Teaching Resources

The following is a non-comprehensive list of articles, books, and web-based resources intended to stimulate, challenge, and encourage reflection on pedagogical aims and practices within the discipline of Religious Studies. The Craft of Teaching periodically updates this list; please send your suggestions/additions to craftofteaching@uchicago.edu and njhardy@uchicago.edu.

 

Teaching Resources

Teaching: Selected Reads For Beginning Teachers

• Susan A. Ambrose, Michale W. Bridges et al. How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010.

  : Distills into seven principles much recent research in psychology, education, and cognitive science on how students learn.

• Ken Bain. What the Best College Teachers Do. Harvard University Press, 2004.

  : A popular companion that draws upon many years of experience in faculty development to communicate the essentials of effective college teaching.

• John C. Bean. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. 2nd Edition. Jossey-Bass, 2011.

  : Bean's book will measurably improve new teachers' assignment design skills and provide ample examples to stimulate readers' own ideas.

• Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill. Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. Jossey-Bass, 2005.

  : New teachers will find the middle chapters on gettting and keeping a discussion going immediately useful. Readers will also want to consult what many regard as the best overall book on discussion leading, the collection of essays entitled Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership (Harvard Business School Press, 1991).

• L. Dee Fink. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass, 2003.

  : Offers one model of course design that will give the new teacher a helpful conversation partner in designing their own course. Download a 32-page guide based on Fink's book.

• Barbara Gross Davis. Tools for Teaching. 2nd edition. Jossey-Bass, 2009.

  : Along with the classic McKeachie's Teaching Tips (but more affordable), one of the better "get in and drive" teaching manuals.  Clear and well-referenced. 

Click here for a longer list of recommendations from the POD Network community.

 

Teaching Religion: Selected Reads on Religious Studies Pedagogy

Collections and Series

• Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65.4 (1997).  

  : A thematic issue on “Teaching and learning in religion and theology.”

• Teaching Theology and Religion.  

  : A journal on pedagogy published annually in four issues by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. The journal is searchable here.

• AAR Teaching Religious Studies Series

  : Volumes in this series contain essays that locate the topic within its historical context and within the academic study of religion, as well as provide discussions of related pedagogical issues.  

  • A review by Gene V. Gallagher of seven of the books in this series can be found in Teaching Theology and Religion, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 24–36, "The AAR Teaching Series."
  • Some titles currently available include:
    • Teaching Religion and Violence, Brian Pennington, ed.
    • Teaching Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies, Rebecca Todd Peters and Bernadette McNary-Zak, eds.
    • Teaching Jung, Kelly Bulkeley and Clodagh Weldon, eds.
    • Teaching Mysticism, William Parsons, ed.
    • Teaching Religion and Film, Gregory J. Watkins, ed.
    • Teaching Death and Dying, Christopher M. Moreman, ed.
    • Teaching the Daode Jing, Gary D. DeAngelis and Frisina, Warren G., eds.
    • Teaching Confucianism, Jeffrey L. Richey, ed.
    • Teaching New Religious Movements, David G. Bromley, ed.
    • Teaching Religion and Healing, Linda Barnes and Ines Talamantez, eds.
    • Teaching African American Religions, Carolyn M. Jones and Trost, Theodore Louis, eds.
    • Teaching Durkheim, Terry F. Godlove, ed.
    • Teaching Ritual, Catherine Bell, ed.
    • Teaching Freud, Diane Jonte-Pace, ed.
    • Teaching Islam, Brannon M. Wheeler, ed.
    • Teaching Lévi-Strauss, Hans Penner, ed. 

 

• Mark Juergensmeyer, ed. Teaching the Introductory Course in Religious Studies: A Sourcebook. Scholars Press, 1991.  

  : Contains essays by such figures as Robert Bellah, Jonathan Z. Smith, Ninian Smart, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith. 

• Frank E. Reynolds and Sheryl L. Burkhalter ed. Beyond the Classics?  Essays in Religious Studies and Liberal Education. Atlanta, 1990.

• Jon R. Stone, ed. The Craft of Religious Studies.  London and New York, 1998. 

  : A series of articles on the field of Religious Studies.

 

Books and Articles

• Monica A. Coleman. “Transforming to Teach: Teaching Religion to Today’s Black College Students.” Teaching Theology and Religion 12.4 (2009): 95-100.

• Susan G. Henking. "The Open Secret: Dilemmas of Advocacy in the (Religious Studies) Classroom," in Advocacy in the Classroom: Propaganda versus Engagement ed. Patricia Meyers Spacks (1996), pp. 245-259.

• Gavin Hyman. “The Study of Religion and the Return of Theology.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72 (2007): 195-219.

• Russell T. McCutcheon. “Religion, Ire, and Dangerous Things.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72(2007): 173-193.

• Martha Nussbaum. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. London, 1997.  

  : See especially chapter 8, “Socrates in the Religious University.”

• The Religion Major and Liberal Education: An AAR White Paper, 2007

• Mark Roncace and Patrick Gray, eds. Teaching the Bible: Practical Strategies for Classroom Instruction. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.

• Jonathan Z. Smith, On Teaching Religion: Essays by Jonathan Z. Smith. Oxford University Press, 2012.

• Jonathan Z. Smith. “Teaching the Bible in the Context of General Education.” Teaching Theology and Religion 1.2 (1998): 73-78.

• Barbara E. Walvoord. Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses. Blackwell: Malden, MA, 2008.

• Lee Yearley. “Bourgeois Relativism and the Comparative Study of the Self.”  Tracing Common Themes: Comparative Courses in the Study of Religion. Eds. John B. Carman and Steven P. Hopkins (1991): 165-178.  

  : A fascinating discussion about how and why Prof. Yearley changed his course, “Varieties of Religious Thought.”

 

Online Resource Collections

• Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion

• The Wabash Center Syllabus Project. A searchable collection of online course syllabi.

• Society for Biblical Literature: Teaching the Bible. A resource for teaching Bible.