Home  Volume 8 (2004) Issue 1
Issue 1
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8:1 Editorial: Pedagogy as Method, Ecology and Home |
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Written by John Shortt & David Smith
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Despite concerted attempts to render it thoroughly susceptible to the methods of inquiry of empirical science, teaching remains something of a mystery. As with other complex, multi-faceted human activities, we tend to get a collective grip on the process of teaching by assuming its similarity with other areas of our experience. At certain points in history and cultural space certain similarities may loom larger than others in our thinking, and in so doing subtly shape how we think about and even how we go about teaching. Consider, by way of parallel, how we think about another mystery, love. Once we start to think of love mainly as, for instance, a physical force ("He was immediately attracted to her", "I could feel the electricity between us"), that metaphor may gradually color how we approach and experience our relationships. |
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8:1 To Defy a Divided Existence: Ontological Assessment and the Christian Academy |
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Written by Todd Ream
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PROVIDING GUIDANCE TO students concerning the nature of the roles that they will assume in a pluralistic society is an important part of the mission of Christian colleges and universities. However, the fulfilment of this portion of their mission cannot come at the expense of the ontological formation of their students. As a result of an assessment that takes both the roles and the ontological points of existence of students into consideration, this article challenges Christian institutions of higher learning to become places where students can learn to defy the pressures that lead to a divided existence. |
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8:1 Faith, Education and Communication Technology |
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Written by Quentin J. Schultze
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NEW TECHNOLOGIES SUCH as the Internet and PowerPoint are altering the communication context in which educators, school administrators, students and counselors work. This essay suggests that biblical insights and historic Christian theology can help educators to act wisely within this high-tech context. Of particular importance are: listening, being self-consciously "multimedia" persons, and attending to the role of the Holy Spirit in the non-technological mystery of human communication.
This article is available as a sample pdf: Faith, Education and Communication Technology
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8:1 Tribute to Peter Cousins (1928-2003) |
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Written by Richard Wilkins
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Peter Cousins, who died in September 2003, was the first Editor of Spectrum, a magazine that grew into a journal that was re-titled in 1997 as Journal of Education & Christian Belief. It can therefore be truly said that Peter Cousins was "our" first editor. This tribute to "a giant in the land" was written by Richard Wilkins, another former editor of Spectrum. It was first published in the Spring 2004 issue of ACT NOW, the magazine of the Association of Christian Teachers in England, and it appears here with the kind permission of the author and editor. |
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8:1 Exploring the Numinous in Literature: Learning from Paul on Mars Hill |
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Written by Laura Barge
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A BIAS AGAINST a Christian perspective in the teaching of literature in the secular university is generally recognized as well established. This bias seems out of place because the present climate in such studies favors the open acknowledgment of whatever theoretical praxis (feminist, Marxist, Freudian, deconstructionist) is being used to approach the literature. A Christian teacher searching for irenic and productive rather than agonistic responses to this bias can learn from St. Paul's address to the Athenians on Mars Hill. Paul's assumption that any serious attention to the sacred dimension of human experience is ultimately a reference to the Christian God suggests a methodology of using the numinous spaces - ideas of transcendence or the sacred found in nearly all significant literature - as guideposts to insight into Christianity in the classroom. Whether such alternate spaces are those of the Romantic sublime, the existential human self in sublimated sexual experience, the realm of Art as sacramentally holy, or a creation cursed by the absence of God, identifying and exploring the space can lead to a comparison with other numinous spaces, including Christianity. Carefully conducted, such teaching can move from reading pagan poets whose writings betray their ignorance of the God whose "offspring" they are to gaining insight into the true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of historic Christianity, "in whom" all persons "live", and move, and have their "being". |
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8:1 Education for Homelessness or Homemaking? The Christian College in a Postmodern Culture |
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Written by Steven Bouma-Prediger & Brian Walsh
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SOME POSIT TODAY that colleges and universities - small or large, public or private, Christian or secular - educate people for upward mobility, alienate people from their local habitation, and encourage the vandalism of the earth. In short, they argue that education is in many respects education for global homelessness. In this article, we examine these claims, set forth an alternative vision of education, and describe some of the implications of a biblically informed vision. In doing so, we argue that Christian higher education our explicitly to aim at homecoming and homemaking. |
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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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