This paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as "contemplative pedagogy." Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first-person experience as an essential means of knowing that has historically been overshadowed and dismissed by an…

There has been very limited research on the possible role religion has in its influence on teacher choices, especially within a Social Science classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how secondary Social Studies teachers explicitly and implicitly treat religion as a factor in the teaching of history and how their own affinity with/to a…

This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in "Teaching Theology and Religion" 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of…

"Life Design-Ethics-Religion Studies" (LER) is the only non-confessional form of religious education (RE) in Germany. Six years after German reunification, the federal state of Brandenburg introduced LER with its dimension of non-confessional RE into the school curriculum. In this contribution, LER will be elucidated in three steps.…

In January 2012, a team of curriculum specialists based at Bar Ilan University in Israel were approached by a Jewish day school in Australia to design a new Jewish Studies curriculum for its school. The mandate was to design a curriculum model from first-steps that would form the basis for the new curriculum. This article demonstrates how…

Science and religion are two indisputably profound and durable cultural forces with a complex history of interaction. As ASTE members are aware, these interactions often manifest themselves in classrooms and in the surrounding communities. In this essay, we encourage science teacher educators to broaden their perspectives of science-religion…

This series of short essays considers the complex choices and decision-making processes of instructors preparing to teach, and continuing to teach, introductory courses in religious studies. In a paper originally presented in the University of Chicago's "The Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion" series, Russell McCutcheon…

This Forum emerges from a session initiated by the Professional Development Committee at the 2017 conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston. A panel of five Bible scholars, from both theological education and undergraduate contexts, provide brief descriptions and analyses of a specific course they have taught online. They describe…

This article describes the author's adaptation of Gallagher's (2009) Article of the Week approach to teaching students literacy skills using current events. The use of this unique instructional routine within the context of a Catholic middle school language arts classroom has proven successful for supporting students in developing critical…

How are religious traditions and exchanges between them constructed in textbooks used in Quebec? Through a critical discourse analysis of History and Citizenship Education, and Ethics and Religious Culture textbooks, we find that the Abrahamic monotheistic tradition is valorized, while non-Abrahamic monotheistic traditions and polytheism are…

Instead of flipping a conventional college course, here we consider flipping part of a conventional course into a whole new course. The idea tested here for three semesters was to split a full-featured traditional course into two linked courses: a condensed, 1-credit-hour, online mass-enrollment course on core ideas and skills paired with a…

Since the early 1980s, several Muslim communities have attempted to create indigenous Muslim American institutions of higher learning. Many of the first attempts failed to sustain their operations beyond a few years; and until recently, none could attain accreditation. Since early 2000, a second wave of Islamic postsecondary institutions has…

The authors discuss results from two co-taught courses in Islamic studies shared as a virtual exchange between the University of Michigan (U-M), USA, and Saint Petersburg State University (SPbU), Russia. These courses were shared with the intent of expanding the range of perspectives to which the students were exposed and to provide an opportunity…

Asynchronous online instruction has become increasingly popular in the field of religious studies. However, despite voluminous research on online learning in general and numerous articles on online theological instruction, there has been little discussion of how to effectively design and deliver online undergraduate courses in religious studies.…

In this essay I propose that using online tools to connect geographically-separated classrooms for real-time collaborative learning experiences may effectively develop intercultural competency in the religious studies classroom. I explore personal examples from several international and inter-institutional collaborations with Jacques Derrida's…