Liberal arts courses sometimes face the question of whether core texts can actually 'educate character' or 'care for the soul' in the Socratic sense. The "Bhagavadgita" addresses these issues from a Hindu perspective. But at the same time, the educational function of a religious core text changes decisively when transposed into a liberal…

In this essay, Ross Collin offers ethics-focused readings of Anton Chekhov's popular short stories "The Schoolmistress" and "The Teacher of Literature." Chekhov shows in the two stories how teaching can inhibit teachers' flourishing. That is to say, teaching under bad conditions can draw teachers into moral…

The gospel is central to life in the Christian community. It is formational to the church proper and to the pedagogical task of faith-based colleges and universities. The gospel is also significant for the education of non/nominal Christians who are present in our classrooms. This article describes the gospel as indispensable for faith-based…

Teacher-researcher, Katherine Macro spent six weeks observing an eleventh-grade Advanced Placement and Composition class at Sunnybrooke Central High School to examine the teacher's use of creative drama to teach Shakespeare. In this article, Macro describes ways the instructor used theater-based instructional strategies, especially a staged…

The benefits of performance-based classroom approaches to teaching Shakespeare have been well-documented in pedagogical scholarship. This paper is an effort to push beyond the performance-based classroom and begin to incorporate ideas from the field of performance studies into a new pedagogical approach that capitalizes on my institution's…

Incorporating children's and young adult literature in school curriculum has the ability to support academic learning across many disciplines, yet few examples exist effectively demonstrating how to integrate such literature into physical and health education classrooms. We offer several different examples of integrating children's and young adult…

In this article, the author details an undergraduate senior seminar titled "History and Literature," for which the main project was a close reading of a big book: Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (1862). Despite reservations about the style of the material, the "great books" approach to teaching, and the challenge of compelling…

Getting students talking about a work of literature -- sharing and interrogating their own and each other's textual interpretations and responses -- is vital for the teaching and learning of literature. If a classroom community of readers is constituted by such talking, then responsive teaching involves a lot of "listening." What,…

Since the establishment of the "Journal of Political Science Education" (JPSE) in 2004, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has become more rigorous and data-based, thanks in large part to the efforts of editors, peer-reviewers, and submitters to the journal. Where does the field go from here? I argue that our greatest strengths lie…

The time children spend indoors with nature-based children's literature is as important as the time they spend outdoors. Children's literature traditionally has been replete with pastoral, animal, and wilderness stories that nurture a sense of wonder and excitement about the world we share. Such literature encourages a high regard for the…

In this article, I discuss how I pair the close reading of choice, high-interest, young adult literature (YAL) with the creative writing of young adult stories in a preservice English teacher preparation programme. This paired reading and writing is used to have preservice teachers (PSTs) engage with identities, communities, and stories of their…

This study describes the thinking strategies and epistemological stances of two Bible experts, who applied a literary and historical interpretive approach, respectively. A thinking-aloud protocols methodology was used as the two scholars read the same biblical story and verbalized their thoughts. The findings reveal intricate relationships between…

Water, particularly in the lives of Black Americans, has historically been characterized by its danger, offering up notions of fear, horror, and death. Ironically, Black children's schooling experiences regarding "literature" have been described similarly. Throughout this essay, I take up Sharpe's (2016) wake work and King's (2019) black…

Although teaching Shakespeare in Turkey naturally creates barriers of language, space and time, the use of digital humanities helped me to overcome these obstacles. My experiences at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, showed me that combining conventional methods of teaching Shakespeare in Turkey with digital tools helps to familiarise students…

As the world around us becomes more accessible, so do our students' options to engage with that information. With the increased disconnect within the classroom, many educators are seeking ways to re-engage students. Research supports the use of choice for reading within the classroom to increase engagement. The article establishes the impact of…