Greg Carey asks a very good question on his blog today (receiving many good and helpful comments), in line with the theme of my previous post pointing to Joel Willits’ self-reflection. Here is the question:

There’s a huge gap between what I learned in seminary and how I teach today.

Thus, my question to other biblical studies instructors: How does your classroom teaching compare with what you received as an undergraduate or (if applicable) seminarian?

If you don’t teach, a different question: Looking back at your education, how do you wish you’d been taught?

I do not yet have the honor of calling myself a faculty member, but I have been imagining how I will teach for many years. First, let me ruminate on how I have been taught.

I did my undergraduate work at Messiah College and my seminary education was at Fuller Seminary. I am now a doctoral student at UCLA. A few differences stand out to me:

• Classroom size and attention to students. Messiah College classrooms were much smaller, even for the Gen. Ed. survey courses in Bible. Sure, you could coast along without getting noticed if you wanted to, but I always felt welcome to engage the professors on a personal level. At Fuller, the class sizes were enormous in comparison (though, not as big as for your average lecture course at UCLA). An average survey course, particularly by a popular professor, was packed out at around 60-80 students. It created a distance between professors and students. Professors sometimes tried various approaches to bridge that gap. One offered a time once per week after class to sit down and chat with her and other students–but this often felt like a competition of students trying to look smart for the professor. One Fuller professor, in particular, made it a priority for student to feel comfortable talking to him, about anything. This may have been a personality issue, but I do think that the larger classroom sizes contributed to a mentality of distance between professor and student as well. Sometimes, even when I had the individual attention of a professor, I still felt like I was an intruder in their personal time and space–and I’m a pretty motivated student!
• Introducing material that challenges faith. If you’re teaching biblical studies at a Christian institution, you will probably be shocking a few students who are attached to the sermons and Sunday school lessons they have learned growing up. I found that some professors at Messiah College had a sharper iconoclasm, while my professors at Fuller had a more gentle and cautious pedagogical approach. Messiah College gave you a dramatic “reveal,” if you will, of the historical data debunking popular notions of the nativity scene or the role of the authors’ own cultural situation in the writing of biblical texts. Fuller seemed to ease the students in, not throwing them straight into the messy trench of biblical criticism without a parachute, but offering hints of the trench–with quick explanations for how to negotiate the hard realities with deeply held confessional convictions. On the one hand, I think the approach I felt in my experience at Messiah offered the opportunity to dive further and faster to the real meat and potatoes of biblical scholarship. On the other hand, it often left some other students confused or even angry. It’s a bit of a continuum, between gently guiding students towards some important questions of biblical criticism, on the one end, and ripping apart any preconceived notions or biases on the other. Every educator needs to figure out where they are on the continuum.
• “Course reader” versus standard textbook. I don’t know how things work at Messiah nowadays with these sorts of issues, but while I was there, the emphasis was on having one or two hard copy textbooks. At Fuller, many classes were using an electronic “course reader” with PDFs of the necessary readings. At Fuller, we might have one dominant textbook, but lots of articles or chapters from other places. At UCLA, many professors opt for many PDFs which can be posted online for the students to download–sometimes without even requiring any textbooks. The nice thing about PDFs is that you can keep them with you anywhere on your laptop–or your Kindle DX, if you’re so blessed.
• Technology and the classroom. There wasn’t really much going on with this when I was at Messiah, but at Fuller I had a few professors experiment with approaches that I found helpful. One of the ways that John Goldingay compensated for a huge classroom was to use Moodle assignments in which small (virtual) groups were assigned. Each week, we wrote very short blog posts (no more than 200 words) responding to specific questions related to the biblical readings and secondary sources. Each person had to respond to at least three other group members’ blog posts every week. All of this was privately contained within the bounds of your small Moodle group. Prof. Goldingay would then select random questions and comments raised within the blog posts and address them in class (not revealing the authors). This lament psalm was something I wrote for one of his assignments–he asked me to read it for the class.

Now for what I hope to be as an educator. I would like to be a pastoral professor, approachable for any sort of question. While I would try to be clear about boundaries, I would want the students to understand that I know this material is both intellectually and personally challenging. And I’m available to talk it out. Even if I end up in large classrooms, I would try to find ways to remain as accessible as possible, and seek methods to help students connect with one another (like Goldingay’s Moodle groups).

As far as introducing challenging material, I think I would take lessons learned from both Messiah College and Fuller Seminary. From Fuller, I take away a desire to explain how difficult matters of biblical criticism might fit within a theological framework, even if it isn’t always nice and neat. From Messiah, I take away a desire to be totally honest with students about the tremendous challenges one faces in academic biblical interpretation. I would hope to balance the two.

On textbooks, I am rarely wowed with one particular book so much that I would want it to represent all of what I offered for students. So, I may choose one standard textbook, while offering alternate readings in PDF format that balance that book’s weaknesses or offer differing opinions.

With technology, I am very much interested in finding techniques that work. Goldingay’s method was nice. I’d look for others too.

The end game is that the students critically engage the material, ask hard questions, learn to think critically, and hopefully discuss the issues with their peers.