Religious Education

• STH TE 808: Creative Pedagogy
  This course examines the transformative potential of creative pedagogy, in which individuals and communities learn through the free play of possibilities that deepen faith. By engaging practical, historical, theological approaches, students learn to consider the tensions, risks and opportunities of creative pedagogy, while acquiring skills to teach and learn through the body, the imagination, and the senses.
• STH TE 811: Doing Theology Aesthetically
  In this course learners explore the aesthetic dimensions of meaning-making through visual art and aesthetic practices. Discussion of texts, experiences of making art, and engagement in aesthetic practices shed light on the potential strengths and limitations of using aesthetic experience as an effective teaching approach in religious education.
• STH TE 812: Introduction to Christian Education: Person, Community, and Religious Education
  This course is a practical introduction to ministries of learning and teaching in Christian communities. It will explore the dynamics of individual and communal faith formation in diverse contexts, drawing on a range of perspectives from theology and the philosophy of education. Students will analyze the education offerings of religious communities, evaluate educational resources, practice effective teaching approaches, and design educational strategies appropriate to their community of faith.
• STH TE 819: REligious Education for Social Transformation
    This course explores a religious pedagogy that enables communities of faith to integrate the personal formation of their members with their communal public actions for social transformation. Both the history and the current practices of Christian religious education reveal a division between two educational dimensions: the formation of "self" and the transformation of society. Rather than separate tasks, participants are invited to understand these as one integrated task. The pedagogy of practicing theology will be introduced to show how it enables people in communities of faith to develop their personhoods, as they participate in the communities' actions for social transformation.
• STH TE 822: Spirituality and Liberative Pedagogy
  The purpose of this course is to draw from the depths of Christian spirituality and liberative pedagogy to discover insights, questions, and directions for future educational practice. The course takes seriously both Christian spirituality and liberative pedagogy in their own rights, exploring practices and pedagogies in their many forms, and pays attention to the creative overlap between the two. The underlying hope is that the class will discover and construct educational practices that deepen spiritual life and contribute significantly to liberation in this world.
• STH TE 845: Religion and Education
  The relationship of government with schools and colleges based upon religious convictions and the efforts of educators to shape and maintain a distinctive character in such institutions. Issues of educational freedom and the rights of parents in historical and comparative international perspective.

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