Trigger warnings,covenants of presence,and more: Cultivating safe space for theological discussions about sexual trauma

Sexual assault is prevalent, but many educators find themselves ill‐prepared to address it in the classroom. This article conceptualizes a trauma sensitive pedagogy that engages the psychological, social, and theological implications of sexual assault for classroom conversations about sex and sexuality. First, the article examines the impact of the classic power disparity between student and teacher as a dynamic that can trigger recall of the abuse of power inherent in sexual violence. Next the article reframes understandings of trigger warnings to consider how they can be used to support educators in taking seriously the vulnerability of those who have experienced sexual assault. The article also presents perspectives on the role of “teacher self‐disclosure” in facilitating conversations that acknowledge sexual assault, followed by a teaching strategy that demonstrates pedagogical sensitivity to trauma. Suggestions on how to support students through and beyond conversations that can trigger traumatic stress conclude the article.     

Reflective boot camp: adapting LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in higher education

This qualitative study investigates the experiences of using an adaptation of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as a reflective practice pedagogy with occupational therapy graduate-level students and faculty. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is an innovative facilitated methodology that uses brick-building and metaphoric storytelling as a form of communication and problem-solving. Participants engaged in a four-step kinesthetic experience as a means to achieve a serious objective. Results of the study indicated affirmative participant outcomes that included: accelerated group cohesion; an appreciation for inclusive learning where student voice was amplified; a language for emotional content and deeper meaning-making; and an experiential process using materials that appealed to various learning styles. A small number of participants experienced minor tension with the process provoking unanticipated reflective learning. The results of this study indicate that using the kinesthetic brick modeling methodology for reflective practice is a promising higher education pedagogical option.     

Hannah Arendt & Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer Society

This paper considers the place of education within our “consumers’ society”, beginning with Hannah Arendt’s account of the rise of consumerism to a position of political dominance and the resulting eclipse of public life. Connections are then made between Arendt’s account of this rise and Jean Baudrillard’s account of the postmodern proliferation of signs and the transformation of the sign into a commodity. This radical “semiurgy” accelerates into a self-referential series of signs which entails the loss of reality – it contributes to the disappearance of the human subjectivity behind the creation of images. I argue that Baudrillard does not respond adequately to the dynamic that he describes so well. By contrast, Arendt’s concept of natality, I suggest, prepares the ground for a response to the forces of commodification that colonize the educational environment and threaten its critical possibilities. As youth and schools receive more and more attention from advertisers, students are sold by educational institutions to commercial interests who seek unfettered access to this “captive audience”. Yet education is profoundly compromised when youths are viewed as consumers and not as a social investment, when education is viewed merely as an opportunity to secure a new market.     

Strategic Planning to Enhance Teaching and Learning with Technology

Abstract. Seminaries across North America are continuing to expand their use of technology for theological education. This article explores eight issues surrounding the strategic planning process when it comes to technology. These have to do with the obstacles to fresh thinking, the current best practices in strategic planning processes, detailed discussions of the impact of various models of technology for theological education on faculty, Information Technology personnel, and students as well as the issues surrounding delivery system models and the issue of sustainability.     

Cognitive Complexity: Differentiation and Integration in Counseling Practice and Training

This article presents an in‐depth exploration of cognitive complexity. The authors propose that the domains of differentiation and integration signify unique cognitive processes that develop along distinct trajectories. Although differentiated complexity arises from clinical experience and certain training methods, the development of integrative complexity requires enhanced abductive reasoning skills and the use of phenomenological methods. Implications for growing integrative complexity through training, supervision, and clinical practice are provided.     

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.     

The Semantics of Wisdom in the Philosophy of Tang Junyi: Between Transformative Knowledge and Transcendental Reflexivity

In this article, I offer a provisional analysis of the philosophical semantics of “wisdom” in the thought of the New Confucian thinker Tang Junyi. I begin by providing some pointers concerning the concept of wisdom in general and situating the discourse on wisdom in comparative philosophy in the context of the later Foucault’s and Pierre Hadot’s historical investigations into ancient Graeco-Roman philosophy as a mode of spiritual self-cultivation and self-transformation. In the remainder of the paper, I try to describe and think through what Foucault identifies as a “Cartesian moment,” in which self-knowledge becomes the ultimate precondition for the ethico-spiritual project of “caring for the self,” in Tang’s approach of wisdom. In the course of my argument, I outline the complex relation between his vision of a renewed Confucian mode of religious practice on the one hand and his philosophical presuppositions concerning the transcendental status of subjectivity and the reflexivity of consciousness on the other.     

What Is Philosophy of Music Education and Do We Really Need It?

The article deals with the problem of the disciplinary identification of thephilosophy of music education. It explores alternative approaches to thephilosophy of music education and its relation to musical pedagogy. On thebasis of this analysis an account of the philosophy of music education as aphilosophical discipline is suggested and its specific function identified.     

Emancipatory education versus school-based prevention in African American communities

Schools have become strategic settings for the work of community psychologists. In a review of 177 primary prevention programs for children and adolescents, Durlak and Wells (1997) found that 129 (72.9%) were based in schools. The literature in community psychology describes many school-based prevention programs targeting problems such as substance abuse, school maladjustment, delinquency, and violence (e.g. C. A. Mason, A. M. Cauce, L. Robinson & G. W. Harper, 1999). A large number of these programs are based in schools in African American communities and include social–cognitive, decision making, affective education, and other skills-building modules along with direct instruction. In this paper, it is argued that ideas from emancipatory education (e.g. Freire, 1998) and African-centered education (e.g. H. Madhubuti & S. Madhubuti, 1994; M. J. Shujaa, 1995) should guide school-based interventions in communities of people of African descent. There is an extensive and distinguished history of emancipatory schools and school-based programs in African American communities. Included in this history are the freedom schools during reconstruction, the SNCC Freedom Schools, the Liberation Schools of the Black Panther Party, the Malcolm X Academy in Detroit, Sankofa Shule in Lansing, the Institute for Positive Education/New Concept Development Center in Chicago, the Benjamin E. Mays Institute in Hartford, and the schools affiliated with the Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) to name just a few. This paper will first provide a brief, critical review of the role of schools and social oppression. Second, primary prevention programs in communities of people of African descent will be examined, questioning some of the dominant methods and assumptions. Next, underlying assumptions about relationships between African identity, educational success, and healthy outcomes for young people will be addressed. This will be followed by a discussion of African-centered emancipatory education, focusing specifically on the role of students as agents of social change and the importance of critical reflection on African cultural resources. The Benjamin E. Mays Institute will be presented as an example of how ideas from an African-centered emancipatory approach to education have been incorporated within a school serving a community of people of African descent in Hartford, Connecticut.     

The evolutionary origins of natural pedagogy: Rhesus monkeys show sustained attention following nonsocial cues versus social communicative signals

The natural pedagogy hypothesis proposes that human infants preferentially attend to communicative signals from others, facilitating rapid cultural learning. In this view, sensitivity to such signals is a uniquely human adaptation and as such nonhuman animals should not produce or utilize these communicative signals. We test these evolutionary predictions by examining sensitivity to communicative cues in 206 rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using an expectancy looking time task modeled on prior work with infants. Monkeys observed a human actor who either made eye contact and vocalized to the monkey (social cue), or waved a fruit in front of her face and produced a tapping sound (nonsocial cue). The actor then either looked at an object (referential look) or looked toward empty space (look away). We found that, unlike human infants in analogous situations, rhesus monkeys looked longer at events following nonsocial cues, regardless of the demonstrator's subsequent looking behavior. Moreover younger and older monkeys showed similar patterns of responses across development. These results provide support for the natural pedagogy hypothesis, while also highlighting evolutionary changes in human sensitivity to communicative signals.