Empirical Considerations In Religious Praxis And Reflection In The Teaching Situation: A Conceptual Map

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Tine Vekemans

In early 2020, Jain diaspora communities and organizations that had been painstakingly built over the past decades were faced with the far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and its concomitant restrictions. With the possibility of regular face-to-face contact and participation in recurring events—praying, eating, learning, and meditating together—severely limited in most places, organizations were compelled to make a choice. They either had to suspend their activities, leaving members to organize their religious activities on an individual or household basis, or pursue the continuation of some of their habitual activities in an online format, relying on their members’ motivation and technical skills. This study will explore how many Jain organizations in London took to digital media in its different forms to continue to engage with their members throughout 2020. Looking at a selection of websites and social media channels, it will examine online discourses that reveal the social and mental impact of the pandemic on Jains and the broader community, explore the relocation of activities to the digital realm, and assess participation in these activities. In doing so, this article will open a discussion on the long-term effects of this crisis-induced digital turn in Jain religious praxis, and in socio-cultural life in general.


Author(s):  
Judson B. Murray

Confucian mysticism is a subfield in academic areas of study including Chinese thought, Chinese religions, Confucian studies, and comparative mysticism. Important topics examined in this subfield include, first, a view of the human self that is fundamentally relational, both in an interpersonal sense and because Confucians presuppose various correlations and an integration between, on the one hand, the matter–energy, capacities, processes, and activities comprising the self and, on the other, the elements, forces, patterns, and processes of the world it inhabits. One paradigmatic way Confucians conceptualize the interrelation between the self and the cosmos is their idea and ideal of the “unity of Heaven and humanity.” The Confucian mystical self, provided failings such as unbalanced emotions, selfish desires, and self-centeredness are effectively curtailed, contributes vitally to, because of its profound reverence for life, the generative and life-sustaining process of change that pervades and animates the cosmos. Second, practitioners use various techniques of religious praxis in combination to form multifaceted training regimens aimed at self-cultivation and self-transformation. Examples include a form of meditation called “quiet-sitting,” rituals, textual study, “investigating things,” self-examination and self-monitoring, filial piety, and “reverent attentiveness.” Third, training in these practices can achieve the different mystical aims, experiences, and transformations they seek, all of which relate to the overarching ideal of the unity of Heaven and humanity. These objectives, broadly speaking, include self-understanding, accurately grasping the “principles” of things and affairs, effortless moral virtuosity, “forming one body with all things” (and other types of Confucian mystical union), and exemplifying “sincerity.” Accomplishing them collapses the conventional divide separating several specious dichotomies, such as thought and action, self and other, humankind and nature, internal and external, the subjective and the objective, and moral ought and is. Fourth, the influence that precedent and tradition exert in Confucianism has prompted scholars to devote attention both to notable continuities and to intriguing innovations in comparing ancient mystical ideas, practices, experiences, and aims to later expressions and elaborations of them. At present, much of the scholarship on Confucian mysticism contributes to efforts attempting to provide rich and nuanced analyses of the tradition’s core doctrines, practices, experiences, and ethical and religious aims, by viewing these subjects through the lens of Confucianism’s mystical and spiritual dimensions. Less scholarly attention has been devoted to identifying and explicating the possible contributions that studying Confucian mysticism can make to the scholarship on theories of mysticism and comparative mysticism. Scholars of mysticism have not yet availed themselves of the wealth of data, the possible additional perspectives on contested issues, and the new trajectories for future research that Confucianism offers to these fields. Also, few studies employ the definitions, categories, and theories that have been developed in the contemporary study of mysticism as a methodology for studying Confucian mysticism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orlando Woods

This article explores the recursive relationship between religious praxis and urban environments. It advances the concept of ‘religious urbanism’ to show how urban environments play an active role in shaping the praxis of religion, and how religious groups adopt secular logics in response to the pressures of urban environments. Such logics have given rise to new, more pragmatic forms of spatial reproduction that lead to the desecularisation of space. Desecularisation involves religious groups diminishing the secular properties of space, rather than attempting to achieve any lasting notion of sacredness. Drawing on the restrictive religio-spatial context of Singapore, I demonstrate how fast-growing religious groups are forced to compete, commercialise, and compromise in order to acquire space. Combined, these factors have come to define religious urbanism in Singapore, and highlight the gulf between the planning and praxis of religion in urban environments.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tami J. Draves

The purpose of this research was to investigate the experiences of instrumental music teachers in Designing Arts Instruction, a 4-day professional development course in a large urban school district. Specifically, I was interested in which activities participants (a) found most relevant and applicable to their current teaching situation, (b) believed would most benefit student learning, and (c) believed would contribute most to their overall music teacher development. Multiple forms of data were collected including participants’ reflections, researcher-facilitator journal and field notes, and structured individual interviews. Curriculum development and rubric writing were relevant to participants’ teaching situations and also engaged teachers’ personal musicianship. Participants recognized creative activities as motivating for students. Collaboration emerged as the course feature that contributed most to participants’ overall development. Those who plan and facilitate professional development might consider including aspects that invite collaboration, deep thinking, engagement, and reflection, particularly within the context of teachers’ musicianship.


1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
R.D. Savage ◽  
J.F. Savage ◽  
J. Potter

ABSTRACTThe aim of the present study is to investigate classroom communication by teachers of the deaf. A comparison will be made of the linguistic content of the communication of experienced and inexperienced teachers using total communication methods in a classroom teaching situation. The implications of the teachers' classroom communication methods for children's language development will be discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Eskelund Knudsen

This article is an empirical analysis of history teaching as a communicative process. Dialogic history teaching develops as a designed meaning-making process that depends on thorough pedagogical strategies and decisions, and requires cohesion in teacher expectations, introductions and interventions. A micro-dialogic study is presented in this article to document a paradoxical teaching situation where history as subject-related content all but disappeared from a group of students' meaning-making processes because they were preoccupied with figuring out their teacher's intentions. History teaching thus turned into 'just teaching' without the teacher or the students being aware of it. A strong emphasis on history teaching as a communicative process and dialogue as a key pedagogical tool have potential with regard to pedagogical decision-making and strategies on the one hand, and for relationships between students and history as subject-related content on the other. The analysis presented in this article contributes to a growing field of studies on dialogic history teaching, of which the focus on students as an important part of classroom dialogues is central.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kane ◽  
Jordan Gusich ◽  
Thomas Upton

The evidence is undeniable that extensive reading (ER) improves reading comprehension, vocabulary, and motivation. Nevertheless, ER is often neglected in ESL classrooms. In order to introduce ER to more ESL teachers’ repertoires, this article will present a developed, principled, and practical ER project suitable for almost any classroom teaching situation. Readers will gain an overview of the literature surrounding ER and be provided with practical ideas, resources, rubrics, activity descriptions, and examples from the author’s personal practice of ways to implement an ER project in their institutions and classrooms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-475
Author(s):  
Tariq BOUQETYB

Project work is used in several educational settings, including foreign and second language teaching contexts. In the Moroccan English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom, the Moroccan Ministry of Education recommended implementing project work, and it is a common component of the Moroccan textbooks of English. Yet, there is a scarcity of studies conducted on the use of project work in Moroccan EFL classrooms. The main aim of the study is to investigate students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards project work. The study addresses the question about students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards project work and the factors behind those attitudes. It was conducted with sixty students and eight teachers belonging to two different high schools (Moulay Rachid and Abbas Sebti high schools) in Tangier. To collect data, the researcher made use of two data collection methods, namely the questionnaire and the interview. The results of the study showed that both students and teachers had positive attitudes towards project work. The results also revealed that not all teachers follow the steps of using project work. Based on the results, it was clear that the lack of technology is one of the most severe challenges that hamper the use of project work. The findings of this study could form the basis for further research and contribute to improving the learning and teaching situation in Moroccan high schools.


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