Pedagogy and Practice: Using Wisdom Ways in the Classroom

Abstract. The Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies Section of the Society of Biblical Literature chose Wisdom Ways, by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, as the basis for a discussion on teaching at its November 1902 meeting in Toronto. Each presenter commented on the underlying pedagogy of the book, sharing exercises and assignments they had used in their classrooms to help students interpret the materials, especially from a feminist and/or liberationist perspective. Adapted from the SBL presentations, this is a different type of review essay that describes the use of a book in three different settings: a free‐standing seminary, a state university, and a university‐affiliated divinity school. These three distinct contexts are in turn the settings for three individual pedagogical styles. The result is a conversation among author, teachers, text, and students that illustrates the interplay of teaching, learning, and context.     

Discovering New Ways of Moving: Observational Analysis of Motor Creativity While Dancing Contact Improvisation and the Influence of the Partner

Contact improvisation (CI) is a form of dance based on motor creativity, improvisation and the physical contact between different improvisers dancing together. This will generate different ways of moving and a varied use of motor creativity depending on the dancers involved. This study aims to observe the differences in movement generation depending on the partner by using OSMOS (Observational System of Motor Skills; Castañer & Camerino 2006; Castañer et al., 2009). Four contact improvisers were video‐recorded while dancing in duets. Data were analysed by three observers using Theme Coder software (Magnusson, 1996) for the detection of T‐patterns and the production of event frequency charts. The results show that (1) the motor skills that appear most frequently are the conduction of partners, elevations, spatial level changes and turns; (2) motor creativity is affected by the partner, as there is a reciprocal influence in the dance; and (3) motor creativity is enhanced by interaction with a partner.     

The Spacious Mind: Using Archetypes for Transformation Towards Wisdom

The spacious mind model combines Hindu and Buddhist philosophy on spiritual maturity with the Jungian view on psychological maturity to delineate how archetypal work can spur the development of wisdom. Both psychological and spiritual development defuse the ego's hold on reality to create a spacious mind that has contact with the spiritual Self. To explain such a transformation, this article discusses 5 parts of the mind: the ego, the conscious, the unconscious, the archetype, and the Self. The innovative features here are an integrated view of spiritual and psychological development, and the insight that archetypal work can be a mechanism for growth in both domains, because an archetype resides in the energetic plane with the Self and in the conscious mind with the ego.     

Ways of Using Words: On Semantic Intentions

Intentionalism is the view that demonstratives, gradable adjectives, quantifiers, modals and other context-sensitive expressions are intention-sensitive: their semantic value on a given use is fixed by speaker intentions. The first aim of this paper is to defend Intentionalism against three recent objections, according to which speakers at least sometimes do not have suitable intentions when using supposedly intention-sensitive expressions. Its second aim is to thereby shed light on the so far little-explored question of which kinds of intentions can be semantically relevant.     

人慧与物慧:基于智慧描述词与提名智慧者的分类

为揭示一般人内隐的智慧分类机制及智慧类型,考察了51名硕士生对智慧描述词和提名智慧者的分类。多维标度分析与聚类分析表明,40个智慧描述词的语义空间包括人文才能/科技才能和内在特质/外在表现两个维度,分为自然科学才能、社会科学才能和人文科学才能三类;40个提名智慧者的语义空间包括自然科学者/人文社科者和人际间的/个人内的两个维度,分为自然智慧者、社会智慧者和人文智慧者三类。综合分类结果及中西智慧文化,根据智慧内包含才能或能力的性质或要解决的问题性质,智慧可分为人慧与物慧两大类型。     

The Wisdom of Individuals: Exploring People's Knowledge About Everyday Events Using Iterated Learning

Determining the knowledge that guides human judgments is fundamental to understanding how people reason, make decisions, and form predictions. We use an experimental procedure called 'iterated learning,' in which the responses that people give on one trial are used to generate the data they see on the next, to pinpoint the knowledge that informs people's predictions about everyday events (e.g., predicting the total box office gross of a movie from its current take). In particular, we use this method to discriminate between two models of human judgments: a simple Bayesian model ( Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006 ) and a recently proposed alternative model that assumes people store only a few instances of each type of event in memory (Min K ; Mozer, Pashler, & Homaei, 2008 ). Although testing these models using standard experimental procedures is difficult due to differences in the number of free parameters and the need to make assumptions about the knowledge of individual learners, we show that the two models make very different predictions about the outcome of iterated learning. The results of an experiment using this methodology provide a rich picture of how much people know about the distributions of everyday quantities, and they are inconsistent with the predictions of the Min K model. The results suggest that accurate predictions about everyday events reflect relatively sophisticated knowledge on the part of individuals.     

Wisdom as Parental Teaching in Proverbs 1–9

It is the contention of this article that Proverbs chs. 1–9 is a literary unity in which wisdom has the denotation of the parental household teaching. Teachings which have other contexts in other parts of the Old Testament have in Pr. 1–9 a parental teaching context. Besides denoting the parental teaching, personified speaking Wisdom has the personal features of a teacher. Both Wisdom's features and her message serve to reinforce the parental teaching. Personified Wisdom also denotes the teaching of the entire Book of Proverbs. Through the device of personified Wisdom, the wisdom of Solomon enshrined in the Book of Proverbs is re-located from the royal court to the individual Israelite household. This is evident in the literary design of the book. It also reflects the situation of the book's redaction in post-exilic Judaism.     

McSexy: Exotic Dancing and Institutional Power

A growing body of research is exploring the relationship between power and women's sexuality in occupations that involve the vending of sex or the sale of sexuality. Previous research has examined power in the field of exotic dancing on the individual level and at the interactional/organizational level. This research examines dancer power at the institutional level. Data were gleaned from interviews with 133 female dancers in several cities and level of clubs.     

舞蹈治疗:从身体到心灵

现代舞蹈理论之父拉班早在 20世纪上半叶就曾发出呼吁,"现代化劳动习惯经常造成对心灵的损害,如果不找到补救方法,整个人类文化必定遭殃"。在一切工作领域均应艺术地创造节奏化、流畅的工作程序,从而避免过度紧张带来的疲劳和过度松弛带来的懒惰。舞蹈在现代社会应承担更多的社会责任:身心健康方面的、教育方面的、社会改造方面的。     

Practical Wisdom: On Theological Teaching and Learning – Edited by Malcolm L. Warford

Books reviewed: Practical Wisdom: On Theological Teaching and Learning. Edited by Malcolm L. Warford. New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2004. xiv + 283 pages. ISBN 0‐8204‐7263‐8.     

Dancing faith: contemporary Christian dance in Norway

ABSTRACT

Although dance is a common religious expression, its place in the Christian tradition has been contested. In modern Protestant Norway, dance has mostly been considered irrelevant to church life or even sinful. In recent decades, however, dance has become increasingly common in Norwegian churches. The present analysis of empirical data on dance in Christian settings in contemporary Norway is based on participant observation and interviews. While younger dancers (born after 1990) consider it natural to dance in church, and are usually welcome to do so, older participants have met significant resistance. When dancing, dancers find personal meaning (wellbeing, processing emotions and life events), social meaning (communication, belonging), and religious meaning (contact with God, prayer, growth). Dance emerges as a part of lived religion that clearly highlights how bodies matter, and how spiritualities are gendered, in this contribution to understanding the embodied dimensions of religion.     

Dancing shapes: a comparison of luminance-induced distortions

We present an illusory display in which a grid of outlined squares is positioned in front of a moving luminance gradient. Observers perceive a strong, illusory, 'wavelike' motion of the superimposed squares. We compared luminance effects on dynamic and static aspects of this illusion. The dynamic aspect was investigated by means of a temporal gradient, which induced an illusory pulsing of the outlined squares. The static aspect was investigated in two different ways. In one experiment, the outlined squares were positioned on a spatial gradient, which caused the squares to look like trapezoid shapes. In another experiment, the squares were positioned on different luminance fields, which affected their apparent size. In all experiments, luminance settings were the same, and observers were asked to indicate the direction and strength of the induced distortions. The overall results show large agreements between the dynamic distortion and the first-mentioned static distortion, whereas different tendencies emerged for the second static distortion. In a second series of experiments, we examined these distortions for various ranges of the luminance gradient and for border gradients as well. On the basis of these data, we explored how the directions of the perceived distortions of the single-gradient displays examined in this paper could be related to each other.     

Persuasibility of Women: Conventional Wisdom Re-examined

This study examined sex differences in persuasibility at differing levels of topic involvement. A pilot study was conducted to select topics which were of high and low involvement and which did not show sex differences in terms of agreement, interest or information about the topics. Subjects were 296 Introductory Psychology students. Pre-test and post-test measures were obtained as a measure of opinion change. Control groups were used to control for effects of testing, maturation, and other threats to internal and external validity. The treatment consisted of written persuasive communications arguing against the opinions previously reported by a majority of subjects. Contrary to most previous research, results indicated that there were no significant sex differences or interactions in persuasibility using topics of low or high involvement.