Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
17. Teaching: Teaching in the Ideological State of Religious Studies: Notes Towards a Pedagogical Future
Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
Richard W. Newton, Jr. [+]
University of Alabama
Richard W. Newton, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His research examines the making of social difference in light of the anthropology of scriptures. He also curates the teacher-scholar multimedia resource, Sowing the Seed: Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture, and Teaching (sowingtheseed.org).
Description
Higher education in North America increasingly implores teachers to adopt frameworks of values education, pre-professional student-learning, and assessment backed by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Teacher-scholars in religious studies have reason to question whether such initiatives put a critical understanding of our data at odds with the ideological state apparatuses within which our institutions are situated. Thinking with the work of Louis Althusser, this chapter historicizes classroom tensions and outlines an alternative way for theoretically-minded scholars to negotiate the task of pedagogy.