Seminarium

The Elements of Great Teaching

Tactical Teaching: Part 3—Different Outcomes/Different Tactics

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The following excerpts of David’s upcoming book, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: Reflections on Education as Transformation through Dialogue (Summer, 2014), are used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

I found that teaching a skill, methods, reflection/action cycles, values, etc. all  involve a very different strategy from imparting information. My book outlines additional tactics, like the skill of translating Greek for instance, but by way of examples, let’s consider…

The Skill of Reading for Understanding

Whatever the skill I was teaching, it helped students for me to make the approach explicit by setting out steps for the process. We teach a lot more skills than we realize; or we take them for granted and don’t teach them at all. The teaching of some skills is so simple that we may neglect to make it explicit, leaving students to struggle needlessly on their own.

Students found it helpful to consider reading a book to be a skill with some steps they could adopt to do it:

  1. Read the title and all cover information about the book.
  2. Study the table of contents.
  3. Scan the introduction, the first and last paragraph of every chapter, and the conclusion.
  4. Now go back and read through each chapter, carefully noting the subtitles and subsections.
  5. As you go, highlight or underline key points, take notes in the margins (on agreements and disagreements), and at the end of each chapter write the main subject and a list of key points.
  6. When the book is done, list your main learning and your main critiques. This process also made it much easier for students to review the assigned books, because they could focus on reading the highlights and notes.

In my experience, the difficulty for upper class and doctoral students was this: They were so eager to critique what they had read and to offer some distinctive point of their own that they tended to skew their understanding of what they had read—in essence setting up a paper tiger so they could make a critical point about it. In that context, an assignment I gave was for students (following steps noted above) to write a faithful review of an assigned book—before they offered any critique. This turned out to be especially helpful for doctoral students, since they would be expected to summarize accurately the history of relevant secondary literature as part of their dissertations.

Teaching a Method

I have always thought of methods as being more involved than skills. They are comprehensive and creative; and they address complex subjects and situations; they involve evaluation and imagination. They are the basis for critical thinking. Most innovations in biblical scholarship come from posing new questions to the biblical texts and history. So, I became fascinated with different methods and the questions they posed, such as historical criticism, linguistic criticism, discourse analysis, performance criticism, and empire studies. For me, it was astounding what new insights came from applying a set of questions in a systematic way, using the method in a tentative, heuristic manner and honoring the text as the final arbiter of meaning. The insights multiplied when several methods were combined or used in tandem.

Here is the general approach I took in teaching a method. The steps involved a process of weaning students from dependence on a teacher so that they could use a method for themselves. Here was my approach:

  1. Model the method for students. Take them through the process from beginning to end.
  2. Next, have students go through the process under your guidance in class, perhaps in small groups and perhaps on the same text/problem, directing the process and answering questions.
  3. Then give students a new assignment to do on their own and turn in both their notes and their outcomes—and give extensive feedback. Give this assignment on the same text/problem for all students, so that they can also evaluate each other’s work, compare notes, and learn from each other.
  4. Finally, choose another text they have not studied before as a basis to do a final project. In the final project, they are to be as clear and explicit as possible about each step of the method and the outcome. When I used this process, I graded students on their use of the process as well as on the level they achieved at the end.

It is important for students not just to learn about a method but also to have the experience of using the method: for example, how to analyze a narrative, reconstruct historical events, explore cultural dynamics, and discern the rhetorical impact of a letter. Students first learn a method and then apply it to a case study. The key point of such a process was to make students independent—able to apply the method on their own.

Teaching the Reflection/Action Cycle

There is a hermeneutical circle whereby interpreters act in response to the material they are studying and then use they study material to reflect on their actions. Some teachers do this in quite extensive ways. For example, they have their students do a project outside the classroom or in the community in social service organizations dealing with the poor or homelessness or environmental degradation—and then the students carry on an interactive “dialogue” between the texts they are studying and the projects they are doing. In addition to such a program, we can engage students in reflections on life experiences.

In more simple ways, we can engage students in reflection on their life experiences. Many seminary students have had previous careers, done some international travel, and carried out volunteer work. In addition, many of them are involved in parishes and work study during their years in school. At the seminary where I taught, most seniors had completed their year of internship. The idea of asking them to reflect on the texts we are studying in relation to their life experiences takes intention and opportunity. It requires asking for reflection and giving time for it to happen in the classroom or as an assignment.

Classes can also engage students in actions that will generate reflection: storytelling performance, meditation, case studies with role-playing, viewing contemporary films, and creating resources for websites and communities. Students see how these activities emerge from their studies and then they reflect on ways in which their actions illuminate the texts they are studying. The New Testament texts themselves urge their readers to take certain actions, embrace certain convictions, and foster certain relationships. An adequate interpretation of the text may involve not only explaining a text but also acting in ways that the text implies the audiences ought to act—or, conversely, actively resisting harmful behavior that the text has urged. In reflecting on their future work in parishes, I also ask seminarians to imagine what an active congregation might be like in the twenty-first century if it were based on the Gospel of Mark or on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians or on the Book of Revelation.

The key to this teaching is to make explicit the connection between action and reflection and to encourage a habit of making such connections.

Teaching Values

There are so many values integral to the educational process: love of learning, pursuing truth where it might lead, respect for the persons and opinions of others, respect for and the guarding of academic standards, honesty and responsibility in academic work, the ability to cooperate and partner in learning, the capacity for active listening and respectful speaking, openness to be challenged and to change one’s mind and behavior; and concern for those at most risk. Add to these a commitment to excellence in teaching, love of the students, offering constructive rather than shaming feedback, fairness in grading, and the willingness to admit mistakes.

There are also more encompassing social values that we want to engender: passion for peace and non-violence; pursuit of justice; respect for personal freedom; commitment to the common good; care for one another, especially the vulnerable, inclusiveness; responsible citizenship in society; a sense of global concern; and reverence for the rest of nature. Everything we do in planning and carrying out a class represents ethical choices that manifest such values, or not.

No doubt we all actually foster such values. However, we seldom make them explicit because often they happen unself-consciously in the course of focusing on the subject matter. I learned a great deal about myself and my teaching by naming these values and by asking myself specifically in what ways I did in fact model them, incorporate them into my syllabus and assignments, foster them among students in discussions, and evaluate my success or failure in doing so. Being explicit has led me to be more intentional about the ethical dynamics of teaching and to make changes accordingly.

If I had it to do over, I would set time aside in each course, if only for one conversation toward the end of the term, to list a set of values and ask the students in what ways the course succeeded in promoting these values and where we could improve, along with suggesting other values that we should be aware of incorporating. I suspect it would have led me to make changes and adjustments in planning for subsequent classes. It would also make students aware of the values they themselves can embrace and manifest in their participation in the learning process

Photo Credit: “Sunset & the Thinker” by Esparta Palma  – CC by 2.0

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David Rhoads is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (1988 to 2010), previously professor of religion at Carthage College, Kenosha, WI (1973 to 1988). He has published Mark as Story (co-author, third edition, 2012), The Challenge of Diversity (2004), Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel (2005), From Every People and Nation: The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective (editor, 2005), and “Performance Criticism: An Emerging Discipline in Second Testament Studies” (BTB, 2006). He edits the Biblical Performance Criticism series for Wipf and Stock Press. He edited Earth and Word: Classic Sermons on Saving the Planet (2008), co-edited The Season of Creation (2011), and directs Lutherans Restoring Creation. Rhoads was Carthage Teacher of the Year in 1974-75. In 2004, he received the first Fortress Press Award for outstanding teaching in a graduate/seminary institution. Rhoads lives in Racine, WI with his wife the Rev. Sandra Roberts.