October 2020
October Theme: Context. Spotlights: Bill Parham and Steven Mailloux. Jesuits have always adjusted their rhetoric to their students’ abilities, meeting them where they are and helping them develop from there. That idea fits perfectly into current pedagogical “best practices.” Even if you agree that context matters, though, it can be difficult to translate that idea into specific strategies in the classroom. It can be even more difficult to connect that idea to larger themes of moral reflection and social justice, two of the singular features of contemporary Ignatian pedagogy. Click here to access the link.
November 2020
November 2020 Theme: Experience. Spotlights: McNair Program, Steven Neal, and Kat Brown. Experience is defined by the university as “providing both cognitive and affective learning opportunities” for students. As Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach explains, “the teacher creates the conditions whereby students gather and recollect the material of their own experience in order to distill what they understand already in terms of facts, feelings, values, insights, and intuitions they bring to the subject matter at hand. Later the teacher guides the students in assimilating new information and further experience so that their knowledge will grow in completeness and truth.” Throughout the practice of Ignatian pedagogy, experience is in constant interplay with reflection and action. Click here to access the link.