Learning Involves Moving and Being Moved—Part 2: Six Strategies of an Invitational PedagogyPosted on January 19, 2015 by Mindy McGarrah SharpPhenomenologists and narrative theorists note the importance of a horizon to learning – a not yet that beckons engaged, creative, responsible movement. Self-psychologist Heinz Kohut insists on “postponing closures” when interpreting any life experience, one’s own or on behalf of another person.Learning has more room to move and breathe when a learning process yields to an open future, leaving room to move discourses, interpretations, theological claims, and processes of becoming into a life’s vocation…
How Do we Keep it Real? Authentic Assessment and Religious StudiesPosted on June 13, 2014 by Nathan LoewenIt seems to me that a change in pedagogy towards authentic assessment and outcomes-based instruction demands the conception of clear lines between religious studies and professional lives in contemporary society. But to answer that, I need to determine how might religious studies teaching authentically assess learners….
Integrating by PartsPosted on February 11, 2014 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorSomething there is that doesn’t love a silo. A curriculum is divided into fields are divided into courses are divided into units are divided into assignments. Ever review a student’s final paper for a course and find that, somehow, she didn’t succeed in using the knowledge and skills that she _actually did develop_ throughout the course? That final paper was constructed in a silo. There are a lot of factors from which the silo problem has been constructed and maintained. But, it’s pretty disheartening to imagine our learners going into their vocations and building silos around the challenges they find there…silos with high walls that keep out all the knowledge, intuition, skills, and habits that they’ve poured themselves into developing.My institution’s response-in-progress to the silo problem is a capstone project to the M.Div program, the “Final Integrative Paper…”
Why Don’t You Just Tell Me What Grade You Want?Posted on January 13, 2014 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorWant an “A”? Okay. Shake on it.In “contract grading,” the student and instructor agree at the outset what grade the student is going for, and what is needed to earn that grade. Of course, this could describe the point of many syllabi. What distinguishes “contract grading” (at least the examples I have seen) is that the student decides which assignments she will do and which assignments she won’t do. Also, in most examples I have seen, the work is assessed on a “satisfactory/unsatisfactory” basis. I have been looking closely at “contract grading,” and am planning to implement some version of it for my 2014–15 courses…
The Instructor’s Double StandardPosted on December 9, 2013 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorTeachers have a lot of power over students in the classroom. Typically, we write the syllabus, decide the rules, make rulings on infractions. In turn, we are accountable to our institutions, as instructors and also regarding our many non-teaching obligations. In conversations, I frequently brush up against the reality of The Instructor’s Double Standard, here defined as any instance when an instructor holds students to a standard to which she does not hold herself, or to which she is not held by the institution…