Pedagogies of Presence and Praxis

By way of introducing their own vocational sense, at the beginning of the GTU Preparing Future Faculty Project's Learning and Teaching Academy, the twelve fellows reflected on an essay by Clark Gilpin, "Formative Practices of the Theological Teacher's Vocation" (in The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher, ed. L. Gregory Jones and Stephanie Paulsell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 3-17). Gilpin argues in the essay, among other things, that as doctoral students develop in the vocation of the teaching scholar, a critical learning process involves "achiev[ing] a self-critical understanding of the connection of individual scholarly questions to prior, background public questions of religion." This, says Gilpin, "is the invigorating heart of doctoral education" (13).



This heart could clearly be felt and heard beating in the presentations delivered by TeagleWabash Fellows which aimed to position the courses they will be teaching in the Spring 2008 semester not only in institutional and learner contexts or which they envision teaching in other settings. But the Fellows have also risen to the challenge of setting their proposed courses in the context of larger public questions of meaning and value that inform the worlds students move through as the enter, attend, and leave religion and theology courses. For T-W Fellow in Theology Dante Quick (shown above,l, with Steven Bauman), teaching the course Theological Ethics in Black and White: Aesthetics and the Political at American Baptist Seminary of the West provides an opportunity for students to both grasp the basic theology and ethics that have developed out of African American experiences of oppression and liberation, but also to use this learning to explore a social issue in their local context through an articulated theological lens.

Ricky Manalo, T-W Fellow in Liturgical Studies, envisioned a very different context, Washington Theological Seminary, for his proposed course, "Intercultural Communication in Pastoral Settings." While the course has the goal of introducing students to "major concepts and approaches in intercultural communication encounters within pastoral settings," this goal is in service of responding to an arguably larger question: How do ministers and leaders in the Roman Catholic Church learn to really hear and engage the diverse members of the communities they serve on their own terms? Ricky is particularly concerned to address the growing proportion of Hispanics in a church which still largely communicated in Anglo-American registers.

The "moral discourse project" that will be the capstone experience in T-W Ethics Fellow Melissa James's "Introduction to Christian Ethics" at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary is meant very specifically to enable students to "hear and identify various voices in a community" as they engage issues of moral concern. Students will draw from readings in ethics as well as from the novel Montana 1948 to begin to frame responses to ethical questions and challenges from a faith perspective. The process of moral deliberation in which students will engage throughout the course will serve as a grounding practical methodology for ethical action as leaders in the church.

We'll share more about T-W Fellows' course proposal presentations in future blogs.

Learning, Teaching, Living

"What is surprising about the current attack on education, especially in light of the growing corporatization and privatization at all levels of schooling, is the refusal on the part of many theorists to rethink the role academics might play in defending the university as a crucial democratic public sphere," says educational and cultural theorist Henry Giroux [2002:1]. He is probably right in a very general sense, but as regards the diverse the particularity of the Graduate Theological Union's Teagle-Wabash Fellows, he is exactly wrong. The twelve GTU students who gathered this week, along with a number of other doctoral student guests, to engage a wide range of senior scholars on the current practice of learning and teaching in religion and theology attests, if to nothing else, to the willingness of emerging teaching scholars to locate their work--their vocations, in the language adopted by most in the group--at the epicenter of critical concerns in the public sphere. As we reach the end of nearly two weeks of simultaneously engaged, affirming, conflicted, prayerful, power-laden, and generally provocative conversation, we are exhausted and invigorated all at once by the theoretical, spiritual, and practical challenges of creating religion and theology classrooms in which, truly and transformationally, “religion meets the world.”

Over the next few weeks, Teagle-Wabash Fellows will be invited to share their reflection on the two-week Learning and Teaching Academy (LTA), a pedagogical intensive which anchors a year-long project in which experienced faculty mentor doctoral students to engage teaching as vocation in courses which aim to provoke and integrate questions of meaning and value. For now, here are a few glimpses of the first LTA, the Teagle-Wabash Fellows, invited presenters, and doctoral students whose work together have made for such a rich experience.

Ethics and Social Theory Fellow Melissa James and Psychology and Religion Fellow Steven Bauman end a content-rich day with collegial conversation. The LTA offered a sequence of practical content modules meant to engage Fellows in the real work of the teaching scholar. But, Fellows also worked together each afternoon in small groups to both sift through content and articulate its place in their own sense of vocation and in their approaches to classroom teaching.

A panel on Institutional Contexts for learning and teaching, for instance, invited Fellows to consider how questions of meaning and value in liberal studies play out in diverse settings. Here, University of California, Davis Religions Studies Instructor Wendy Terry, Ph.D. and Santa Clara University Director of Resident Ministry and Associate Campus Minister for Vocational Discernment, Theresa Ladrigan-Whelpey discuss critical differences in secular and denominational institutions, both in terms of student populations and institutional expectations.















University of California, Berkeley Professor Carol Redmount offered insights on the opportunities and demands of teaching in a large, urban, elite research university.

Mills College Professor Judith Bishop (R), shown here with GTU Dean of Students Maureen A. Maloney, Ed. D., added the perspective of a private, secular, liberal arts college to the mix. Mills is a womens college at the undergraduate level, where questions of gender and diversity more broadly understood are central to classroom teaching in any discipline.

Daily small group discussions--such as this one with Near Eastern Religions Fellow Terri Tanaka (L), Theology Fellow Erin Brigham (C), and Interdicisplinary Studies Fellow Michael Campos (R)--were intended not only to invite Fellows to explore key issues as they might play out in the religious studies classroom, but also to develop professional relationships with colleagues across the field.

Morning full group discussions, creatively facilitated by the Fellows themselves, allowed for critical reflection, review, and challenge as the Fellows processed a weath of content in light of their own vocational interests and commitments and their emerging pedagogical philosophies. Shown here (L to R) are: Erin Brigham, Courtney Gulden, Melissa James, Sanna Reinholtzen, and Dante Quick.

Over the next few weeks, we will post segments of presentations on such topics as course concept development, instutional context, revising a course, instructional technology, and measurement and assessment as well as reflections from the Teagle-Wabash Fellows.