Using disciplinary literacy in Biblical, religious, and theological studies

ABSTRACT

Disciplinary Literacy (DL) is a pedagogical- and andragogic-centered academic discipline that has entered its third decade. DL seeks to observe and describe how scholars in a particular field cognitively approach and process what they do while those scholars read primary and secondary literary texts, examine material culture, perform experiments, read and write scholarly articles, and teach and evaluate students. Such observations and descriptions are then used to reverse engineer and backward design the curriculum, assessment tools, and strategies to increase students’ success, retention, and graduation rates. Our article seeks to introduce (1) Biblical, Religious, and Theological Studies (BRATS) faculty to DL and (2) DL, post-secondary General Education, and secondary education faculty to BRATS. We will summarize (a) what DL is as opposed to (b) what the disciplines of general academic, developmental, and critical literacies are, (c) why they differ, and (d) what pedagogical and andragogic benefits DL offers. BRATS and General Education faculty can use DL to provide explicit, scaffolded instructional practices to help general education undergraduates interpret the Bible and other ancient, foreign literature critically, rhetorically, and historically more like BRATS faculty do. DL and BRATS faculty would then use the above to reverse engineer and backward design curriculum and strategies for secondary educators to adopt and implement. Suggestions for future research and for overcoming structural obstacles will be presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Disciplinary literacy
• academic and general literacy
• Biblical literacy
• post-secondary and secondary education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Disciplinary Literacy is the approach that one would get if one took the traditional methods and methodologies of BRATS and integrated them with a social science of a BRATS discipline, a history of a BRATS discipline, or a philosophy of a BRATS discipline with the added goal of creating pedagogical or andragogic applications from those discoveries and observations.

2. We initiated three literature reviews in the Fall of 2019, the Spring of 2020, and the Fall of 2021. The last search yielded one article in the British Journal of Religious Education in 2020 (Unstad and Fjortoft 2020). With the ATLA database, we used the following search terms: (1) ‘disciplinary literacy’ AND ‘disciplinary literacies’, (2) ‘critical literacy’ AND ‘critical literacies’, and (3) ‘literacy strategies’.

With the EBSCO, ERIC, ABELL, LLBA, and MLA databases, we used the following: (1) ‘disciplinary literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Bible’ [for Bible study or references], (2) ‘disciplinary literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Biblical’ [for Biblical Studies references], (3) ‘disciplinary literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Religion’ [for religion(s) references], (4) ‘disciplinary literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Religious’ [for religious studies references], (5) ‘critical literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Bible’, (6) ‘critical literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Biblical’, (7) ‘critical literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Religion’, and (10) ‘critical literacy or literacies’ AND ‘Religious’.

3. Hermeneutical, methodological, historiographical guides will cover these criteria under different concepts and terms. I have borrowed and adapted the above criteria from Long E.L. (1982) and Robb (1981).

4. See also the Joint Statement on Religion in Public Schools (American Jewish Congress, American Civil Liberties Union, American Jewish Committee, American Muslim Council, Anti-Defamation League, Baptist Joint Committee, Christian Legal Society, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and et al. 1995).

5. Religious Education in Schools (England) (2019), Wales National Exemplar Framework RE (2008), Scotland Rel and Moral Ed (2011), Learning Directorate (2011), Northern Ireland Order (2006), Northern Ireland Core Syllabus for RE, and Statutory Curriculum (Northern Ireland) (2022).

6. Byrne (2014), Barker (2014), Foster (2020), Foster (2022a), Foster (2022b), Goldburg (2008), Halafoff and Bouma (2019), and Mavor (1989).

7. Instead of the passive banking model for secondary and post-secondary instruction, DL scholars overwhelmingly prefer the andragogic model of adult education coined by Malcom Knowles. Students are seen as being self-directed, problem-centred, process-oriented, and co-facilitators of their education. Teachers are more like master guides, player-coaches, or chamber concertmasters in students’ educational journeys or careers. See Adult Education (2013), Elias and Merriam (2005), Orem (2005), and Merriam and Brockett (2007).

8. On incommensurability, see Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and Clifford Geertz’s ‘The Legacy of Thomas Kuhn: The Right Text at the Right Time’ (2000). There are also cognitive and educational hurdles regarding students’ cognitive and intellectual development stages or types of cognitive, ethical, and intellectual modes of thinking and acting. These differences that students bring to their reading of literature must also be addressed pedagogically and andragogically. See Perry (1970), Fowler (1981), and Gilligan (1982).

A similar concern has been voiced in homiletical, hermeneutics, and methods texts like those referenced in Porter and Evans (1997), Groom (2003), Fee (2002), McKnight E., (1969), Fee and Stuart (1993), Black and Dockery (2001), deSilva (2004a, 2004b), Osborne (2006), and Chapters 7–9 of Zuck (1991).

9. When the Bible, other religions, and other non-Christian texts are taught or studied from within a parochial or confessional context, an added dimension of complexity is engendered. Although BRATS scholars and religious professionals (e.g. pastors and priests) who work in parochial institutions may have attended the same private interfaith or interdenominational schools of theology and divinity schools (e.g. Harvard, the University of Chicago, or Boston University) as BRATS scholars working in public, secular universities, the parochial and BRATS professionals working in their confessional institutions may be required to take a parochial or apologetic stance or approach to their teaching. Educators who must work from within their own faiths’ metaphysical, philosophical, and theological traditions should be studied apart from the BRATS faculty above who work in public (e.g. U. of Michigan or Indiana Univ.) or secular, interfaith settings (e.g. Harvard, or the Univ. of Chicago). The aims and goals of parochial and confessional educators necessitate different pedagogical and andragogic content, practices, and interventions and, therefore, require a separate DL research programme for each parochial or confessional setting: e.g. Lutheran, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic; Eastern Orthodox Churches; Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox Judaism; Sunni or Shite Islam; Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan Buddhism; and various forms of Hinduism. Each will have different and specific literary practices, methods, and goals. DL scholars will have to separately examine, analyse, and describe the differences in the literacy and research practices of these parochial and confessional experts in their institutional settings. The role of the scholar and the scope of the scholar’s duties, and their theology and calling, may necessitate different discipline-specific literacy, literary, and research practices.

10. The above are descriptive summaries and statements, not normative ones regarding their validity.

11. Institutions are required to provide aggregate data based on the Student Right to Know Act under Sec. 485(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, 34 CFR 668.45, and S. 2755 (IS) – College Completion Fund Act of 2021. Undergraduate data in the aggregate is available at the US Department of Education’s College Scorecard (College Scorecard n.d.) and (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System 2022). Institutions are also required to list the same on their website or to list the departmental or institutional representative responsible for disseminating such data. ‘Graduation rate data provide information on institutional productivity and help institutions comply with reporting requirements of the Student Right-to-Know Act (1990) and the Higher Education Act, amended (2008). Graduation rates data are collected for full-time, first-time degree and certificate-seeking undergraduate students’ (National Center for Education Statistics n.d.). Unfortunately, there are no requirements and uniform format for what is collected and reported for graduate programs and institutions. Disaggregated data for programs and majors within an institution are rarely released publicly. These realities limit the amount and types of data that researchers can obtain to only a handful of institutions. Congress or Parliament will need to pass an act to make universal disaggregated data for each major, program, division or school, and graduate school available for researchers and consumers.

12. See Berger’s (The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion 1967), Berger’s and Luckmann’s (The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge 1966), Geertz’s (From the Native Point of View 1985) and (The Interpretation of Cultures 1973), Kuhn’s (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1962). For an introduction to Religious Studies and Comparative Religion, see Smith’s (A Twice-Told Tale: The History of the History of Religions’ History 2001) and Prothero’s (Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know––and Doesn’t 2007) and (God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World 2010).

13. The data is from 2021, as in 2022 BU changed several degree programs in education. In the full data table available at https://www.academia.edu/90568608/Using_Disciplinary_Literacy_in_Biblical_Religious_and_Theological_Studies_Mean_Time_Data.

14. GRS PhD Program (2021).

15. GRS PhD Degree Requirements (2021).

16. Boston University PhD Profile for Theological Studies (2022).

17. Boston University STH PhD Program in Theological Studies (2021)

18. Boston University STH PhD Program in Theological Studies (2021).

19. Boston University PhD Profile for Theological Studies (2022).

20. Boston University STH PhD Program in Theological Studies (2021).

21. Boston University STH PhD Program in Theological Studies (2021).

22. Master of Divinity (MDiv) (2021).

23. Master of Divinity (MDiv) (2021).

24. BU D.Min (2020).

25. Boston University Doctor of Ministry in Transformational Leadership (2020).

26. EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (2021).

27. EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (2021). ‘The coursework takes place two weeks in early July in the summer and on weekends during the academic year so that students can continue to work while progressing through the program’.

28. BU PhD Ed Studies (2022).

29. MAT in English Education (2021).

30. MAT in English Education (2021).

31. MAT in Social Studies Education (2021).

32. MAT in Social Studies Education (2021).

33. EdM in English and Language Arts Education (2021).

34. EdM in English and Language Arts Education (2021).

35. Boston University GRS PhD Degree Requirements (2021).

36. Boston University GRS PhD Degree Requirements (2021).

37. EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (2021).

38. EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (2021). ‘The coursework takes place two weeks in early July in the summer and on weekends during the academic year so that students can continue to work while progressing through the program’.

39. Harvard University Committee on the Study of Religion PhD Program & Timeline (2022).

40. Harvard Divinity School Accreditation (2022).

41. The Mean Time to Degree (MTD) is not given.

42. University of Chicago Committees and Areas of Study/Bible (2022).

43. U of C Div Ph.D. Mean Time Data (2022).

44. Wheeler also has a Ph.D. in Education that is designed as a research degree for postsecondary faculty. Postsecondary, developmental, critical, and disciplinary literacy faculty in the General Education, Literacy, Development, or Academic Support and Tutoring departments may have earned an Ed.D. Most secondary educators do not usually earn a Ph.D. or an Ed.D. degree. So the difference in educational preparation is even greater when comparing secondary educators with only a master’s degree to BRATS faculty with doctorate degrees.

45. The disciplinary experts in BRATS are those with a Ph.D. (or those who possess the equivalent Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) or Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.)). The School of Theology does offer a terminal professional degree, i.e. the Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) degree. The D. Min. is a part-time program that takes three years to complete and requires a minimum of 32 credit hours. It is a one-year professional doctorate spread out over three years. However, a Ph.D. degree is usually required for almost all postsecondary teaching and research posts in BRATS fields and departments.

46. Northern Illinois University is one such institution, as are its sister institutions: Southern Illinois University, Eastern Illinois, Western Illinois, Northeastern Illinois, and Governors State. Similar comparisons can be made in other states with Big Ten, Pac-12, or Ivy League and Ivy-like institutions (e.g. the University of Chicago, Duke University, and Notre Dame University).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Floyd Knight

Floyd Knight is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics and African American Literature in the English Department studying pragmatics and discourse linguistics and in the College of Education studying Post-secondary Education and Disciplinary Literacy at Northern Illinois University. He has taught English Composition, Church and Non-profit Administration, and American Religions at the college level. He has previously taken doctoral coursework and seminars in Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and Religious Studies at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and at Boston University. Author of twenty professional and academic articles, Floyd’s latest publication revising Kripke’s proper noun definition is ‘Quantifying the Lemma Massa as a Proper-Name in the John and Massa Tales: Using Quantitative and Qualitative Pragmatic Methods to Analyze Common Nouns Used as Proper Names’, in the International Journal of Translation, Interpretation, and Applied Linguistics, 1(2) (2019): 27-53. doi:10.4018/IJTIAL.2019070103.