12 Surprises When Lecturing Less (and Teaching more!)

Now That You’ve Flipped Biblical Hebrew…

G. Brooke Lester, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Scriptures, and Director for Emerging Pedagogies, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Time was, my Biblical Hebrew students and I sweated grimly in a thrice-weekly race against time. But now, with the lectures recorded (as voice-narrated Keynote/PowerPoint presentations) and moved outside of the classroom as homework,... Read more →

Debating the Black Christ

Kwok Pui-lan, William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School What if you were to stage a debate on the black Christ, instead of giving a lecture on James Cone’s black theology? If you haven’t used debate in class, I encourage you to try... Read more →

Field Reports in Biblical Studies: A Teaching without Teaching Experiment

Greg Carey, Professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary We all know that our students’ social and religious contexts shape the way they understand the Bible – in theory, at least. But how do we bring that knowledge into the classroom? This question is particularly acute in a diverse... Read more →

Learning From Each Other: Hevruta

Wil Gafney, Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (At Brite Divinity School as of 9/2014) As the saying goes, “sometimes the old ways are best.” (Eve Moneypenny and James Bond in Skyfall, 2012) Hevruta is a venerable pedagogy that places mutual student learning at... Read more →

Using Film to Nurture ‘Theology from the Underside’

Grace Ji-Sun Kim What are your favorite pastimes? Does it include a night with friends at your favorite restaurant or is it watching a movie at home, on the sofa, with snacks? Imagine your college class with movie and a grade. That’s the good life. Seminary life isn’t quite like... Read more →

When Good Discussions Go Bad

Kate Blanchard, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Alma College The main reason I don’t lecture is cowardice, plain and simple. I have never felt brilliant or knowledgeable or charismatic enough to carry a course on my own. Thankfully, though, I teach in a small department in a small institution where... Read more →

Quiet Please: Making Space for Silence

Lynn Neal is Associate Professor of Religion at Wake Forest University I was sitting around the seminar table with eighteen students in a course on religion and popular culture. To get the discussion started, I asked them about the results of their web-based research on firsthand accounts of becoming a... Read more →

Students Teaching each other through Partnership

Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions at Claremont School of Theology. Pedagogical Confession: I learn from lectures. I’m one of those people for whom the traditional academy was made. I listen to lectures on audiofiles (and I have since I was a teenager).... Read more →

Bhashya, Samvada, and Sadhana: Commentary, Debate, Attainment and Other Takeaways from a Monastery in India

Deepak Sarma, Professor of South Asian religions and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University My unpleasant memories of middle school English classes are made much worse when I recall how some teachers taught poetry and prose by picking “important” passages and pontificating about them. Learning to “read” poetry was essentially... Read more →