Vocation in Theology and Psychology: Conflicting Approaches?

ABSTRACT

Recent contributions in the fields of psychology, sociology, and theology reveal opposing attitudes about the subject of calling or vocation with regard to one's work. Whereas psychologists have rediscovered the concept, theologians increasingly show reluctance to accept a vocational view of work. In offering an alternative perspective, this article argues that an approach to calling from biblical theology is capable of inspiring Christian workers in a psychologically meaningful way, while avoiding the inadequacies of the understanding that “work is vocation” that was developed during the Protestant Reformation. In a biblical-theological approach, work is not equated with calling. Rather, it is perceived as practicing the love command and hope for a restoration of God's intentions for creation, emanating from the call into fellowship with Christ and a vision for the kingdom of God.     

Mothers’ Knowledge of What Reduces Distress in Their Adolescents: Impact on the Development of Adolescent Approach Coping

Objective. This longitudinal study assessed the role of mothers’ knowledge of what is comforting to their adolescents when they are distressed. The authors proposed that the adolescents of mothers who were knowledgeable but dissatisfied with their adolescent would have adolescents who coped better than those whose mothers were less dissatisfied; dissatisfied mothers would be more likely to draw on their knowledge to engage in “not-too-nice” parenting, thereby allowing their adolescents to find their own means of self-comfort. Design. Participants were 111 early adolescents and their mothers. At the first time-point adolescents were assessed for approach coping and asked to rate what they would find comforting when they were upset; mothers were asked to predict those ratings and assessed for the extent of their dissatisfaction with their adolescent’s behavior. Adolescents were assessed again for approach coping 2 years later. Results. Mothers’ knowledge positively predicted adolescent approach coping, but only when mothers were high in dissatisfaction. Conclusions. The findings underscore the importance of parents’ knowledge of their adolescents in promoting coping, as well as the role that maternal dissatisfaction plays in adolescents’ ability to cope on their own.     

GERONTOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE

This paper discusses four well‐attested criteria by which a given “subject area” might be judged to be or not to be an “academic discipline.” What can be said of “gerontological studies” under each of these criteria? In what ways might “gerontological studies” benefit from being more generally accepted as an “academic discipline?     

Educating World Teachers for Cosmopolitan Classrooms and Schools

This essay responds to the question of what it might mean to educate “world teachers” for cosmopolitan classrooms and schools through an examination of an ethnographic play entitled Satellite Kids. The author begins with the idea that teachers need to develop or build up “intercultural capital”, that is, knowledge and dispositions that will help them in intercultural exchanges of teaching and learning. The author then explores what such knowledge and dispositions might entail through an analysis of Satellite Kids. The play's focus on issues of power, identity, and intercultural conflict within a Canadian cosmopolitan school makes an interesting case study for exploring what intercultural knowledge and dispositions might look and sound like, and how the educational project of building intercultural capital is different from the project of multicultural education that has been dominant in Western teacher education throughout 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.     

Boys’ and girls’ educational choices in secondary education. The role of gender ideology

This study aims to explain why boys and girls in secondary education choose different educational tracks. We argue that adolescents internalise gender expectations as to what is “appropriate” male and female behaviour in their gender ideology. Gender ideology can affect educational choices by influencing (1) how adolescents evaluate their competence in certain subjects (competence beliefs), (2) what they find important in a future occupation (occupational values) and (3) what school subject they prefer right now (subject preferences). Longitudinal data collected among adolescents at age 15 and 16 (N = 1062) are used. Multinomial path models show that gender ideology shapes boys’ occupational values and subject preferences, whereas for girls it shapes their competence beliefs. Only for boys this leads to gender-stereotypical educational choices, however. Our results support the idea that gender expectations are stricter for boys than for girls and may prevent men from entering more feminine career tracks.     

Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

What Characterizes Adolescents Struggling With Educational Decision‐Making?

Educational decision‐making is a complex process where individual factors such as how adolescents think about and evaluate themselves could play an important role. In this study, (N = 84), we combined behavioral and neural correlates of self‐concept and self‐esteem to examine what characterizes adolescents who struggle with educational decision‐making. We included 38 adolescents (16–24 years, M = 18.7 years) from “the Gap‐Year program.” This program focuses on personal development for adolescents who have dropped out of higher education or stay undecided after high school. We compared these adolescents prior to the start of the training with 46 peers (17–21 years, M = 19.4 years) who reported to have successfully chosen a major. The results showed that adolescents struggling with educational decision‐making reported lower levels of self‐esteem and self‐concept clarity. Neurally, higher self‐esteem was associated with more self‐related activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Together, these results suggest that healthy self‐esteem levels are an important condition for the ability to make a well‐suited educational choice.     

Managing managerialism in church school leadership: a practitioner inquiry in the theology of education

This paper is written from the perspective of an Anglican head teacher in the context of UK public educational policy in which managerialism is construed as the prevalent orthodoxy of reform. It seeks to bring the discipline of theology and the field of school leadership studies into closer dialogue around the theme of managerialism in a way that will benefit academic scholarship and practitioner researchers. Firstly, it explores The Way Ahead report as an impetus to critical theological reflection about Christian vocation and the distinctive role of church school head teachers. Secondly, it indicates how the site of managed reality is important for theology and how the theology of education might be pursued in defence of education. Against claims that doing theology tends to domesticate education, it is argued that theology can help provide an important countercultural perspective intended for the good of education. Thirdly, it outlines the background of public educational policy which makes countercultural theology an appropriate response in the service of a faith‐inspired professionalism. Fourthly, it suggests how a countercultural model of contextual theology can collaborate with important forms of research in the field of educational leadership, management and administration.     

Diversity and Performance: A Shotgun Marriage?

Books and articles promoting “diversity” abound. Many of their authors are not clear what they mean by diversity. Many seem to be naive about the amount of conflict “diversity” can engender. And almost all authors assume–without presenting any meaningful evidence–that diversity is somehow good for organizations. This article attempts to define diversity, suggest the conflict that is often associated with it, and then investigate the conditions (if any) under which diversity with its attendant conflict can benefit the organization.     

LINKING MARXISM, GLOBALIZATION, AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPARATIVE AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY POST 9/11

Abstract In a post‐9/11 world, where the politics of “us” versus “them” has reemerged under the umbrella of “terrorism,” especially in the United States, can we still envision an éducation sans frontières: a globalized and critical praxis of citizenship education in which there are no borders? If it is possible to conceive it, what might it look like? In this review essay, Awad Ibrahim looks at how these multilayered and complex questions have been addressed in three books: Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur’s Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism, Nel Noddings’s Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, and Gita Steiner‐Khamsi’s The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. Ibrahim concludes that, through creating a liminal, dialogical space between humanism, environmentalism, materialism, philosophy, and comparative education, the authors in these books offer a critical pedagogy in which éducation sans frontières is possible — a project that is as visionary as it is hopeful.     

Earth Juts into World: An Earth Ethics for Ecologizing Philosophy of Education

Philosophers of education often focus their critique on issues such as neoliberalism, consumerism, pluralism, and so on, and they typically turn for solutions to what we might call the political: democracy, the public, cosmopolitanism, dissent. These critiques and solutions remain firmly connected to what Heidegger calls “the world,” and this worldly analysis seemingly hovers above earthly issues of the environment and ecology. In this article, Clarence Joldersma employs Martin Heidegger's distinction between earth and world, drawing on Kelly Oliver's interpretation of it, to “ecologize” philosophy of education by arguing that that earth “juts” into the world. Philosophy of education needs a Derridean supplement, something that makes up for a lack, but that, in filling the lack, simultaneously supplants it. Joldersma invites philosophy of education to supplement its worldly principles (dissent, democracy, and the like) with an “earth ethics” that is characterized by three features. First, this ethics lets the earth and earthlings be, recognizing their continuing mystery as beings. Second, it acknowledges gratefulness toward the earth, an indebtedness to the earth for the reliable support it provides to our worldly projects and concerns. Third, it recognizes earth's fundamental fragility, that its seeming worldly dependability conceals an earthly vulnerability. Joldersma concludes that these three features, in tandem, give rise to an earthly ethics of responsibility. Philosophy of education needs an earth ethics to supplement, if not supplant, its worldly principles.     

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND FAITH

Critical pedagogy has often been linked in the literature to faith traditions such as liberation theology, usually with the intent of improving or redirecting it. While recognizing and drawing from those previous linkages, Jacob Neumann goes further in this essay and develops the thesis that critical pedagogy can not just benefit from a connection with faith traditions, but is actually, in and of itself, a practice of faith. In this analysis, he juxtaposes critical pedagogy against three conceptualizations of faith: John Caputo's blurring of the modernist division between faith and reason, Paul Tillich's argument that faith is “ultimate concern,” and Paulo Freire's theology and early Christian influences. Using this three‐pronged approach, Neumann argues that regardless of how it is seen, critical pedagogy manifests as a practice of faith “all the way down.”     

A SYSTEMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS RELATIVE TO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

“The accent in cultural history is on close examin‐ ation — of texts, of pictures, and of actions — and an open‐mindedness to what those examinations will reveal, rather than on elaboration of new master narratives.”

Lynn Hunt (Ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), p. 22.

“[Films] are a legitimate way ... of representing, interpreting, thinking about and making meaning from the traces of the past ... that seriously deals with the relationship of past and present.”

Robert A. Rosenstone (Ed.), Revisioning History (Princeton, N.J., 1995), p. 3.

One of postmodernism's major lines of development collapses the boundaries and hierarchical distinctions between elite or academic culture and popular culture, giving us new opportunities to cross boundaries separating history from literature and the arts, the “academic” from the “popular”, the archival from the imaginative. I embrace the freedom that postmodernism offers to entertain new ideas, play different kinds of language games, challenge established “ways of seeing”.

I propose here that we extend the range of what we regard as historical “source” to include film, and that film be accepted by historians of education as a legitimate form of textual representation and important evidentiary “source” for our exploration and interpre‐ tation of culture and of education. What follows is an attempt at integrating film into the historiography of education. For illustrative purposes, I've chosen Peter Weir's “Dead Poets Society” ("DPS”, 1989) for my text. I don't presume to give “the” meaning of “DPS” for understanding recent American educational history, but to suggest some of its possible meanings, which, given the problematic nature of “meaning” in our postmodern epoch, is about all we can hope for, but which may be enough to continue the conversation about movies after the movie is over.     

Positive Perspectives on the Profession: Reframing through Appreciative Inquiry

Change theories and Organization Development strategies have long followed the problem-solving approach of looking at organizations, identifying the weaknesses and introducing interventions to “stop doing the wrong things.” In its simplest form, this approach has been successful in a variety of situations and has a popular following. Consultants or internal reviewers look for the problems, identify the cause of the problem, and introduce the intervention (new rule) to eliminate the opportunity for the repetition of the “problem.” Problem-solving is a popular perspective through which change is initiated in politics, academia, and in social media. Eliminate the “bad” and pay attention to what we have been doing wrong to improve. This article first reviews the problems posed in past Hanna lectures to some major themes: (a) the need to address societal concerns, (b) the need to reduce sub-disciplinary fragmentation, (c) the problems inherent on university campuses as a result of politics and the economy, (d) the need to re-examine the over-reliance on the scientific research paradigm at the cost of phenomenological understandings, and (e) the framing of problems to be solved by professionals in our field. The introduction of Appreciative Inquiry and is then provided as an alternative approach to examine current contextual setting with the primary emphasis away from “What problems are you having?” and toward “What is working around here?”. This alternative suggests that in all organizations there is some positive force that is moving the organization forward, and the identification of that force (what works) can lay the ground work for doing more of “what works.” Finally, three examples of Appreciative Inquiry opportunities in action from our discipline are offered for consideration.     

Points of Vulnerability and Presence: Knowing and learning in globally networked communities

This is a paper about knowledge, learning and the idea of community in what we call “hybrid workspaces”. Hybrid workspaces “bring together physical place and cyber place” in communication networks (Castells, 2001, p. 131). Many people work in various kinds of hybrid workspaces. A person working on a production line might have real-time co-workers in their own town, just as a colleague might work in a hybrid workspace and rely upon others who communicate asynchronously via a website to help them solve problems. Hybrid workspaces, like most workspaces, are centrally concerned with the global production and diffusion of certain kinds of routine and innovative working knowledge. In this paper we think about knowledge as social action that is generated, mediated, negotiated and traded among people in the politically charged dynamic of hybrid workspace communities. We consider the ways people adopt, modify and are changed by the technologies they implement in these workspaces. We are especially interested in what people have to learn to know, and to be, to operate effectively in these hybrid communities, and what role formal, informal and non-formal education has to play in negotiating what counts as knowledge, and who can say so, in virtual workspaces.     

Latin American Theology and Religious Pluralism: A Latin American Voice

This article summarizes recent efforts by Latin-American theologians concerned with developing a pluralist theology of liberation. The author highlights some of the most significant issues and themes of this emerging theological reflection among liberation theologians. Finally, he identifies some of the challenges a pluralist theology of liberation raises for our task as religious educators in North America.     

Enhancing transfer of learning through post-course reflection

Abstract

This article investigates how a structured post-course follow-up reflection activity affects the depth of reflection and facilitates the transfer of learning. The research is reflective, based on the findings from the Action Learning Management Practicum, a 3^rd year paper at Massey University, New Zealand. The initial reflections at the end of the course generally went no deeper than students “noticing”, or “making sense” of the experiences. With the benefit of distance and time away from the course, the students' reflection was deep and insightful. The findings suggest that the post-course reflection activity enables participants to “make meaning” from their experiences with the benefit of time and distance from the initial post-course reflection, thus enhancing the transfer of learning. The article argues for an extension and adaptation to Kolb's “Experiential Learning Cycle” model in relation to the time of reflection based on the empirical evidence provided.     

Learning transferable skills through adventure education: The role of an authentic process

Abstract

The purpose of this study is threefold: (a) to explore what 18 adolescents learned while participating in a three week long adventure program, (b) to examine how they learned while on the program, and (c) to determine what program outcomes they considered most applicable to their home environments, or which learning is “transferable”. To address these purposes, 18 participants 13–18 years old on 14 different three-week long sail and dive training courses were interviewed. The study found that participants learned both hard skills (e.g., sailing and diving) and life skills. They learned these skills experientially, by observing and receiving feedback from others, by exposure to new and different persons, and through the authenticity of needing to learn these skills through the course design. Participants reported that the life skills were most likely to be applicable after course completion in the home environment. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Persuasive communication: A theoretical model for changing the attitude of preservice elementary teachers toward metric conversion

This study was based on Hovland's four-part statement, “Who says what to whom with what effect,” the rationale for persuasive communication, a theoretical model for modifying attitudes. Part I was a survey of 139 perservice elementary teachers from which were generated the more credible characteristics of metric instructors, a central element in the “who” component of Hovland's model. They were: (1) background in mathematics and science, (2) fluency in metrics, (3) capability of thinking metrically, (4) a record of excellent teaching, (5) previous teaching of metric measurement to children, (6) responsibility for teaching metric content in methods courses and (7) an open enthusiasm for metric conversion. Part II was a survey of 45 mathematics educators where belief statements were synthesized for the “what” component of Hovland's model. It found that math educators support metric measurement because: (1) it is consistent with our monetary system; (2) the conversion of units is easier into metric than English; (3) it is easier to teach and easier to learn than English measurement; there is less need for common fractions; (4) most nations use metric measurement; scientists have used it for decades; (5) American industry has begun to use it; (6) metric measurement will facilitate world trade and communication; and (7) American children will need it as adults; educational agencies are mandating it. With the “who” and “what” of Hovland's four-part statement defined, educational researchers now have baseline data to use in testing experimentally the effect of persuasive communication on the attitude of preservice teachers toward metrication.