A point contingency for homework submission in the graduate school classroom

We explored the effects of points versus no points on the submission of homework assignments and quiz performance in a graduate-level course. Students were more likely to submit homework assignments during points weeks, but quiz scores were relatively unaffected.     

Timely Completion of Class Requirements: Effects of Student and Faculty Gender

Male and female students have displayed different reactions to the gender of their faculty. This research was designed to explore whether biases exist early in the school term. Students unfavorable attitudes toward instructors were measured by the extent to which they delayed completing a course requirement: participation in a subject pool. Students scheduled a date upon which to participate in a research study. Discrepancies between their scheduled and their actual participation dates reveal that male students delayed their requirement (a) more when their instructors were female than when they were male, and (b) more than female students when the instructors were female. Supporting data suggest that the delayed completion time reflects lower evaluations of female faculty. Discussion focuses on implications in academic settings.     

Migration: Vocational perspectives on a complex and diverse transition

This paper outlines the origins of this special issue: a UK Economic and Social Research Council supported seminar series on ‘Careers and Migration’. The series elucidated a number of salient (though under-researched) issues: migration as a diverse and complex process; the loss, recovery and reconstruction of career capital as central in the migration experience; insecurity, security and their dynamic interplay; the salience of relationships with family, compatriots and communities in migrants' career development; and the appropriateness of creative approaches in researching migrants' careers. The seven articles, written by interdisciplinary authorial teams (sometimes working in different occupational sectors) contribute to our understandings of these pressing concerns.     

“But Aren't Cults Bad?”: Active Learning,Productive Chaos,and Teaching New Religious Movements

This article considers the challenges inherent when teaching about new religious movements (“cults”), how successful instructors have surmounted them, and how teacher‐scholars in other fields of religious studies can benefit from a discussion of the successful teaching of new religions. I note that student‐centered pedagogies are crucial to teaching new religions, particularly if students disrupt and defamiliarize the assumed and reified categories of “cult” and “religion.” I argue that what works in a classroom focusing on new religious movements will work more broadly in religious studies classrooms, since the challenges of the former are reproduced in the latter.     

PHILOSOPHY AS EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION OF LIVING

This essay describes an approach to designing a course in philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) around a set of immersive “spiritual exercises” through which students might examine their desires, engaging students in a process of testing their own experience against philosophical theories and theories against their own experience. These are used to tie together the units of a course covering classical Western and Eastern philosophical traditions, and to supplement traditional philosophical analysis of texts and arguments with ways of exploring what it might be like to live as a Platonist, Stoic, or Confucian. The essay details several exercises, engages perspectives on PWOL from Pierre Hadot and John Cooper, and addresses the question of how to assess immersive exercises.     

Assigning Integration: A Framework for Intellectual,Personal, and Professional Development in Seminary Courses

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.     

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain: Strategies for the Successful Use of Homework Assignments

Presents an overview of the research findings to date, and practical guidelines for the use of homework in psychosocial treatments for patients with chronic pain. Generally, psychosocial treatments incorporating homework assignments help patients to improve more than when treatment is comprised entirely of in-session work. The article outlines common obstacles experienced when using homework with pain patients and strategies to combat these obstacles. The types of homework assignments that may be most helpful, as well as interventions that can be used to promote homework compliance and successful treatment outcome are discussed.