This conversation between the 2018 American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award winner Jill DeTemple and the editors of "Teaching Theology and Religion" continues an occasional series of interviews that has previously featured Jonathan Z. Smith, Stephen Prothero, Mary Pierce Brosmer, Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, and two…

The world history survey course has experienced stunning success within American higher education. In the space of three decades, it has grown from an embattled alternative to the Western civilization sequence to a cornerstone of university history programs. The survey has become standard not only as an introduction for the history major, but also…

Socratic method is associated with law school teaching by which students are asked questions in class that require them to analyze cases and derive legal principles. Despite the method's potential benefits, students usually do not view it as supportive and enriching but rather as a kind of survival ritual. As a pedagogical approach for use in any…

Undergraduate students today often enroll in introductory religious studies or theology classes because they want the time and space to reflect on their personal spiritual questions. Such a motivation can clash with the faculty's desire to introduce students to rigorous academic study of their field. Barbara Walvoord has proposed four "voices"…

This article is a response to criticism of my book "Big Ideas for Little Kids." The main topics addressed are: Who is the audience for the book? Can people without formal philosophical training can be good facilitators of elementary school philosophy discussions? Is it important to assess attempts to teach philosophy in elementary school? Should…

The past decade has seen a resurgence of scholarship on world literature. The best-selling successes of "Great Books" arguments contained in Azar Nafisi's memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and in Dai Sijie's novel "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" seem to mirror, on the popular front, this scholarly return to the question of world…

In the following paper we argue that the conventional "Introduction to Sociology" survey course should be restructured because such courses try to survey an unsurveyable body of knowledge and they do not teach the application of sociological research. The conventional intro course should be replaced with an intro course that surveys the types of…

The time has come to create a realistic grammar syllabus in the beginning language courses. Yet why do some in the profession insist that all grammar must be taught in the first year of language learning? Abundant data from decades of research on topics such as human memory, chunking, and second language acquisition exist that overwhelmingly…

The interdisciplinary survey inherits from more traditional survey courses the weaknesses embodied in the survey textbook. The standard textbook presentation gives students the impression that each figure's music, art, or literature is the product of the "spirit of the age." Well-chosen biographies temper that presentation by drawing attention to…

There is widespread emphasis on reform in the teaching of introductory statistics at the college level. Underpinning this reform is a consensus among educators and practitioners that traditional curricular materials and pedagogical strategies have not been effective in promoting statistical literacy, a competency that is becoming increasingly…

The author responds to the recent work of Kaminski, Sloutsky, and Heckler (2008) and advances two major concerns about their research and its applicability to learning mathematics: a confounding variable that arises from the mathematical differences between the generic examples and concrete examples poses a threat to the construct validity of the…

Through a series of five vignettes, each by a different author and representing a variety of instructional types, this article explores other options to the introductory linguistics course. A conclusion to these vignettes is that success in reaching the nonmajor turns on taking account of the institutional context and the student population and…

Hegel's teaching is often omitted or considered summarily in political philosophy courses. In order to reduce these difficulties, an introductory discussion of Hegel's political thought in the context of a dialogue is presented. (RM)

Discusses fundamental problems in selecting an approach to organizational communications; the purpose of an organizational communication course; the structure and content of organizational communication coursework; and teaching strategies used in the basic course in organizational communication. (RS)

Effective teaching of college level introductory courses in anthropology should include techniques used by anthropologists themselves. An effective learning environment is first achieved by having respect for one's discipline, for students, and for the processes of learning and intellectual development. Once the environment has been established,…