a way of being, teaching, and learning. The third section illustrates the theme of multiplicity pedagogically with reference to institutional identity, choice of textbooks, topical organization of the course, the "mosque visit" assignment, and class composition and student roles in the classroom. I conclude in the fourth section with personal reflections on multiplicity in relation to credibility and identity, politics and transformation. The essay was inspired by my realization that I embody multiple religious identities, and that one of my purposes is to build community inside and outside the classroom in an effort not only to transcend the tendency of our culture to adopt an essentialist view of Islam as suspect and alien, but also to recover Islam as a universal religion and to consider its agenda for world transformation alongside those of other religions.

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ch. 1 God, Darwin, and the Courts: An Evolving Debate

ch. 2 Teaching the Contexts: Why Evolution Should Be Taught As An Argument and How it Might be Done

ch. 3 Problems in the Philosophical Bases of Intelligent Design

ch. 4 Challenging the Myth of Human Superiority

ch. 5 "This Evolution Bit is Straight from Satan": McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education and the Democratization of Southern Christianity

ch. 6 A Clash of Opposing Worldviews: How One Professor Teaches the Intelligent Design/Evolution Controversy

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Journal Issue. (This issue, and all "Spotlight on Teaching" issues prior to 1999, are not available on the AAR website.)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Religion and Film: Capturing the Imagination (Gordon Matties)
ch. 2 Apocalyptic Visions: Beyond Corporeality (Ann Pearson)
ch. 3 Seduction by Visual Image (Barbara DeConcici)
ch. 4 Teaching Film and Religion (Paul V. Flesher, and Robert Torry)
ch. 5 Teaching Field of Cosmogonic Myth (Mara E. Donaldson)
ch. 6 A Picture's Worth: Teaching Religion and Film (Irena S. M. Makarushka)
ch. 7 Religion and Popular Movies (Conrad Ostwalt)

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Traversing a rock-strewn terrain of essentialist methodologies historically employed for teaching Islam, the author espouses a non-Essentialist pedagogy that combines critical reflection, analysis of historical methods, and development of an appreciation for alternative notions about Islam and global interdependence. In this essay the author contends that teaching Islam ought to avoid our and their language and instead aim at helping students think in critically reflective, creative, and relational ways so that they might learn to "think of civilizations as transformative, reflexive, and fluid entities."

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Exploring Religious Pluralism in Higher Education: Non-Majority Religious Perspectives among Entering First-Year College Students

ch. 2 Teaching Adolescents about Religious Pluralism in a Post- 9/11 World

ch. 3 Diversity and Spirituality in Secular Higher Education: The Teaching Paradox

ch. 4 Evoke: Remembering an Institution's Mission Through Soulful Renewal

ch. 5 Social Studies Teacher Educators: A Survey of Attitudes Toward Religion in the Curriculum

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Coming in Future Issues

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In this edited transcript of a panel at the Society of Biblical Literature (November 23, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts), five Bible scholars give brief presentations on various challenges and opportunities encountered when teaching academic biblical studies courses online in both undergraduate and theological education contexts. Each presentation is followed by questions from the audience and discussion. Topics include: a typology of different approaches to online teaching, advantages and disadvantages of online compared to face-to-face classrooms (for both students and faculty), opportunities for imaginative exercises online, the advantages of online threaded discussions, and the joys and pitfalls of bringing your course into an online environment for the first time.

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 "Do You Believe in the Whole Idea of 'God the Father'?" How College Students Talk about Spiritual Transformation

ch. 2 Bible Bills, Bible Curricula, and Controversies of Biblical Proportions: Legislative Efforts to Promote Bible Courses in Public Schools

ch. 3 The Philosophy of Baha'i Education

ch. 4 Religion and High Academic Achievements in Puerto Rican High School Students

ch. 5 Government Involvement in Religious Education: Perspectives from Abraham Kuyper on School Choice

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ch. 1 Talking With Students About Faith in an Era of Religious Extremes

ch. 2 Exploring Religion and Christianity as Points of Diversity Within Counseling Training Programs

ch. 3 Addressing the Identity-Relevance Dilemma: Religious Particularity and Pluralism as Presbyterian Church-Related Colleges

ch. 4 Planning for Change in Christian Colleges: Learnings from Lilly's PTEV

ch. 5 Islamic and Liberal Visions of Citizenship Education: Religion and State in the National Curriculum of Pakistan

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Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Thinking, believing and sharing: editorial
ch. 2 Welcome from the Director (George MacDonald Ross)
ch. 3 The LTSN and the PRS-LTSN
ch. 4 QAA Benchmarking Project
ch. 5 Workshops, Events and Networks
ch. 6 Teaching Pjilosophy and HPS to Science Students (Geoffrey Cantor)
ch. 7 The Vision of God and its Impact on the Educational Process (William S. Campbell)
ch. 8 The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act: the Implications for PRS (Gary Bunt)
ch. 9 Cultivating Transferable Skills in Philosophy Undergraduates (Christopher Cowley)
ch. 10 Double Marking versus Monitoring of Examinations (Roger White)
ch. 11 Report on a History of Science, Technology and Medicine Workshop, Leeds, 30-31 May 2001 (Graeme Gooday)
ch. 12 Report of a Workshop on Teaching South Asian Religious Traditions, Centre for Applied South Asian Studies, University of Manchester, 18 May 2001 (Suthren Hirst, Searle-Chatterjee, and Nesbitt)
ch. 13 About the Journal

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Measuring Faculty Spirituality and its Relationship to Teaching Style

ch. 2 Learning to Teach about Religion in Public Schools: Perspectives and Experiences of Student Teachers in the Program for Religion and Secondary Education at Harvard Divinity School

ch. 3 Rain and Snow, Bless the Lord: Quaker Theology and Teacher Education Practice

ch. 4 Life on Campus after September 11th: Undergraduates' Attitudes Regarding War and Religious Discrimination

ch. 5 Review of the Bible in History and Literature

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Although comparative theology is a continuously growing method in the study of religion, it is still relatively new and not widely accepted in either confessional or secular institutions. Scholars may face difficulty when seeking their institutions' acceptance for a comparative theology course. One way of generating interest and approval for such a course is by designing it from the center of the institution's mission. Professors can look to the institution's mission as a resource for teaching comparatively. We offer four examples from Catholic institutions of how this might be done. Reid Locklin offers further insights in his response to our explorations.

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Journal Issue. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Theory Practice Learning: Models in Violence Studies and Conflict Resolution (Richard Freund)
ch. 2 Experiential Learning: Pedagogy for Life (Barbara A.B. Bobbi Patterson)
ch. 3 The Challenges of Experience for Learning about Violence against Women (Traci C. West)
ch. 4 Religious Practices for Social Change (Thee Smith)
ch. 5 Nonviolence in the Modern World (John E. Cort)
ch. 6 Experiential Education: Pedagogy Across the Spectrum (Peter Gathje)

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Dueling Weltanschauungen: Contemporary Collegiate Worldviews Part 1

ch. 2 Between Secularism and Pluralism: Religious Clubs on the Queen's University Campus

ch. 3 John Haught and the New Atheists

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Abstract: In recent years there has been a renewed interest in textbooks, partly because they have maintained their position as an important genre. Not too many years ago – and perhaps currently as well – many considered textbooks outdated or archaic compared with technological advances such as the Internet and different kinds of educational software. Despite these changes, textbooks for school subjects and for academic studies continue to be in demand. Textbooks seem to constitute a genre in which established truths are conveyed, and may thus represent stable forces in a world of flux and rapid changes. Textbook Gods offers perspectives on representations of religion and religions in textbooks. The contributions emerge from different contexts, ranging from European countries, to North America, Japan and Australia. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Introduction: Theoretical Perspectives on Textbooks/Textbooks in Religious Studies Research (Bengt-Ove Andreassen)

ch. 1 Closed and Open Concepts of Religion: The Problem of Essentialism in Teaching about Relilgion (Torsten Hylén)
ch. 2 Establishing Religion through Textbooks: Religions in Japan's "Ethics" Program (Satoko Fujiwara)
ch. 3 Bad Religions and Good Religions: The Representation of Religion and Religious Traditions in a New Swiss Textbook (Katharina Frank)
ch. 4 To Learn about the Other and Get to Know Him: Judaism and the Jewish Community of Quebec as represented in Ethics and Religious Culture Textbooks (Sivane Hirsch and Marie Mc Andrew)
ch. 5 Researching Materials Used to Teach about World Religions in Schools in England (Barbara Wintersgill)
ch. 6 Representations of Indigenous Australian Religions in New South Wales (NSW) Higher School Certificate Studies of Religion Textbooks (Carole M. Cusack)
ch. 7 Visual Engagement: Textbooks and the Materiality of Religion (Mary Hayward)
ch. 8 Cartographic Representations of Religion(s) in Norwegian Textbooks (Suzanne Anett Thobro)
ch. 9 A Reservoir of Symbols: On the Conceptualization of "Religion" in Introductory Books for RE in Teacher Education in Norway (Bengt-Ove Andreasen)
ch. 10 Stones and Bones: Indigenous African Religions and the "Evolution" of World Religions (James R. Lewis)
ch. 11 "Christianity" for "the Christianity" - That is the Question (Annika Hvithamar)
ch. 12 School Bible in the Service of the Danish National Church - A Case Study (Jens-André P. Herbener)
Index

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Like religious studies, Jewish studies is an academic exploration of literature, ritual, history, philosophy, and experience across disciplinary boundaries. As with all area studies, Jewish studies balances itself – often precariously – as a bridge across that range of methodological options. The breadth of theories employed by each has complicated the teaching of an upper level seminar in Jewish studies. Conceived as a cross between a parade of scholars course and a senior capstone experience, the class employed the broad thematic principle of "identity." In doing so, it exposed the biases of the students, the subject, and the instructor.

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 The Developmental Pathways of Evangelical Christian Students

ch. 2 Talking with Students about Truth: Using Heidegger to Loosen the Grip of Literal Absolutes

ch. 3 Public Funding, Religious Education, and Multiculturalism in Canada

ch. 4 Latino/a Participation and Engagement in Community Events, in Church Settings, and in Educational Settings

ch. 5 The Servant and Teacher: "Poured Out Like Water" An Essay on Teaching and Living

ch. 6 Judical "hostility to all things religious in public life" or Healthy Separation of Religion and Public Education?

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This paper is a reflection on the two most significant challenges that I have faced teaching the introductory course in Islam. The first is the challenge of teaching Islam after September 11, 2001, the events of which gave rise to such pedagogical questions as how much and in what ways the course syllabus should change, and in particular how we should address issues such as extremism and terrorism. The second is the challenge of being a non-Muslim teaching Islam, which raises issues of authority (particularly when there are Muslim students in the classroom). The limitations and advantages of teaching a tradition as an outsider are explored, and strategies for compensating for the limitations are suggested. The final section of the essay explores the following question: When, if ever, can (or should) we as teachers move from explaining and analyzing the positions taken by members of a tradition to criticizing them?

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Editor's Preface

ch. 1 "Complete Victory is Our Objective": The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools

ch. 2 Community, Freedom, and Commitment: Student Discipline at Religiously- Affiliated Colleges and Universities

ch. 3 World Religions in Modesto: Findings from a Curricular Innovation

ch. 4 Teaching from the Edge

ch. 5 Wholeness and Creativity in Religious Studies Teaching

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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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Teaching bioethics might be likened to a rollercoaster ride of twists, turns, and dips that invite teachers and students to experience something of their own edges of fear and comfort. Here the author provides readers with a glimpse into her distinctive approach to teaching bioethics that encourages students to move beyond boundaries of personal comfort zones by willfully transgressing traditional or comfortable boundaries. The essay describes how this is accomplished through a variety of methods – provocative readings, classroom discussion, student response papers, and student ethics committees. The author contends that teaching bioethics ought to include critical pedagogical methods and an alertness for real-life intersections of science and ethics. Teaching bioethics can be a subversive activity that encourages students and teachers to engage in making life morally livable.

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 Dueling Weltanschauungen: Contemporary Collegiate Worldviews Part II Toleration and Diversity as Defining Values?

ch. 2 Race Through Religious Eyes: Focusing Teacher Reflectivity on Race, Culture, and Spiritual Belief

ch. 3 Faith-Based Charter Schools: An Idea Whose Time is Unlikely to Come

ch. 4 Bible Electives in Public Schools: A Guide From the Society of Biblical Literature

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Many early efforts at teaching preaching online incurred disastrous losses in quality. Revamped versions now claim to meet, and in some areas even exceed, classroom learning effectiveness, with potentially significant gains for students from non‐dominant cultures. Students preach in local ethnic and denominational contexts, so a wider range of sermon styles can flourish in indigenous soil. Students hear immediate feedback from their community, and from their online peers and professor. Online discussion formats level the playing field for non‐native speakers. By remaining embedded in their denominational and ethnic environments, student's cultural differences may be simultaneously affirmed and critiqued. This article describes capacities which predict success among preaching students, and how culture may influence the manifestation of these capacities. It details best practices and continuing challenges for professors making the transition to online preaching courses, as they seek to build culturally sustaining learning environments in which diverse students may flourish.

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Service learning pedagogy often assumes a variety of forms when connected with classroom teaching. Through a creative use of service learning pedagogy, the author constructs learning designs that foster student engagement with course content and prompts interrelated connections between the subjects and their own service learning experiences. The author highlights the importance of setting a context for service learning through creating activities linked to learning goals, integrating service learning components with classroom teaching methods, and proactively engaging student apathy, resistance, and faith perspectives through specific assignments that combine experience, analysis, and subject matter. The course described in this essay directly contributed to the author's receiving the 2004 Fortress Press Award for Undergraduate Teaching.

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Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

ch. 1 The Quest for Meaning: Teaching Spirituality in Communication, Social Work, Nursing, and Leadership

ch. 2 The 'Invisible Institution' and a Disappearing Achievement Gap

ch. 3 An Empirical Study on Factors Influencing Parents' School Choice

ch. 4 Religion Inside the Schoolhouse Gate: Gatekeeping Forces and Religion Coverage in Public High School Newspapers

ch. 5 Teaching and the Seasons of Time: The Final Days of an Art Class

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This article discusses an experiential teaching method that uses secular activities that are simple, accessible, and analogous to religious practice in order to facilitate comparative religious study. These “analogous activities” – for example, social rituals, stillness, yoga, a social media fast, singing, nonviolent communication, and mindfulness meditation – provide a third point of reference that allows students to pivot between their understanding of religion and those of practitioners and scholars of religion. Experiential learning can be quite successful if deliberately sequenced to allow students to encounter a series of interpretive frameworks and structured with prompts and parameters that encourage reflection and critical analysis of their experience. In my course engaging in analogous activities not only impacted students' understanding of Asian religions, but also led them to question two previous assumptions: first, that religious beliefs were more important than religious practices, which is particularly problematic in regards to Asian religious traditions that place more emphasis on orthopraxy than orthodoxy, and second, that religion was something separate from one's everyday or lived reality.

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Biblical texts have been handed on to us through a long history of interpretation. Awareness of this rich but complex process is one of the goals of biblical teaching. Since the earliest centuries of the church there has been a parallel history of artistic interaction with the biblical text. These artistic treatments of biblical subjects have had a great cultural impact and have deeply influenced public perceptions and understandings of the Bible. Unfortunately, seldom does this history of artistic interpretation become a part of Bible courses. In this paper, I reflect on learnings from a serious effort to take artistic resources and methodologies into account in teaching Hebrew Bible in a theological school. My most successful efforts have employed the ancient Jewish interpretive method of midrash. Use of midrash opens new, imaginative possibilities that can enliven and extend our usual exegesis of texts. More specifically, midrash provides the ideal category for understanding artistic interactions with biblical texts. Through midrash students can understand artists to be both profound respecters of the power and integrity of biblical texts, while at the same time extending and entering into imaginative encounter with those texts. This article will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming book Arts, Theology, and the Church: New Intersections.

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One-page Teaching Tactic that taps into students' interest in and knowledge of Facebook to help them read the Bible's four Gospels with fresh eyes.

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Abstract: Following a long historical legacy, Muslim women’s lives continue to be represented and circulate widely as a vehicle of intercultural understanding within a context of the "war on terror." Following Edward Said’s thesis that these cultural forms reflect and participate in the power plays of empire, this volume examines the popular and widespread production and reception of Muslim women’s lives and narratives in literature, poetry, cinema, television and popular culture within the politics of a post-9/11 world. This edited collection provides a timely exploration into the pedagogical and ethical possibilities opened up by transnational, feminist, and anti-colonial readings that can work against sensationalized and stereotypical representations of Muslim women. It addresses the gap in contemporary theoretical discourse amongst educators teaching literary and cultural texts by and about Muslim Women, and brings scholars from the fields of education, literary and cultural studies, and Muslim women’s studies to examine the politics and ethics of transnational anti-colonial reading practices and pedagogy. The book features interviews with Muslim women artists and cultural producers who provide engaging reflections on the transformative role of the arts as a form of critical public pedagogy. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Contested Imaginaries of Reading Muslim Women and Muslim Women Reading Back (Jasmin Zine and Lisa K. Taylor)

Part I: Transnational Anti-Colonial Feminist Reading Practices
ch. 1 SUR/VEIL: The Veil as Blank(et) Signifier (Megan MacDonald)
ch. 2 Khamosh Pani: Reading Partition Muslim Masculinities and Femininities in an Age of Terror (Shahnaz Khan)
ch. 3 Breaking the Stigma? The Anti-Heroine in Fatih Akin’s Head On (Mine Eren)
ch. 4 Pedagogies of Solidarity in Suheir Hammad’s "First Writing Since" (Dana M. Olwan)

Part II: The Politics of Production and Reception
ch. 5 A Too-Quick Enthusiasm for the Other": North American Women’s Book Clubs and the Politics of Reading (Catherine Burwell)
ch. 6 Of Activist Fandoms, Auteur Pedagogy and Imperial Feminism: From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to "I am Du’a Khalil" (Trish Salah)

Part III: Transformative Pedagogies
ch. 7 Cartographies of Difference and Pedagogies of Peril: Muslim Girls and Women in Western Young Adult Fiction Novels (Jasmin Zine)
ch. 8 “Shaking Up" Vision: The Video Diary as Personal and Pedagogical Intervention in Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance (Mehre Gomez Fonseca)
ch. 9 From Empathy to Estrangement, From Enlightenment to Implication: A Pedagogical Framework for (Re)Reading Literary Desire Against the "Slow Acculturation of Imperialism" (Lisa K. Taylor)

Part IV: Reflections on Cultural Production
ch. 10 Interview with Mohja Kahf (Jasmin Zine)
ch. 11 Interview with Zarqa Nawaz (Jasmin Zine)
ch. 12 Interview with Rasha Salti (Rasha Salti and Lisa K. Taylor)
ch. 13 Interview with Tayyibah Taylor (Jasmin Zine)
ch. 14 Interview with Sofia Baig (Jasmin Zine)
ch. 15 Interview with Sahar Ullah (Jasmin Zine)
ch. 16 Interview with Jamelie Hassan (Lisa K. Taylor)

Contributors
Index

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Sexuality, more so than other subject areas, magnifies the embodied nature of teaching and learning as well as conspicuously silences open dialogue given its taboo status in many religious and theological contexts. Yet, student learning about sexuality that incorporates knowledge of and about religion, in particular, may greatly improve the public discourse about sexuality through our students as responsible citizens and as leaders in their chosen professions. To bridge this gap, through a year-long collaboration, a group of professors and instructors with expertise and experience teaching sexuality and religion in a variety of disciplines and diverse institutional and religious contexts developed, tested, and refined classroom teaching strategies to shift from a content-based “subject matter” to an embodied learning experience, resulting in perspective transformation as a primary student-learning outcome. Findings in the form of “guiding questions,” encourage instructors to attend to contextual, experiential, and performative aspects of the classroom environment.

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Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editorial
Religious Freedom and the Eye of the Beholder (Michael D. Waggoner)

Articles, Essays
ch. 1 Cultivating Commitment and Openness in the Christian College Context: A Study of the Institutional Predictors of Fallibilist Christian Spirituality (P. Jesse Rine)
ch. 2 African American Homeschoolers: The Force of Faith and the Reality of Race in the Homeschooling experience (Ama Mazama and Garvey Lundy)
ch. 3 When Yoga is Kosher but Kabbalah is Not: Spirituality and Cultural Appropriation in Jewish Education (Stuart Z. Charmé)
ch. 4 Not What Every Other Girl Wants: American Indian Women's Educational Aspirations (Maureen Snow Andrade)
ch. 5 Religious Issues in English Education: An Examination of the Filed (Robert Todd Bruce and Beatrice Bailey)

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How do we deal with our own sexuality as teachers and as learners in the classroom? As a seminary professor in a mainline Christian context, I find that discussing sexuality increases student discomfort levels by threatening to raise questions about the connections between morality, behavior, and bodies of those in the room – questions we have been culturally trained to avoid. In order to decrease discomfort, many instructors approach sexuality only as content-based subject matter. Particularly for ministry students, this approach can be a disservice to their discernment process and preparation for future ministry contexts, especially for those in turmoil regarding sexuality-related issues. By explicitly engaging how personal experience and cultural contexts shape our sexuality, pedagogical models can promote critical self-reflection and seek perspective transformation, not values change, as a resource for professional sexual ethics training in ministry.

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Many undergraduates are culturally shaped to avoid making ethical judgments. They spontaneously adopt relativist and skeptical strategies such as “It all depends,” or “Whose morality?” or “Who's to say?” as ways of fending off the challenge of making moral decisions. The current tsunami that is washing away traditional sexual norms is both a result and a cause of this cultural shift. Case studies can mitigate this decline and help students to grow in both confidence and ability to make good ethical judgments. The case method, used with a Socratic pedagogy, engages imagination and counters the deficits in empathy found in many contemporary students. It moves students toward understanding morality itself. Against skepticism, it assists students in exercising practical reason, culminating in decision. Five cases invite students to overcome extreme relativism, to look for and evaluate relevant differences, and to enter into ethical discussion with other students on the sexual issues they face in their college years.

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After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Foreword (Noah Pickus)
Acknowledgments

I. Introduction: Why the Return to Ethics? Why Now?
ch. 1 Debating Moral Education: An Introduction (Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben)
ch. 2 The Changing Contours of Moral Education in American Colleges and Universities (Julie Reuben)

II. What Are Universities For?
ch. 3 Aim High: A Response to Stanley Fish (Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben)
ch. 4 I Know It When I See It: A Reply to Kiss and Euben (Stanley Fish)
ch. 5 The Pathos of the University: The Case of Stanley Fish (Stanley Hauerwas)
ch. 6 On the Distribution of Moral Badges: A Few Worries (Elizabeth V. Spelman)

III. The Politics and Ethics of Higher Education
ch. 7 Pluralism and the Education of the Spirit (Wilson Carey McWilliams and Susan McWilliams)
ch. 8 Multiculturalism and Moral Education (Lawrence Blum)
ch. 9 Against Civic Education (James Bernard Murphy)
ch. 10 Education, Independence, and Acknowledgment (Patchen Markell)
ch. 11 The Power of Morality (George Shulman)
ch. 12 Hunger, Ethics, and the University: A Radical Democratic Goad in Ten Pieces (Romand Coles)

IV. Which Virtues? Whose Character?
ch. 13 Is There an Ethicist in the House? How Can We Tell? (David A. Hoekema)
ch. 14 The Possibility of Moral Education in the University Today (J. Donald Moon)
ch. 15 Is a Humanistic Education Humanizing? (Ruth W. Grant)
ch. 16 Players and Spectators: Sports and Ethical Training in the American University (Michael Allen Gillespie)

Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Additional Info:
Georgia State University associate professor of religious studies, Molly Bassett, writes about a dual-level course she's teaching for a third time this fall titled "Religious Dimensions in Human Experience.” Part 2, is a reflection by one of her former graduate students, Sarah Levine, who took the course the first time Bassett taught it in the fall of 2010.

Additional Info:
Wisdom or questing to know God and the world evokes fear through case studies of the controversial Reimagining Conference and the race related responses to the O. J. Simpson verdict, the fear of knowing God (which included the fear of questioning dominant metaphors of God) and the fear of knowing ourselves are explored. From this analysis, a view of wisdom is proposed and also an approach to education that inspires and encourages people to seek to know and respond to God and the world.

Additional Info:
One page Teaching Tactic: scaffolded short, "in character" writing assignments in an online course, to foster critical reflection on different sides of an argument.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue. (This issue, and all "Spotlight on Teaching" issues prior to 1999, are not available on the AAR website.)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Cases and Course Design (Robert L. Stivers)
ch. 2 Case Writing and Teaching in a Seminary: Reflecting on Ministry Experience (V. Sue Zabel)
ch. 3 Law and Order: Waco, Texas, 1993, Revisited (Leland E. Elhard)
ch. 4 Sopater's Body (David E. Frederickson)
ch. 5 Adult Learners, Feminist Practices, and the Use of Cases (Carol Allen)
ch. 6 A Study of Case Studies (Anne Reissner)
ch. 7 Case Studies and the Teaching of History (Garth M. Rosell)

Additional Info:
Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Editor's Preface

Articles, Essays

ch. 1 How School Law Scholars Teach about Religion in Public Schools: An Analysis of Graduate and Undergraduate Textbooks (Suzanne E. Eckes)

ch. 2 Finding Congruence, Finding Meaning: Value Intersections and Transforming Relationships among Faculty and Staff at a Religious College (Alyssa N. Bryant, Christy Moran Craft)

ch. 3 Asking Sacred Questions: Understanding Religion's Impact on Teacher Belief and Action (Kimberly White)

ch. 4 The Evolving Place of Research on Religion in the American Educational Research Association (Jason Nelson)

Resource Reviews
ch. 5 A Buddhist in the Classroom

ch. 6 American Educational History: School, Society, and the Common Good

ch. 7 Education about Religions and Beliefs (ERB) Clearninghouse

Additional Info:
One page Teaching Tactic: begins discussion of human sexuality and the Bible from students' social context rather than “what does the Bible say?” -- derails the rush to judgment and demonstrates the multiplicity of sexuality “issues” in the room.

Additional Info:
The Bible is a non-western text subject to a variety of interpretations and applications – constructive and destructive. The academic study of the Bible, therefore, requires critical thinking skills and the ability to engage with diversity. The reality is that most first-year college students have not yet developed these skills. Rather than bemoan students' lack of development, the essay explores ways of teaching and applying critical thinking within the context of an introductory Religion course. The essay claims that first-year college students can better learn the content of the discipline and function in a pluralistic world if the teaching of critical thinking skills is a part of the pedagogy.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Intercultural and Transnational Pedagogy: Editors' Introduction (Ellen Posman, and Reid B. Locklin)
ch. 2 Thoughts on Intercultural Education in Religious Studies (Edwin David)
ch. 3 The 2010 Census and the Undergraduate Classroom (Philip Wingeier-Rayo)
ch. 4 Teaching Buddhism, Teaching Otherness?: “Many Buddhisms” in Transnational Chicago (Anne Mocko)
ch. 5 Chi, Postcolonial Theory, and Theological Pedagogy (Grace Ji-Sun Kim)
ch. 6 Interrogating the University Archive (Gregory Lee Cuéllar)
ch. 7 Teaching Religion and Theology: Intercultural and Transnational Online Resources (Jonathan Y. Tan)
ch. 8 Intercultural and Transnational Pedagogies: Suggested Resources

Additional Info:
Can students learn religious history from movies? While using film as text is likely to attract students' interest, will such a course be able to negotiate the complex intertwining of film with religion and history to provide students with more than mere entertainment? Will students respond to a challenge to move beyond a movie's surface visual experience to address the core lessons history posits: it's not always been this way, we are the product of what has come before us, I/we are being called to change? This article discusses one attempt to answer these questions and examines both the opportunities and difficulties of using movies to teach religious history.

Additional Info:
One page Teaching Tactic: How to start classroom discussions about sensitive issues such as human sexuality

Additional Info:
This article proposes strategies for teaching about sexuality in Islam through student-centered learning activities, such as self-reflection, multimedia presentations, and small group discussions. We focus on a diversity of perspectives related to veiling in Islam. The approaches we describe help students deconstruct and reevaluate common U.S. cultural assumptions that equate veiling in Islam with the oppression of Muslim women. Through the use of Likert scale questionnaires and written reflection papers, we have found that students are able to acknowledge and distinguish a multiplicity of perspectives regarding veiling and sexuality in Islam after they have been introduced to academic scholarship on the history of veiling, and after they have had multiple opportunities to engage in small and large group discussions on the topic.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue

Table Of Content:
Contributors

Ch 1. Harnessing the Power of Storytelling in the Hindu Studies Classroom and Beyond (Raj Balkaran)
Ch 2. Teaching Stories about Teaching Self: Upaniṣadic Narrative in the Classroom (Steven E. Lindquist)
Ch 3. Innovative Narrative Strategies in Hinduism Textbooks (Hillary Rodrigues)
Ch 4. Teaching Tales: Mokashi’s “Religious” Narratives (Jeffrey M. Brackett)
Ch 5. The Dynamic Canon of the Purāṇas and the Ethnography of the Classroom (Elizabeth M. Rohlman)
Ch 6. Teaching Hindu Stories as Ways of Fashioning Selves and Framing Lives (Shana Sippy)
Ch 7. Narrative Pedagogy and Transmedia Balancing (Caleb Simmons)

Resources

Additional Info:
Journal Issue. In this issue of Spotlight, contributors suggest that the shift to online education involves a complex process of translation. Not unlike language translation, translation from traditional educational models to online environments requires a greater or lesser reconceptualization of education itself. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Translating Religion Courses to an Online Format: Introduction (Ellen Posman, and Reid B. Locklin)
ch. 2 Rethinking Online Education (Sandie Gravett)
ch. 3 Introducing Religion to Cyberstudents (Erica Hurwitz Andrus)
ch. 4 Diversity in Online Education (Andrew T. Arroyo)
ch. 5 Hybrid or Blended Teaching Formats: What and Why (John T. Strong)
ch. 6 Dancing Online with Your Students (Marla J. Selvidge)
ch. 7 The Challenge of Online Education (John Baumann)
ch. 8 The Internet Is Not a Classroom: Online Education and the Challenges of Socialization (Annie Blazer, and Brandi Denison)
ch. 9 Navigating the Sea of Cyberspace (Justin Arft)
ch. 10 Translating Religion Courses to an Online Format: Suggested Resources

Additional Info:
Is it feasible for nonfluent instructors to teach Biblical Hebrew by communicative principles? If it is feasible, will communicative instruction enhance postsecondary learning of a classical language? To begin answering these questions, two consultants representing second language acquisition (SLA) and technology-assisted language learning led 8 Biblical Hebrew instructors and a graduate assistant through a 3-year process involving study of SLA principles, development of Biblical Hebrew classroom manuals, training of teachers, and field-testing of materials with more than 90 students in 7 institutions. More than two-thirds of the students and all instructors found the communicative approach both effective and preferable to grammar-translation and audiolingual methods customarily employed for learning classical languages.

Additional Info:
This article presents a particular teaching strategy that involves using food playfully in the classroom in order to change the mood, generate different forms of learning, and prod students to connect food and religion. I offer a rationale for teaching with food, then provide an application from a university course on Gnosticism. My goal is to encourage college and university teachers of religion to take food, and play, more seriously in their teaching.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Religion, Education and Critical Thinking

Articles, Essays
ch. 1 Misinterpreting the Spirit and Heart: Religious and Paradigmatic Tension in Ethnographic Research (Peter Magolda, Kelsey Ebben Gross)
ch. 2 Moderate Ultra-Orthodoxy: Complexity and Nuance in American Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Moshe Krakowski)
ch. 3 The Impact of Religious Studies Courses: Measuring Change in College Students' Attitudes (Bret Lewis)
ch. 4 Freedom to Hold or Not to Hold Group Beliefs: The Case of Religious Beliefs in French and Polish Public School Textbooks(Sebastien Urbanski)
ch. 5 Integrating Client Religious Beliefs in Counseling: Evolving Theory, Research, Education, and Practice (Jennifer R. Curry, Leila F. Roach)

Resource Review
ch. 6 Religious Diversity and Children's Literature: Strategies and Resources (Shabana Mir)

Additional Info:
Click Here for Book Review
Abstract: There is still resistance in Christian institutions to interreligious dialogue. Many feel that such a practice weakens Christian faith, and promotes the idea that Christianity is merely one among many different religious options. When it comes to higher education, there is the fear that both college and seminary students will “lose their faith” if they are invited to study other religious traditions from a positive perspective.

Unfortunately, this attitude belies the current culture in which we live, which constantly exposes us to the beliefs and practices of others. Kristin Johnston Largen sees this setting as an opportunity and seeks to provide not only the theological grounding for such a position but also some practical advice on how both to teach and live out this conviction in a way that promotes greater understanding and respect for others and engenders a deeper appreciation of one’s own faith tradition.

Largen’s synopsis of interreligious education and suggested action includes contributions by Mary E. Hess and Christy Lohr Sapp. Hess and Sapp provide practical commentary regarding the successful implementation of Largen’s proposed approach. As a group, Largen, Hess, and Sapp create a text that extends pedagogical innovation in inspiring but practical ways. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
ch. 1 Our Interreligious Life in the Twenty-First Century North American Context (Kristin Johnston Largen)
Chapter Praxis Points (Christy Lohr Sapp)
Praxis Point #1
Praxis Point #2
Praxis Point #3
Praxis Point #4
Praxis Point #5
Praxis Point #6
Chapter Response: What are Students’ Questions? (Mary Hess)

ch. 2 A Christian Rationale for Interreligious Teaching and Learning (Kristin Johnston Largen)
Chapter Praxis Points (Christy Lohr Sapp)
Praxis Point #7
Praxis Point #8
Praxis Point #9
Chapter Response: How Do We Understand Student Learning? (Mary Hess)

ch. 3 Outcomes, Strategies, and Assessment for Interreligious Teaching and Learning (Kristin Johnston Largen)
Chapter Praxis Points (Christy Lohr Sapp)
Praxis Point #10
Praxis Point #11
Praxis Point #12
Chapter Response: How Do Theological of the Pluralism of Faith Help? (Mary Hess)

Epilogue
Returning to the Questions with Which We Begin (Mary Hess)
Endings and Beginnings (Kristin Johnston Largen)
Works Cited
Photo Credits

Additional Info:
Journal Issue. (This issue, and all "Spotlight on Teaching" issues prior to 1999, are not available on the AAR website.)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Cases and Course Design (Robert L. Stivers)
ch. 2 Case Writing and Teaching in a Seminary: Reflecting on Ministry Experience (V. Sue Zabel)
ch. 3 Law and Order: Waco, Texas, 1993, Revisited (Leland E. Elhard)
ch. 4 Sopater's Body (David E. Frederickson)
ch. 5 Adult Learners, Feminist Practices, and the Use of Cases (Carol Allen)
ch. 6 A Study of Case Studies (Anne Reissner)
ch. 7 Case Studies and the Teaching of History (Garth M. Rosell)

Additional Info:
A case of community-based service learning in the School of Theology at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa is analyzed for what it means to teach biblical studies in an African context where biblical scholarship is partially constituted by ordinary African readers of the Bible and where context is a central pedagogical concept. Reflecting on a series of experiments over the past ten years in two second-year University level modules, the article analyzes the contours of a partnership between the academy and local communities of the poor, working-class, and marginalized through community-based service learning. This partnership provides a form of contextualization that enables students to integrate the forms of engagement with the Bible they bring to their formal theological studies and the forms of critical distance that characterize the discipline of biblical studies.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue. (This issue, and all "Spotlight on Teaching" issues prior to 1999, are not available on the AAR website.)

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Insider, Outsider, and Gender Identities in the Religion Classroom (Laurie L. Patton) ch. 2 Crossovers and Cross-ups: A Cautionary (NancyFalk)
ch. 3 Mindfield or Mindfield: Teaching Religion in a Multicultural Classroom (Zayn R. Kassam)
ch. 4 Taking Myself Seriously: Transformation of a Working Pedagogical Model (Marcia Y. Riggs)
ch. 5 Spotlight on Teaching: Insider/Outsider (Francisca Cho)
ch. 6 Holy Shock at Sacred Cities: "Rocks Are not my Problem" "Why aren't Women Allowed to make the Pilgrimage to Mecca?" (Kimberly Patton)
ch. 7 Teaching Critical Theory (Miriam Peskowitz)

Additional Info:
An entire special issue of “Teaching Theology and Religion” on the topic of addressing sexuality in the classroom (in both undergraduate and theological education contexts).  

Table Of Content:
Ch 1. Embodied Learning: Teaching Sexuality and Religion to a Changing Student Body (Kate Ott, Darryl W. Stephens)
Ch 2. Inviting Perspective Transformation: Sexual History Awareness for Professional Formation (Kate Ott)
Ch 3. Case Method Strategies for Teaching Sexual Ethics to Relativists and Skeptics (Edward Vacek)
Ch 4. Trigger Warnings, Covenants of Presence and More: Cultivating Safe Space for Theological Discussions about Sexual Trauma (Stephanie M. Crumpton)
Ch 5. Sexual and Religious Autobiography (Kent L. Brintnall)
Ch 6. Safely Discussing What Cannot Be Said Out Loud (Patricia Beattle Jung)
Ch 7. Beginning with Social Context: Human Sexuality and the Bible (Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre)
Ch 8. Actively Listening to Testimonies about Rape Culture and Religion (Traci C. West)
Ch 9. Getting a Sense of the Room When Discussing Sexuality (Darryl W. Stephens)
Ch 10. Teaching about Sexuality and Veiling in Islam (Amy Defibaugh, Brett Krutzsch)
Ch 11. Civic Learning and Teaching as a Resource for Sexual Justice: An Undergraduate Religious Studies Course Module (Elisabeth T. Vasko)
Ch 12. A Response to Elisabeth T. Vasko: The Risk and Reward of Teaching About Sexual Assault for the Theologian on a Catholic Campus (Donna Freitas)
Ch 13. Teaching Sexuality and Christianity for Perspective Transformation: Suggested Resources and Strategies (Katia Moles)
Ch 14. Teaching about Teaching Sexuality and Religion (Daryl W. Stephens)

Additional Info:
It is a commonplace that scholarship and teaching inform one another. Minimally, this means that the materials of research guide the formation of a syllabus. In courses that are introductory, however, teachers are called to reflect on the foundations of their scholarship. In this task, teaching serves to unsettle and provoke research, not only in the decision of what books to teach, but also in the course's argument. I propose that this argument be directed not toward a field in some ideal shape but toward the more elementary concepts of course, canon, and introduction themselves, since teaching an introductory course is perforce to consider the very nature of introduction. The three concepts of introduction, canon, and course are integral to thinking across the arts and sciences, nowhere more so than in the study of religion, where the work of Jonathan Z. Smith has tunneled, if only partially, into their paradoxes.

Additional Info:
Southern fiction writer Flannery O'Connor once characterized the South as Christ-haunted, and having taught in the South for eight years now, I have come to appreciate O'Connor's evaluation. Most of the students I encounter understand one predominant way to practice Christian faith: assent to propositional theology. Most of them either accept this view uncritically or reject Christian thought completely, seeing it as stifling. My goal is to introduce the diversity of Christian thought in a non-threatening way. Knowing story's potential to draw people into community as well as to transform consciousness, I believe story offers a less threatening way to invite students to explore diversity. This paper describes a course titled "Christian Thought and Contemporary Short Fiction," a course I developed to try to introduce students to a variety of ways to understand Christian thought and practice Christian faith. The paper describes development and facilitation of the course, including student responses to the course content and evaluation of the course.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue.

Table Of Content:
Articles, Essays
ch. 1 (Mis) Understanding Islam in a Suburban Texas School District (Miriam D. Ezzani and Melanie C. Brooks)
ch. 2 Uncovered: Two Generations of African American Muslim Parents Speak Out About Education (Aisha El-Amin)
ch. 3 Religious Beliefs, Knowledge, and Teaching Actions: Elementary Teacher Candidates and World Religions (Derek Anderson, Holly Mathys and Tanya Cook)
ch. 4 When the Children Asked to Study God, What Did the Parents Say: Building Family Engagement Around Sensitive Topics (Mona M. Abo-Zena and Ben Mardell)
ch. 5 Exploratory Study of Professional and Personal Beliefs of Early Childhood Teachers in Public Schools: Their Perceptions of Religiousness and Teaching Efficacy (Shin Ji Kang)
ch. 6 Curricular Documents and the Positioning of Teachers and Students in Catholic Schools: The Cult of Personality (Kevin J. Burke)
ch. 7 Supporting Minority Belonging: Finnish Minority RE Teacher Perspectives on the Significance of RE (Harriet Zilliacus and Arto Kallioniemi)
ch. 8 “If It Feels Good…”: Research on School Selection Process Motives Among Parents of Young Children (Ina ter Avest, Gerdien Bertram-Troost and Siebren Miedema)

Additional Info:
This paper explores the use of Peter Berger's theory of religion and its features of alienation and dealienation to lead students to the critical awareness of the role that human beings play in the construction of social worlds, including most especially our religious worlds. After summarizing Berger's theory of the alienating and potentially dealienating capacity of religion, the paper describes how the author used the study of certain biblical texts, the Wisdom of Solomon and the pericope of the controversy over clean and unclean foods, as presented in both Matthew and Mark, to explore both the alienating and dealienating aspects of religion as presented in these selected biblical texts. The paper also describes how the author encouraged students to embrace as the most responsible stance a dealienating stance toward religion, especially one's own.

Additional Info:
Teaching biblical studies in the undergraduate liberal arts classroom poses many challenges. Do biblical studies deserve a place at a secular liberal arts college? In church-affiliated colleges, should courses in Bible toe the denominational line? Can we claim that biblical studies advance the goals of liberal education, whatever we might think they are?

On a more practical level, how can an instructor engage the attention of students who are taking a course in biblical studies only to fulfill a requirement? How best to begin with students from non-religious backgrounds who begin a course with no real knowledge of the Bible at all? How best to deal with students who already think they know what the Bible is all about, and resist any ideas or approaches that might threaten their ideas?

This collection of pedagogical essays reflects the practical experience of instructors who have spent years teaching biblical studies successfully to undergraduates at liberal arts colleges. The essays address both methodological approaches and specific classroom strategies for teaching biblical studies effectively in a way that advances the skills of thinking and expression that are essential to a liberal arts education. The product of several years of conversation among working professors from an array of liberal arts colleges, these essays offer insights and inspiration for biblical studies instructors who work in a very specific and demanding academic environment. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Part I: Biblical Studies In The Liberal Arts
ch. 1 A Forensic Rationale for Biblical Studies in American Liberal Education (Matthew C. Baldwin)
ch. 2 Occupy Academic Bible Teaching (Susanne Scholz)
ch. 3 Challenges to Teaching Biblical Literature as a General Education Requirement (Stan Harstine and Phillip Wisely)
ch. 4 ‘Not as the Scribes’: Teaching Biblical Studies in the Liberal Arts Curriculum (Glenn S. Holland)
ch. 5 What Do Athens and Jerusalem Have to Do with Sioux Falls? (Murray Joseph Haar and Anna Madesen)
ch. 6 Teaching the Bible in a Secular School (Christian Brady)
ch. 7 Engaging Diverse Students in a Required Biblical Studies Course (Margaret P. Cowan)
ch. 8 Arts Integration and Service-Learning in Introduction to Biblical Literature (Sharon Betsworth)
ch. 9 The Role of the Upper-Level Biblical Studies Seminar (Benjamin White)

Part II: Pedagogical Theory and Biblical Studies
ch. 10 Teaching the Material and Teaching the Students (Shane Kirkpatrick
ch. 11 Service-Learning in Undergraduate Biblical Studies Courses (Janet S. Everhart)
ch. 12 The Reality of Multiple Voices in Biblical Religion (J. Bradley Chance)
ch. 13 Collaborative Learning and the Pedagogy of the Bible (Alison Schofield)
ch. 14 Shifting Contexts and Goals for Introducing the Bible (Bryan D. Bibb)

Part III: Case Studies
ch. 15 Bible-Trek, Next Generation: Adapting a Bible Survey Course for a New Audience (Jonathan David Lawrence)
ch. 16 Dildos and Dismemberment: Reading Difficult Biblical Texts Classroom (Janet Everhart)
ch. 17 Reading Textual Violence as ‘Real’ Violence (Amy C. Cottrill)
ch. 18 Engaging Students Online: Using Wiki Technology (Carl Toney)
ch. 19 What’s the Harm in Harmonization? Using Jesus Films (Margaret E. Ramey)
ch. 20 Teaching with Meta-questions (Jane S. Webster)
ch. 21 Course Design and the Use of Meta-Questions (Russell Arnold)
ch. 22 Biblical Studies and Metacognitive Reading Skills (Rodney K. Duke)
ch. 23 Teaching Revelation to the Left Behind Generation (Susan E. Hylen)

Additional Info:
A project team developing resources for teaching Biblical languages using methods borrowed from the field of Second Language Acquisition used for modern languages. 

Additional Info:
Journal issue. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies: Pedagogical Challenges and Strategies (Bernadette McNary-Zak and Rebecca Todd Peters)
ch. 2 Learning Contracts in Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies (Lynn R. Huber)
ch. 3 Close Reading for Undergraduate Research (Carolyn Jones Medine)
ch. 4 Journal Writing for Undergraduate Research (Jeffrey Brackett)
ch. 5 Transferring Undergraduate Research Pedagogies to the Classroom (John R. Lanci)
ch. 6 Undergraduate Research as Collaborative Pedagogy and Research (Paul O. Myhre, and Brandon Cornett)
ch. 7 Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies: References and Resources

Additional Info:
Journal Issue. Full text is available online.

Table Of Content:
ch. 1 Teaching for Civic Engagement: Background and Overview (Ellen Posman, and Reid B. Locklin)
ch. 2 Engaged Pedagogy and Civic Engagement (Swasti Bhattacharyya)
ch. 3 Site Visits and Civic Engagement (Marianne Delaporte, and Hans Wiersma)
ch. 4 Civic Engagement and International Service-Learning (Philip Wingeier-Rayo)
ch. 5 Civic Engagement and Civic Spaces (Rebekka King)
ch. 6 Reflections on Engaged Civic Learning and Teaching (Bobbi Patterson)
ch. 7 Teaching for Civic Engagement: Suggested Resources

Additional Info:
University teaching and learning take place within ever more specialized disciplinary settings, each characterized by its unique traditions, concepts, practices and procedures. It is now widely recognized that support for teaching and learning needs to take this discipline-specificity into account. However, in a world characterized by rapid change, complexity and uncertainty, problems do not present themselves as distinct subjects but increasingly within trans-disciplinary contexts calling for graduate outcomes that go beyond specialized knowledge and skills. This ground-breaking book highlights the important interplay between context-specific and context-transcendent aspects of teaching, learning and assessment. It explores critical questions, such as:

What are the ‘ways of thinking and practicing’ characteristic of particular disciplines? How can students be supported in becoming participants of particular disciplinary discourse communities?

Can the diversity in teaching, learning and assessment practices that we observe across departments be attributed exclusively to disciplinary structure?

To what extent do the disciplines prepare students for the complexities and uncertainties that characterize their later professional, civic and personal lives?

Written for university teachers, educational developers as well as new and experienced researchers of Higher Education, this highly-anticipated first edition offers innovative perspectives from leading Canadian, US and UK scholars on how academic learning within particular disciplines can help students acquire the skills, abilities and dispositions they need to succeed academically and also post graduation.

Carolin Kreber is Professor of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment at the University of Edinburgh (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Figures and tables
Contributors
Forword
Preface
Acknowledgments

Part I: Introduction - Setting The Context
ch. 1 Supporting Student Learning in the Context of Diversity, Complexity and Uncertanity
ch. 2 The Modern Research University and its Disciplines: The Interplay between Contextual and Context-transcendent Influences on Teaching

Part II: Disciplines and Their Epistemological Structure
ch. 3 (research-based) The Commons: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters
ch. 4 (reactive) Academic Disciplines: Homes or Barricades?
ch. 5 (reactive) Hard and Soft - A Useful Way of Thinking about Disciplines? Reflections from Engineering Education on Disciplinary Identities

Part III: Ways of Thinking and Practicing
ch. 6 (researched-based) Ways of Thinking and Practicing in Biology and History: Disciplinary Aspects of Teaching and Learning Environments
ch. 7 (reactive) Exploring Disciplinary in Academic Development: Do Ways of Thinking and Practicing Help Faculty to Think about Learning and Teaching?
ch. 8 (reactive) Opening History's Black Boxes: Decoding the Disciplinary Unconscious of Historians

Part IV: Exploring Disciplinary Teaching and Learning From a Socio-Cultural Perspective
ch. 9 (research-based) Guiding Students into a Discipline: The Significance of the Teacher
ch. 10 (reactive) Diverse Student Voices within Disciplinary Discourses
ch. 11 (reactive) Guiding Students into a Discipline: The Significance of the Student's View

Part V: Learning Partnerships In Disciplinary Learning
ch. 12 (research-based) Educating Students for Self-Authorship: Learning Partnerships to Achieve Complex Outcomes
ch. 13 (reactive) Supporting Student Development In and Beyond the Disciplines: The Role of the Curriculum
ch. 14 (reactive) Constraints to Implementing Learning Partnership Models and Self-Authorship in the Arts and Humanities

Part VI: Disciplines And Their Interactions With Teaching And Learning Regimes
ch. 15 (research-based) Beyond Epistemological Essentialism: Academic Tribes in the Twenty-First Century
ch. 16 (reactive) Exploring Teaching and Learning Regimes in Higher Education Settings
ch. 17 (reactive) Teaching and Learning Regimes from Within: Significant Networks as a Locus for the Social Construction of Teaching and Learning

Part VII: General Observations On Previous Themes
ch. 18 Assessment for Career and Citizenship
ch. 19 Teaching Within and Beyond the Disciplines: The Challenge for Faculty

Index

Additional Info:
This article explores assignments as a core teaching practice essential to integrating the cognitive, personal, and professional identities of seminary students. These core practices emerge in seminary curricula where there is a strong focus on the teaching of canonical texts and a goal of achieving textual mastery. We propose that carefully chosen and constructive assignments achieve the kind of integration necessary for building content knowledge and the professional, spiritual, and religious identities of our students. While the difference between the educational goals of clergy-training in a seminary and training graduate students in the academy can be sharp, we argue here for ways to make that contrast both productive and generative.

Additional Info:
Journal Issue.

Additional Info:
Finding ways to reduce students' anxiety and maximize the value of learning Greek and Hebrew is a continual challenge for biblical language teachers. Some language teachers use technology tools such as web sites or CDs with audio lessons to improve the experience. Though these tools are helpful, this paper explores the value gained from understanding first how students learn and then how technology tools best support that learning. Developments in cognitive psychology and neuroscience offer many insights concerning adult learning and retention. After a presentation of key insights, several ideas are suggested for enhancing the learning and retention experience of biblical language students.

Additional Info:
In its creative integration of the disciplines of writing, rhetoric, and theology, Writing Theology Well provides a standard text for theological educators engaged in the teaching and mentoring of writing across the theological curriculum. As a theological rhetoric, it will also encourage excellence in theological writing in the public domain by helping to equip students for their wider vocations as writers, preachers, and communicators in a variety of ministerial and professional contexts. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Acknowledgments
Preface

Part I Writing Theological Rhetorics Well
ch. 1 Writing Theology Well in Its Own Context
ch. 2 Writing Theological Reflection Well: Rhetorics of Process, Problem Solving, and Proclamation
ch. 3 Writing Theological Argument Well: Rhetorics of Inquiry, Reading, Reflection, and Persuasion
ch. 4 Writing the Theological Essay Well: Rhetorics of Identification, Correlation, Suspicion, and Construction

Part II Writing Theological and Biblical Research Well
ch. 5 Writing Theological Research Well (I): Rhetorics of Research and Investigation
ch. 6 Writing Theological Research Well (II): Rhetorics of Organization and Documentation
ch. 7 Writing the Biblical Essay Well (I): Rhetorics of Exegesis and Interpretation
ch. 8 Writing the Biblical Essay Well (II): A Critical-Hermeneutical Rhetoric

Part III Toward a Theological Style and Voice of Your Own
ch. 9 Writing with Theological Imagination Well: Rhetorics of Analogy, Metaphor, and Symbol
ch. 10 Rewriting Theology Well (I): Rhetorics of Style and Voice
ch. 11 Rewriting Theology Well (II): Rhetorics of Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs
ch. 12 Rewriting Theology Well (III): A Rhetoric of Revision

Epilogue: Writing Theology Well in Your New Context: From Writing for Professors to Writing with a Professional Voice
Notes
Index