Formation in the Classroom

Abstract

What is the relationship between the academic knowledge of the guild and the formation of students in the classroom? This Forum gathers four essays originally presented at a Special Topics Session at the 2009 conference of the American Academy of Religion (Atlanta, Georgia), with a brief introductory essay by Fred Glennon explaining the genesis of the panel. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen clarify some of the issues at stake in undergraduate liberal arts classrooms by distinguishing between four dimensions of what they refer to as "the (in)formation teaching matrix: institutional context, course content, faculty roles, and student outcomes. John Thatamanil argues that all learning necessarily presupposes formation. Amanda Porterfield argues against using the word "formation" because it complicates and undermines her teaching goals to historicize religion and narratives about it through open-ended inquiry.

Assessing Christian Learning: Vocation, Practices, and Investment

“…This question of how faith relates to life in the world hovers behind the increasingly popular terminology of "faith formation" (Gilhoni, 2011). Literature on "faith formation," "spiritual formation," or "Christian formation" commonly draws a contrast with mere information (Glennon et al, 2011;Miller and Beazley, 2018), implying a vocational engagement of the whole self. Yet if the "faith" that is to be formed is a thing that floats in the air, then "faith formation" may still be about building stronger hot air balloons.…”

Institutional dimensions of the future of philosophy of religion

“…The first challenge is that this assumption foregrounds and centralizes the role of the instructor instead of making the content itself central, with the instructor and the students, in various ways, orbiting (Fiorenza, 2009;Taranto and Dettmar, 2015). The second challenge is the very assumption that it is possible to know a priori what can and should be learned, which seems to in turn assume that learning is primarily a process of information somehow distinct from formation, reformation, and transformation (Freire, 2006;Glennon et al, 2011). Moreover, learning in the humanities cannot necessarily be expected to take place during the period of a particular course; humanistic learning is cumulative as literatures are engaged and then brought into conversation with other literatures in other courses.…”

Can virtue be learned? An exploration of student learning experiences in ethics courses and their implications for influencing moral character

“…A number of scholars point toward the plausibility of understanding a classroom to be a setting for cultivating a certain kind of ethical sensitivity. For example, bell hooks (1994), Fred Glennon (2004Glennon ( , 2011, Katherine Turpin (2008), Nel Noddings (2013), and Karen Teel (2014) argue that academic contexts are appropriate and essential venues in which to foster and promote concerns for social justice and an opposition to injustice. A collection of essays edited by Elizabeth Kiss and Peter Euben (2010) more specifically considers the extent to which moral education can properly be viewed as part of a university curriculum, particularly in relation to courses designated as ethics courses.…”