How programs in prisons are challenging the who,where, how,and what of theological education

This paper claims that programs in prisons are challenging the very who, where, how, and what of theological education. The author draws on research from the fields of pedagogy and prison studies, nearly a decade of experience teaching master's level seminary‐style classes in prison , and the findings of a two‐year cohort of prison educators convened by the Association of Theological Schools for their Educational Models and Practices Project. Addressing displacement as a learning strategy, classroom diversity, the use of student experience, narrative grading strategies, and classroom ritual, the author shows how the teaching strategies emerging from prison classrooms provide vibrant models for the theological academy at large.     

Confessions from the Classroom Teaching with Augustinian Eyes

Through an analysis of Augustine's Confessions, this essay aims to identify the sources, tenets, and implications of the theological anthropology that grounds the author's pedagogy. The author describes classroom dynamics and teaching strategies in terms of the concepts of creation, sin, and redemption found in the Confessions. In relation to Augustine's doctrine of creation, the author argues that a theological anthropology that posits an ineradicable relationship of the human person to God justifies optimism about student response to the study of theology. It also supports a sacramental understanding of the effectiveness of the teacher. In relation to Augustine's theology of sin, the author reflects on the effects of pride on both teacher and student. The section on redemption acknowledges that although the teacher cannot eradicate sin in the classroom, he or she can counter such effects through the responsible and sensitive exercise of authority. Throughout the essay, the virtues of humility and gratitude in the classroom are highlighted, and concrete pedagogical issues are examined in a theological light.     

How Master of Divinity Education Changes Students: A Research‐Based Model

To increase understanding of how Master of Divinity education actually functions and to respond to accreditors' emphasis on the outcomes of learning, this paper presents a research‐based model that focuses on how M.Div. education transforms students. The students‐in‐seminary model is conceptually undergirded by life course theory. In the model, students attending seminary engage in a messy process in which they respond to competing demands of school, church, and family. The author compares the students‐in‐seminary model with the dominant message model for theological education articulated by Carroll et al. (1997 ) and argues that the students‐in‐seminary model more adequately describes the process of theological education. The author calls for further research to study how seminaries promote key messages to their students, the plasticity of students' sense of calling, the impact of church requirements on M.Div. students, and the complexity of life for multiple‐role students.     

Ecclesiology and Ethics

The author elaborates on the relation between tradition and the concept of 'invention' within doctrinal theory. Based on examinations of how this is reflected upon in selected doctrinal theories (Alister E. McGrath, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Oswald Bayer), the author discusses 'invention' in relation to adjacent theological issues. Diverging issues seem to be whether invention should be reserved for the object of theology (Bayer), or whether invention should be the task of systematic theology, especially in relation to the constant generation of new experiences (McGrath and Pannenberg). The author also asserts that the doctrinal theory of Bayer is inventive, even though not intended to be so. Thus, the question is how to work inventively within systematic theology, not whether to do so.     

A Curriculum Evaluation Strategy to Guide District-Level Basal Text Adoption Decision-Making for Special Education

This article describes an approach to curriculum adoption that is confirmatory in nature, and is based upon Cooley and Leinhardt's (1975) model of classroom learning and Stake's (1967) data matrix. This approach includes identification of principles of classroom learning, assessment of district goals, analysis of curriculm materials "on the shelf," direct observation of learning processes during classroom use of materials, and measurement of student performance with curriculum-based and non-curriculum-based measures. This approach was applied to a school district's curriculum adoption decision-making needs in the area of special education, with the pilot use of basal materials in four classrooms over a 1-year period, and the assignment of two nonequivalent control group classrooms. Analysis of the resulting multi-faceted database was used to address a number of separate but interrelated evaluation questions. The results from the separate analyses are mutually supportive, converging toward a single adoption decision.     

Evaluating sermons: The function of grades in teaching preaching

What are grades doing in a homiletics classroom? This article traces the function of grades through the broader history of the educational system in the United States and then makes suggestions for how grades can be used more effectively in teaching preaching. Beginning in the nineteenth century, teachers used grades to rank and motivate students, as well as communicate across institutions. With the more recent assessment movement, educators have conceptualized grading as the larger process of evaluating the success of learning objectives. The commission on accreditation for the Association of Theological Schools does not view grades as part of its assessment, but it evaluates theological schools on whether they achieve intended learning outcomes. Theological educators need to be able to evaluate whether their teaching fulfills their schools' mission and learning objectives. For homiletics, the author measures learning through pre‐ and post‐preaching feedback and incorporates professor‐ and student‐crafted rubrics.     

The Effects of Library User-Education Programmes on the Information-Seeking Behaviour of Brisbane College of Theology Students

ABSTRACT

An increasing proportion of students entering the Brisbane College of Theology (BCT) are adult learners and engaged in theological education for general academic purposes or personal enrichment. In meeting the needs of these students, the user-education programmes conducted by the BCT Libraries endeavour to address the Australian Information Literacy Standards.¹ The literature reveals that information literacy is learned through experience primarily shaped by both librarians and faculty. This case study, which uses an adaptation of Biggs' model of presage, process, and product, looks at the information search process from the perspective of one theological library. As a phenomenographic study, it examines the interconnected theories of students' experience, perception, approach, and learning outcomes in the information search process. It will be shown here that user-education programmes and mediation with the librarian significantly influence the information-seeking behaviour of students.     

Online Primary Sources in Religious Studies: Active Learning Exercises for Information Literacy Instruction

Online primary sources are a valuable resource for undergraduate students in religious studies courses. They provide firsthand, factual information about the beliefs and practices of religious traditions, movements, cults, and so on. In addition, they are readily and freely accessible online. Given their value as an information resource, undergraduate students need to be able to identify primary sources and understand how to use them in academic research. The purpose of this article is to describe activities for information literacy instruction that focus on primary sources in religious studies. These activities are intended as a resource for academic librarians who are teaching—or who plan to teach—undergraduate students how to identify and use primary sources.     

Conversational Learning: A Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Preaching

An increasing number of female students populate preaching classes in seminaries and theological schools across the United States. Based on the analysis of female students' needs and demands in preaching courses, I propose a pedagogy for conversational learning to teach homiletics. My own teaching experience and the knowledge gained through conversations with other feminist educators and homileticians are major resources upon which the principles and strategies of conversational learning are drawn. The ultimate goal for conversational learning is to enable “transformative learning” through which students transform their sense of identity, worldviews, values, ways of thinking, and enhance their unique voices in the pulpit. For this purpose, conversational learning employs student‐centered, group‐oriented, and inductive approaches in an egalitarian learning environment. Conversational learning is an on‐going process of learning preaching in a collaborative way.     

Information Needs and Behavior of Catholic Priests in Croatia

This article presents a segment of the results gathered in a doctoral study that investigated information needs and behavior of Catholic priests in Croatia. The study focused on parish priests in particular and their information needs and behavior in the liturgy and care-giving role. The research was conducted with the help of quantitative and qualitative methodology. Print questionnaires were filled out by 327 respondents, while in the follow-up interviews 20 respondents took part. Research results show that respondents, in the care-giving role and liturgy, require information about theology, general culture, psychology, and pedagogy. More than half of respondents find information for liturgy on religious websites and in their personal parish libraries. However, in their care-giving role they seek information most often from their parishers, members in parish pastoral and economic boards, and from colleagues at their regular meetings organized by the (arch)diocese. Both in liturgy and care-giving role, respondents use religious publications to a much larger degree than secular books, magazines, or newspapers. The respondents explained that in liturgy they consult colleagues and parishers in order to exchange advices and ideas, while in the care-giving role some respondents also prefer to seek an advice from an expert in specific field. The results of this study can help Catholic Church and theological faculties when preparing the information literacy courses for future parish priests.     

The Counselor and the Curriculum

The counselor is involved in the curriculum structure of high school because of the amount of time he spends in educational planning with students. His record of participation in curriculum change has been poor. Educational counseling has consisted of adjusting the student to the curriculum that exists, rather than working for curriculum change that can benefit all levels of students. Curriculum resources should be thought of in a broad sense of not only formal courses and units but also extracurricular activities both in and out of school. The counselor is stationed at the crossroads of student and community needs. What is he doing to help integrate these needs through continual curriculum revision?     

Gendered Training: Men and Men's Issues in Marriage and Family Therapy Programs

Few studies examine men's experiences in becoming a therapist. Only a modicum of attention appears to be paid to men's professional training needs in MFT training programs as expressed in the family therapy literature. Five recommendations, based on the author's experiences and male student voices, are provided for how to best meet the needs of male students in MFT training programs. These recommendations are (1) be aware of men's experiences and don't assume silence means disinterest, (2) develop depth in clinical training on men's issues, (3) incorporate theories of masculinity into curriculum, (4) engage male students in the training process, and (5) provide support to male students through mentorship and support groups.     

The Pedagogy of the Online Wisdom Community: Forming Church Ministers in a Digital Age

Abstract. While electronic learning is transforming the face of higher education today, some in the theological community question whether it is appropriate for the specific goals of graduate level theological formation for ministry. Drawing on the work of one theological faculty, this article answers yes. The author describes the school's hybrid model of distance education pedagogy. He discusses the underlying teaching and learning principles that guided the faculty in their development of this model, and, in particular, the pedagogical ideal of the learning cohort as a “wisdom community.” Web‐based instruction can be effectively designed to nurture wisdom communities for integrative learning. The author describes the “pedagogy of the online wisdom community” from his experience of Web‐based distance education teaching. The growing demand for ministry formation programs, particularly in mission areas, underlines the urgent need for continued study of the role of technology in theological pedagogy.     

Ethnic Studies: An Urgent Need in Theological Education in Africa

By virtue of its subject matter, theological education ought to infuse life with morals and values, thus moulding a just, moral and peaceful society such as is envisaged in God's telos for His world. And in line with its aims, theological education provides knowledge and skills to people to enable them to serve the church, together with the wider society where the church lives. A theological curriculum appropriate to its context ensures success in both these aspects of theological education. To their credit Africa's theological institutions seem to have curricula which are relevant to Africa's context. Success in sustaining the relevance of these curricula lies in continually revising the curriculum so that it does not become dated. One such urgent revision is in the offering of ethnic studies which is necessitated by the ethnic crisis in Africa. For this reason, ethnic studies in the curriculum of theological education in Africa are imperative. In the essay four ways are proposed in which ethnic studies could be included in the curriculum of theological education in Africa.     

Markers of Topical Discourse in Child‐Directed Speech

Although the language we encounter is typically embedded in rich discourse contexts, many existing models of processing focus largely on phenomena that occur sentence‐internally. Similarly, most work on children's language learning does not consider how information can accumulate as a discourse progresses. Research in pragmatics, however, points to ways in which each subsequent utterance provides new opportunities for listeners to infer speaker meaning. Such inferences allow the listener to build up a representation of the speakers' intended topic and more generally to identify relationships, structures, and messages that extend across multiple utterances. We address this issue by analyzing a video corpus of child–caregiver interactions. We use topic continuity as an index of discourse structure, examining how caregivers introduce and discuss objects across utterances. For the analysis, utterances are grouped into topical discourse sequences using three annotation strategies: raw annotations of speakers' referents, the output of a model that groups utterances based on those annotations, and the judgments of human coders. We analyze how the lexical, syntactic, and social properties of caregiver–child interaction change over the course of a sequence of topically related utterances. Our findings suggest that many cues used to signal topicality in adult discourse are also available in child‐directed speech.     

The Effects of Interpersonal Differences Within Religious Communities: A Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model of U.S. Congregations

This study examined how the composition of religious communities influences the spiritual outcomes of members. The U.S. Congregational Life Survey was analyzed using the group actor-partner interdependence model, an analysis that assesses how individual-level outcomes are influenced by (a) the actor's characteristics, (b) the characteristics of other congregants, (c) the relational demography of the actor, and (d) the degree that other congregants differ among themselves. This model, including both surface-level (e.g., demographic) and deep-level (e.g., theological belief) attributes, allowed for the estimation of distinct effects for actor and group similarity, which have been confounded in prior research. Relational demography was found to be positively related to one's needs being met on nearly all measured items. In contrast, a lack of diversity in terms of deep-level constructs (e.g., theological belief and worship preference) predicted less belonging and less satisfaction. These results suggest that religious communities may offer an important setting to benefit from exposure to varied beliefs and values.     

The locus theologicus of U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a Theology and its implications for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) curriculum development

The author examines the history of theological method based on the term locus theologicus, the refinement of this method by Liberation Theologians and U. S. Hispanic/Latino/a Theologians, and describes one experience of using contextual theology to develop curriculum for Second-Year Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Residents.     

The Contemplative Bow in Teaching and Learning Pastoral Care

This article elucidates theoretical underpinnings for the use of one's self in the pastoral theological classroom. The contemplative bow is developed as a capacious metaphor to describe appropriate self use and its necessary importance in the teaching and learning of pastoral arts in a theological curriculum. Central to the argument is the assumption that effective teaching and learning in pastoral care emerges from awareness and knowledge of self as well as letting go of self in beneficial service with others. Analytical engagement of educational, theological, and psychological theory informs practice for the professional school classroom.     

Teaching Exegesis in Historically Black Theological Schools

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.     

Hospitality: A Feminist Theology of Education

This article presents a methodology for a feminist theology of education based on reflection of women's educational experience in light of historical and contemporary theological works, especially the writing of Julian of Norwich. It argues for hospitality as a metaphor for theological education and suggests an understanding of the student, teacher, and environment of education that can create hospitality in the classroom.