Religious Studies Classroom Research Articles

Integrating educational technology into Lesotho Secondary Religious Studies: A conceptual exploration of practical challenges and opportunities

The use of educational technology (Ed-tech) is becoming more prevalent in shaping teaching methods to meet the needs of modern learners. This study examines how Ed-tech is integrated into secondary Religious Studies classrooms in Lesotho, using the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework as a guide. By reviewing global literature, it looks at the opportunities and challenges of incorporating digital tools into Religious Studies, a subject aimed at developing social skills and moral values. Research suggests that technology can improve student engagement, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning through platforms like cloud-based learning and multimedia resources. However, Lesotho faces obstacles in implementing Ed-tech, including inadequate infrastructure, insufficient teacher training, and outdated educational policies, which leads to a digital divide, especially in rural areas with limited access to electricity and the internet. The study concludes that while Ed-tech has the potential to transform Religious Studies education, addressing these systemic barriers is crucial for effective implementation. It recommends improving technological infrastructure, providing professional development for teachers, updating curriculum policies to meet 21st-century requirements, and integrating digital literacy into the Religious Studies curriculum. Overcoming these challenges will not only bridge the digital divide but also enhance the teaching and learning of Religious Studies, equipping learners with skills to navigate the ethical and digital complexities of the modern world.

Kabir and Pedagogy: Teaching the Politics of Religion through the Hagiography of an Indian Saint

This essay discusses the virtues of hagiology-driven teaching and the pedagogical value of the saint in the religious studies classroom, focusing on how a series of class assignments and activities centered on the Indian devotional saint Kabir function in an undergraduate introductory-level religious studies course to effectively engage student learning, and develop students’ understanding of the politics of religion and the crucial interplay of affect, memory, and storytelling in religious life.

Unteaching Religious Studies

In this 1994 article Kenneth Kramer (1941-2019) writes about his approach of “unteaching” to teach introductory religious studies courses, which involves more student engagement and peer to peer learning. Kramer posits that, “by approaching World Religions through sacred texts, and sacred texts through stories, the unteaching dynamic is given a structured content.” Our editorial team found this piece worth considering alongside recent calls for “ungrading” and reflexive reading in the religious studies classroom. This article was originally published in The Council on the Study of Religion Bulletin 15.4.

Re-Visiting Site Visits through the Lens of Disability Studies

The site visit (also called “field trips,” “excursions,” even “field research”) is a well-known learning activity in religious studies classrooms. In this article, I will analyze site visits to reveal how ableism is embedded even in educational practices common to religion courses. First, I will provide a brief overview of disability studies, various models of disability, and the pervasive ableism that structures higher education. Next, I will describe the typical conceptions and components of a site visit, as illustrated by real religion syllabi, with consideration of the barriers that it may present for students who ‘deviate’ from the ‘norm.’ I will then introduce some principles of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning, which may give readers ideas and tools for revising and expanding all of their assignments, including site visits. Finally, I will conclude with some (not definitive, admittedly, but specific) ideas for making site visits more inclusive.

Accepting the Inevitability of Politics in the Classroom

Once we acknowledge that we cannot escape politics in the classroom, it is imperative that we, as instructors, adapt our pedagogy accordingly, with the knowledge that our choices in the classroom will replicate, reinforce, or resist the political status quo. The political embeddedness of religion makes this all the more urgent for instructors of Religious Studies, as we attempt to guide students through explorations of communities, identities, histories, ideologies, and representations of human experience which all have political implications in the present. This article delineates several parameters for crafting our pedagogical initiatives, offering classroom climate considerations to keep in mind while we establish our own best practices. It then offers several suggestions—structural, instructor-focused, and student-focused—of best practices to implement in the Religious Studies classroom so as to achieve optimal learning outcomes for all of our students. Key among our conclusions is that inclusive pedagogy is effective pedagogy in Religious Studies.

Accepting the Inevitability of Politics in the Classroom

Once we acknowledge that we cannot escape politics in the classroom, it is imperative that we, as instructors, adapt our pedagogy accordingly, with the knowledge that our choices in the classroom will replicate, reinforce, or resist the political status quo. The political embeddedness of religion makes this all the more urgent for instructors of Religious Studies, as we attempt to guide students through explorations of communities, identities, histories, ideologies, and representations of human experience which all have political implications in the present. This article delineates several parameters for crafting our pedagogical initiatives, offering classroom climate considerations to keep in mind while we establish our own best practices. It then offers several suggestions—structural, instructor-focused, and student-focused—of best practices to implement in the Religious Studies classroom so as to achieve optimal learning outcomes for all of our students. Key among our conclusions is that inclusive pedagogy is effective pedagogy in Religious Studies.

Positionality and Disclosure in the Religious Studies Classroom

Debate about whether the academy functions to indoctrinate students in a liberal agenda frequently presumes a conception of political identity as binary, discrete, or mappable along a single spectrum, and as doxastic, in that it is reducible to one’s professed beliefs. Such an assumption, however, ignores the ways in which power dynamics and hierarchies that exist outside the classroom also operate within it. We propose here that the critical examination of positionality within the classroom, and of how classroom activities can contest, reinforce, and reconfigure such power dynamics, offers an alternative way of conceiving the political. We argue that the methods and literature from the academic study of religion offers a particular contribution to make in such a project.

Teaching Metaliteracy in the Religious Studies Classroom

This paper reflects upon the collaborative work between a professor and a librarian, who constructed a course on religious communes in the United States implementing the seven elements of metaliteracy as put forth by Jacobson and Mackey (2013). The shifting terrain of information literacy is hard enough for librarians to traverse, but it can feel insurmountable for professors in the classroom. Working side by side with a librarian can be one of the most fruitful ways for professors to advance in this field. The seed for this project came from a collective intent to create lifelong learners with strong habits of inquiry rather than merely teaching students discrete search strategies and skills. By using technology and team based learning, we opened up students to a critical yet empathetic understanding of religion and to help them develop as informed users and creators on the internet.

A Self-Care Journal for the Religious Studies Classroom

A Self-Care Journal for the Religious Studies Classroom

Loaf for Learning

Cooking and eating in the Religious Studies classroom is a challenging and valuable pedagogical practice which turns upside down students’ individualist ideas of religion as belief inside people’s heads, drawing them out into the complexity of lived religion, and in so doing breaks open the modernist study of religion itself. Teaching with food upsets gendered stereotypes about whose religion counts, and it brings students into direct confrontation with the boundaries, borders, taboos and pleasures that are at the heart of religions and the religious. Cooking and eating with students reminds them that religion is not actually a category separate from the other aspects of human life and culture; it’s connected! With food, the classroom becomes a different place, where students move beyond religion as intellectual interiority into the complexity of everyday religion as lived.

Drawing on the Board

Students and teachers alike tend to think of drawing on the board as an old-fashioned teaching technology, and to prefer electronically mediated pedagogies even in the face-to-face classroom. In this article, I celebrate the chalkboard and whiteboard as potential sites of collaborative and open-ended teaching and learning. Arguing that technological choices are always also political choices, I suggest that the problematizing, slow-paced, and inconclusive teaching style encouraged by board-work is a style worth fighting for – especially in the Religious Studies classroom.

Creative Curation in the Religious Studies Classroom

Creative Curation in the Religious Studies Classroom

White Nationalist Violence and the Religious Studies Classroom: Brief Reflections on a Response to a Shooting

White Nationalist Violence and the Religious Studies ClassroomBrief Reflections on a Response to a Shooting Samuel Hayim Brody (bio) In fall 2018, I taught a 100-level religious studies course called "Jews, Christians, Muslims" at the University of Kansas (KU). While we occasionally referred to current events throughout the semester, for example to the tensions in the Eastern Orthodox Church over Russian foreign policy in Ukraine, we did not generally devote full class periods to such discussions. The course seeks to introduce students to the scriptures, major interpretive traditions, practices, and histories of three religions, including their relationships to one another, and just covering the basics is more than enough to keep us busy. However, when the shooting took place at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh—the worst single act of anti-Semitic violence in American history—I felt that we could not hold class as normal and let the incident pass unmentioned. I also felt, however, that there should be some structure to any discussion. Inviting students to simply share their feelings can be valuable, but it also runs the risk of falling flat if they feel intimidated, unsure, or insufficiently informed. I also had the nature and backgrounds of the student body to consider. Of the forty students enrolled, maybe 10 percent were Jewish. The other 90 percent were a diverse group, including Muslims, Christians of varying denominations, first-generation college students, international students, and so on. I didn't want the Jewish students to feel put on the spot. The students in the class were also intellectually and politically diverse, and I didn't want to seem like I was highlighting the event solely to score political points against the Trump administration. With these concerns in mind, here's what I did. Two days before class (three days after the shooting), I emailed my students to let them know we'd be discussing the attack. I included links to news stories for optional preparation—one from the Atlantic with an angle emphasizing Jewish [End Page 103] burial and funeral practices (a topic we had just covered the week before), one from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on a solidarity rally at Sixth Presbyterian Church, and Eric Ward's essay "Skin in the Game," which discusses the role played by anti-Semitism in white nationalist ideology.1 The next day, I wrote to KU's then– Director of Academic Inclusion at the Office of Diversity and Equity, Jennifer Ng. She and I had previously met and had helpful discussions about other issues on campus as they might affect my course, so I thought she might have resources on this as well. I was particularly concerned that connections between the attack and the general political climate, which any discussion would have to draw of necessity, not be received by conservative students in a "partisan" way and cause them to shut down rather than participate. Dr. Ng provided some useful resources geared toward focusing the discussion around specific concrete educational objectives while at the same time acknowledging the emotional impact of the event. In class, I said the discussion could go for as long as students wanted. I had my regular lecture prepared and was ready to move to it if they were done talking after fifteen or twenty minutes. I had them start with five minutes of writing their own thoughts/reactions when they heard the news—not to turn in for evaluation but just to reflect and get their thoughts in order. At first, I was surprised by their responses—except for the Jewish students, many had reacted by classifying the synagogue shooting as one among the numberless mass shootings that take place all the time in the United States, at schools, workplaces, and public places. Their initial lens was not religion or hate crime, but security "in general," gun control, and so on. During the discussion, I did my best to discourage the pattern where I spoke after each student, although sometimes they had specific questions about empirical facts I had to answer. I had prepared just one PowerPoint slide, a screenshot of the killer's account on the social-media service Gab, in case...

Using virtual reality and 360‐degree video in the religious studies classroom: An experiment

AbstractThe advent of relatively inexpensive 360‐degree cameras and virtual reality (VR) headsets brings new possibilities to the study of religion by allowing students to become virtually immersed in distant religious environments at very little cost. These tools can serve as the basis for assignments that help to engage students and meet core learning outcomes such as empathetic understanding and ethnographic analysis of religious place, ritual, and behavior in light of theories of religion. This article describes and reflects on the experimental incorporation of these technologies in two sections of an introductory religious studies course at a small two‐year campus in the University of Wisconsin System.

Lost in the great divide: Motivation in religious studies classrooms

AbstractOne of the most illuminating finds in Barbara E. Walvoord's Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses (2008) is what she calls “the great divide,” a mismatch between instructors’ goals for their courses, which are academic, and the students’ reasons for taking them, which relate to their personal interests and development. Motivation – or, rather, the lack thereof – is not explicitly considered as a potential victim of this mismatch. This article will turn its attention squarely to this issue. First, I will review data about the “great divide” and link them to the common practice of asking our students to bracket the personal when they take our courses. The article will juxtapose this practice with what research tell us about motivation, which will allow us to further explore why the divide Walvoord and others have identified is so problematic. The article will conclude with pedagogical strategies that can help instructors intentionally influence motivation in religion courses. Ultimately, I suggest that we may be doing students – as well as ourselves, as the purveyors of our discipline – a disservice, if we do not attend to (or, worse, if we actively avoid) what we know motivates students to learn.

Disruption, dialogue, and swerve: Reflective structured dialogue in religious studies classrooms

AbstractThis article focuses on Reflective Structured Dialogue as a set of practices developed in the context of conflict resolution that are well suited to handling quotidian uneasiness and extraordinary moments of disruption in religious studies classrooms. After introducing Reflective Structured Dialogue's history, goals, and general practices, the authors consider its uses in classroom settings. They argue that a classroom in which teachers understand themselves as facilitators, and in which students are experienced in structured dialogue practices – including being comfortable in a state of intellectual “wobble” – is one more apt to be able to engage with, and more likely to benefit from, disruptive events.

Sexual Violence in and around the Classroom

AbstractSexual violence on campus is a major issue facing students, faculty, and administrators, and institutions of higher education are struggling to respond. This forum brings together three responses to the problem, with a focus on the religious studies classroom. The responses move from the institution to the faculty to the classroom, exploring three separate but linked spaces for responding to sexual violence. The first contribution (Graybill) critiques common institutional responses to sexual violence. The second contribution (Minister) advocates for long‐term, classroom‐based responses to sexual violence and describes a faculty/staff workshop response. The third contribution (Lawrence) emphasizes the classroom, examining the issues that arise when perpetrators of sexual assault are part of the student body. Read together, the pieces offer a comprehensive view of the complicated intersections of sexual violence, the university, and pedagogical issues in religious studies.

Through Literacy to Fluency: Reading in the Religious Studies Classroom

AbstractThis paper addresses a perennial question of the religious studies and, indeed, of most liberal arts classrooms: How do I get my students to read texts thoroughly and with understanding? After briefly reviewing the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data, I argue that what teachers desire is not just basic literacy, but fluency, which is the capacity to read analytically (and, for me, appreciatively), deploying the strategies of reading in a high process, improvisational mode. I unpack the elements and efficacy of one close reading classroom teaching practice I use, guided annotation, as a strategy for developing fluency. I argue that close analysis of a short, intentionally chosen passage with a guiding question builds towards reading fluency. Annotating short passages, singly and then in relation to other passages, with the author's and disciplinary concerns as the foci, practices the skills that build fluency. Annotation is akin to playing scales in music, repeating a baseline task of reading; working slowly and simply at first, but then with increasing speed and complexity, moving the student towards reading whole texts well.

Ethics and Undergraduate Research in the Study of Religion: Place‐Based Pedagogy and Reciprocal Research Relations

AbstractIn the undergraduate religious studies classroom at the University of Leeds students are introduced to the complexity of religion in locality. One of the most engaging ways to do this is through a place‐based pedagogy utilizing independent fieldwork as part of the learning process. However, undergraduates, like seasoned researchers, must learn to balance and understand the way insider representations influence academic interpretations, and the way their academic interpretations and representations can lead to change in the community being studied. Place‐based pedagogy has, therefore, an important ethical dimension that is not accounted for in the existing literature. Engaging with reciprocal research relations as a way to navigate this terrain introduces students to the human impacts of their research and develops their self‐awareness as researchers and religion specialists. This paper will draw on the Leeds experience to build an understanding of the interaction between place‐based pedagogy and reciprocal research relations which informs both teaching and research in the study of religion, and extends the existing discourse on the ethical dimensions of undergraduate research.

Engaging the Borders: Empathy, Religious Studies, and Pre‐Professional Fields

AbstractThis article proposes that religious studies instructors can gain pedagogical insights regarding the value and teaching of empathy from pre‐professional health care and counseling fields. I present research findings from these fields to support claims that empathic skills are teachable. I then show that empathy has been established within the field of religious studies as important in order to understand the beliefs of the religious other. I conclude that religious studies educators should be concerned about how to teach empathy, and suggest that pre‐professional research findings point us in the direction of how to do this. Experiential exercises such as role‐playing and other simulation exercises seem to be most effective in teaching empathic skills. I present examples that demonstrate how listening exercises and the role‐playing of cases can be used in the religious studies classroom and can assist in the development of empathy for the religious other.