Home Volume 10 (2006) Issue 2
Issue 2
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Introduction: Connecting Spirituality, Justice, and Pedagogy |
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Written by David I. Smith, John Sullivan, and John Shortt
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“Those who are into spirituality are usually not into justice and those who are into justice are usually not into spirituality.”1 This comment was made by Nicholas Wolterstorff during his plenary address to the recent conference “Spirituality, Justice, and Pedagogy,” sponsored by the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, from which the papers in this volume (including that plenary address) are drawn. A similar suspicion lay behind the conception of the conference. There is voluminous discussion of spirituality in education these days, running the full gamut from plans for explicit faith formation through efforts at a mediating “phenomenology of the distinctively human”2 to maximally generic ideas of spirituality as a “heightening of awareness” and the like.3 There is also a wide literature discussing educational justice, attending to matters such as discrimination and representation in relation to various aspects of personal identity and the ways in which educational provision and educational assumptions follow the paths of social privilege. An important area of intersection between these discussions does exist (see, for instance, the recent writing of David Purpel4), but nevertheless a common pattern is for writings concerned with educational justice to treat faith and spirituality with indifference, or even hostility, and for writings on spirituality in education to focus on inner realities to the exclusion of the social, and even sometimes the ethical.5 These two tendencies, of course, easily become mutually reinforcing. The aim of this volume, and of the conference that gave rise to it, has been to resist the dichotomy and explore places where spirituality, justice, and pedagogy might constructively interact, with a particular focus on Christian spirituality.
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Teaching Justly for Justice |
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Written by Nicholas Wolterstorff
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JUSTICE SHOULD BE both a hallmark and a main goal of teaching.
Christian theology has tended to neglect the theme of justice and to
limit its attention to retributive justice, rather than the more basic
primary justice, that justice which has broken down when injustice
occurs. Two reasons for this neglect are explored: the idea that love
supplants justice in the New Testament, and the tendency for English
translations of the New Testament to translate the Greek dikaiosunê
and related words in terms of rectitude rather than justice. The
relationship of justice to personal worth is explored, together with
reasons why teachers should focus both on teaching justly and on
teaching for justice. |
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Exposing Students to Intractable Problems |
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Written by Glenn E. Sanders
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Exposing Students to Intractable Problems: Christian Faith and Justice in a Course on the Middle EastTHIS CHAPTER DESCRIBES the planning and teaching of a course on the
history of the Middle East at a Christian university, focusing in
particular on the way in which a concern for spiritual growth and for
engagement with issues of justice shaped the structure a pedagogy of
the course. The chapter explores the "inner" and "outer" work necessary
to connect justice concerns with spirituality and learning.
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Being Is Believing? Out-of-the-Box (Subversive) Education |
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Written by Philip Fountain and Chris Elisara
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THE WOUNDS OF this world—ecological and humanitarian—require a
re-thinking of our educational systems. Building upon a shalom model of
education, the authors argue that questions of space and location are
critically important to Christian pedagogies. Our education praxis must
move beyond the classroom to engage students empathetically in the
world around us. Doing so will necessarily be a subversive endeavor.
The Creation Care Study Program in Belize is presented as a case study
of "study abroad" and field-intensive education. |
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The Formation of Character: Spirituality Seeking Justice |
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Written by Doub Blomberg
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EDUCATION ALWAYS DEPENDS on a view of humanness. Howard Gardner's
influential theory of multiple intelligences promotes a broader view of
human abilities than that generally favored in schooling, but Gardner
relegates ethical, spiritual, and other normative dimensions to the
periphery. The paper argues that virtue ethics despite historical
Protestant antipathy (which is addressed), provides a more
comprehensive perspective, as long as the development of the virtues is
seen to be embedded in creation and community. A biblical understanding
of spirituality supplies the core that is missing from Gardner's bundle
of computational competences, and seeking God's justice is its proper
goal. |
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Teaching Justice by Emphasizing the Non-neutrality of Technology |
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Written by Steven H. VanderLeest
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THIS CHAPTER EXPLORES the connection between justice and technology and
its implications for teaching about technology and teaching
technological design. The non-neutrality of technology in relation to
issues of justice is examined, and pedagogical strategies are described
for making students aware of this non-neutrality and enabling them to
incorporate a concern for justice into their design decisions. |
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Character Development from African-American Perspectives: Toward a Counternarrative Approach |
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Written by Louis B. Gallien and LaTrelle Jackson
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THIS CHAPTER ARGUES that character education, if it is to be effective,
must be responsive to the values and narratives of particular cultural
groups. It looks in particular at the cultural counternarratives
informing traditions of character formation in African-American
communities, and argues that these can provide a basis for successful
character education. By grounding character education in the history,
literature, and cultural and religious values of African-Americans, we
are more likely to integrate the psychological, spiritual, and academic
development of the next generation of African-American youth. |
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Preparing the Way for Justice: Strategic Dispositional Formation Through the Spiritual Disciplines |
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Written by Bradford S. Hadaway
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THOUGH MORAL EDUCATORS cannot make their students virtuous, they can
promote certain habits of active learning, analogous to the traditional
spiritual disciplines, which can dispose the soul towards the
subsequent blossoming of embodied and lived-out justice. The
incorporation of a range of these disciplines improves typical service
learning courses because each discipline is designed to resist or prune
preexisting negative dispositions which could otherwise undermine the
transformative power of the service learning experiences themselves.
Kant's doctrine of virture and Merton's account of monastic
spirituality are developed to explain and defend this view. |
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Issues |
| Volume 13 (2009)
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| Volume 12 (2008)
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| Volume 11 (2007)
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| Volume 10 (2006)
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| Volume 9 (2005)
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| Volume 8 (2004)
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| Volume 7 (2003)
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| Volume 6 (2002)
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| Volume 5 (2001)
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| Volume 4 (2000)
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| Volume 3 (1999)
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| Volume 2 (1998)
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| Volume 1 (1997)
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