Todd C. Ream

Has Teacher Education Missed Out on the “Ethics Boom”? A Comparative Study of Ethics Requirements and Courses in Professional Majors of Christian Colleges and Universities

Scholars of higher education have noted an increased attention to ethics within professional disciplines such as business and journalism. This paper explores the hypothesis that the field of education has not followed that pattern. To test this hypothesis, we review our findings from a study of curricula for professional majors in 156 Christian colleges and universities associated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Lilly Fellows Network. Overall, we found that a majority of business, nursing, and social work majors were either offered or required to take an ethics course in their respective fields. In addition, ethics courses were required for a significant number of communication, engineering, and computer science majors. Of all the professional majors surveyed, however, education majors were the least likely to have optional or required ethics courses.

Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education

PART I: MORAL EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY HIGHER EDUCATION Introduction: A Less than Human Education Moral Development and Moral Order Searching for Common, Tradition-Free Approaches to Moral Education: A Brief History Addressing the Moral Quandary Facing Contemporary Higher Education: Moral Education in Postmodern Universities PART II: A MORE HUMAN EDUCATION: MORAL FORMATION IN A SPECIFIC TRADITION The Levels of Constrained Identity Agreement Used To Advance Moral Education Case Study I: Moral Education in Secular Colleges and Universities Case Study II: Moral Education among Christian Colleges and Universities Moral Order and Moral Education within Comprehensive Moral Traditions * PART III: MORAL EDUCATION AND LIBERAL EDUCATION * Comparing Types and Levels of Constrained Identity Agreement Diversity and Autonomy and the Different Levels of Constrained Identity Agreement PART IV: STRENGTHENING MORAL EDUCATION IN A PARTICULAR TRADITION Christian Humanism and Christ-Centered Education: The Redemptive Development of Humans and Human Creations A More Human Christian Education: An Exercise in Moral Imagination

FAITH AND LEARNING: TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF FACULTY VIEWS AT RELIGIOUS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES

This paper presents a typology of views held by faculty members at four religious research universities concerning the relationship of faith and learning. Only one pattern of responses (out of eight) affirms that faith and learning should exist in complete separation. As a result, the study challenges Jencks and Riesmans (1968) argument that the academic revolution leads to the demise of faith in favor of academic competence.

From low-lying roofs to towering spires: Toward a Heideggerian understanding of learning environments

This article explores the significance that environments play in terms of the learning process. In the United States, the legacy of John Deweys intellectual efforts left a theoretical understanding that views the architectural composition of learning environments as instrumental mediums which house the educational process. This understanding of learning environments is precipitated by a separation of human agents as subjects and their environments as objects. By contrast, Martin Heideggers theory of ontology, and its reconfiguration of the subject and object relationship, lends itself to an understanding of the architectural composition of learning environments as dwellings.

The Teaching of Ethics in Christian Higher Education: An Examination of General Education Requirements

Using an institutional-structural model of inquiry, this study identified the degree to which ethics education exists in 173 Christian colleges and universities. The results indicated almost all students receive some form of ethics education. However, only one-third of these institutions require an ethics course within their general education requirements.

Addressing the Moral Quandary of Contemporary Universities: Rejecting a Less than Human Moral Education.

Whereas a consensus used to exist that universities had the responsibility to make students more fully human, today one finds scholars claiming that universities should form only certain aspects of a student’s identity or should draw primarily from only certain aspects. In other words, scholars support the claim that the university should or should not undertake a certain kind of moral education by appealing to a particular aspect of human or institutional identity. In this paper, we survey two such arguments regarding moral education in the university as well as a third option that leaves open the possibility of an approach to moral education grounded in a specific kind of humanism. The paper then evaluates these arguments and contends that the vision for moral education with a pluralistic humanistic vision provides the best vision for moral enquiry and formation in higher education.

Pragmatism and the Unlikely Influence of German Idealism on the Academy in the United States

In this article I argue that the subject‐object distinction, operative in Continental Europe during the late‐1700s and early‐1800s, led to the religion‐secular distinction in higher education in the United States. Many scholars believe the origins of the shifting nature of the religion‐secular distinction resided with some form of influence that students from the United States encountered while they pursued advanced academic work in Germany. These scholars studied this influence at an institutional or organizational level. An intellectual approach to history would assess the metaphysical currents of idealism that proved to be the primary influence that students from the United States encountered during their time in Germany. While idealism would never fully take hold in the United States, it gave shape and direction to the emerging movement of pragmatism. As a result, the separation of subject and object, under the guise of pragmatism, is reified in the religion‐secular distinction in the academy in the United States. Once religion becomes the object of a subject, the subjects sense of self‐dependence forces the religion‐secular distinction. However, the religion‐secular distinction proves to be a transitory relationship. Inevitably, the underlying issue proves to be that only the secular can serve as the sustainable object of its subject.

Protestant Bible Institutes in the United States

Despite the fact that theological education was the initial inspiration behind establishing institutions of higher learning in what became the United States, few formal studies exist concerning what may best be identified as Bible colleges or, as will be employed in what follows, Bible institutes. For example, the literature generated by higher education scholars makes almost no reference to Bible institutes. The literature generated in recent years concerning Christian colleges and universities also makes almost no reference to these same schools. However, given the sheer number of Bible institutes operating in North America alone, considerable scholarly work needs to be done. Perhaps what follows can thus provide not only an overview of these schools but also a framework for the beginnings of further study. This chapter opens with some speculative remarks concerning why research concerning Bible institutes is so difficult to find. A history of these schools will then be provided. The remaining portion will then provide an overview of these schools as they exist today through both data and some brief cases studies. Although perhaps needing revision by subsequent scholars, the brief case studies are divided into four ways. First, some schools have chosen to remain what is generally referred to as 2-year institutions while others have become 4-year institutions. Some even offer graduate programs. The chosen examples come from the Mennonite tradition. Second, some schools are intentionally interdenominational schools while other schools are intentionally denominational. Examples of these schools include an interdenominational school in the Midwest and a school in the Church of Christ or Restoration tradition. Third, an overview of an organization that is not a formal institute but provides an ever-increasing array of opportunities for Bible instruction, Youth with a Mission or YWAM, is offered. Finally, perhaps the most recent additions to this list of schools include schools being started by individual churches. One example is from an interdenominational school while the other is from the Baptist tradition. While this typology and the case studies cannot do justice to the full range of Bible institutes presently in operation, the hope is that it can give rise to a body of work that does.

Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson (review)

Gardner, H. (1984). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York City, NY: Basic Books. Guinier, L. (2015). The tyranny of the meritocracy: Democratizing higher education in America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Hershbein, B. (2016, February 19). A college degree is worth less if you are raised poor. Brookings Institution. Retrieved from: https:// www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobilitymemos/2016/02/19/a-college-degree-is-worthless-if-you-are-raised-poor/ Parks, S. D. (2005). Leadership can be taught: A bold approach for a complex world. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Company.

A Review Forum

IntRoductIon by davId W. WRIght, PRovost, IndIana Wesleyan unIveRsIty. RevIeWs by edWaRd P. st. John, algo d. hendeRson collegIate PRofessoR, unIveRsIty of mIchIgan, and fIona lInn, comPlIance PRogRam manageR and ReseaRch scholaR, unIveRsIty of mIchIgan laW school; JennIfeR gRant haWoRth, assocIate PRofessoR and faculty scholaR, loyola unIveRsIty chIcago, and vIRgInIa Koch, doctoRal student, dePaRtment of leadeRshIP, foundatIons and counselIng Psychology, loyola unIveRsIty chIcago; geoRge d. Kuh, dIRectoR, natIonal InstItute foR leaRnIng outcomes assessment, chancelloR’s PRofessoR emeRItus, IndIana unIveRsIty; and todd c. Ream; senIoR scholaR foR faIth and scholaRshIP, assocIate PRofessoR of humanItIes, John Wesley honoRs college, IndIana Wesleyan unIveRsIty. ResPonse by maRK c. tayloR, dePaRtment chaIR and PRofessoR of RelIgIon, columbIa unIveRsIty.