Articles & Essays Archives - Page 3 of 4

What Year Is It?

Many years ago I read a piece of advice that I have not regretted taking to heart. The advice was basically that once your studies are done and your career starts, you should choose a deep, important thinker (the advice was, I believe, in a…

David I. SmithJanuary 22, 2020

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching

Ending Well

It’s the last day of 2019, and perhaps a somewhat arbitrary ending is a good opportunity to think about other, perhaps weightier, kinds of endings. A few years ago, during a conversation with a colleague about how liturgy and pedagogy are related, it struck me…

David I. SmithDecember 31, 2019

Articles & Essays Language and Culture Learning

Some Doubts about “Incarnation”

This piece was written at a time when there was a marked trend in popular evangelical writing about cultural difference to talk about the desirability of being "incarnational". Since then there has been some retreat from that language (including in a later edition of the…

David I. SmithApril 1, 2019

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching

Christian mind ≠ Christian pedagogy

This piece was published as the editorial in International Journal of Christianity & Education 2017, Vol. 21(1), p. 2–5. A few years ago, I surveyed with colleagues four decades of output from 26 Christian and interfaith peer-reviewed journals in North America across a range of…

David I. SmithFebruary 13, 2017

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching

Resisting Homework as Solitary Confinement

What might make school homework Christian? The content of the worksheet? Or maybe the relationship patterns that are fostered by the task? This piece grew out of a breakfast conversation with some local teachers and has resonated with other teacher groups. In fact once I…

David I. SmithJanuary 1, 2015

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching

Seeing Anew, Choosing Engagement, Reshaping Practice

This article was first published in The Christian Teachers Journal, vol. 21:2, May 2013. It offers an overview of some key themes that informed the design of the resources at www.whatiflearning.com I focus in particular on the idea of Christian practices and what they have…

David I. SmithMay 1, 2013

Articles & Essays Featured Language and Culture Learning

Shouting at your Neighbor: Why we Bother with Other People’s Languages.

This essay was published in 2012 in the book Practically Human: College Professors Speak from the Heart of Humanities Education edited by Gary Schmidt & Matthew Walhout (Grand Rapids: Calvin College Press, 2012, 133-145). It asks why we invest time and resources in learning other…

David I. SmithSeptember 20, 2012

Articles & Essays Voices from the Past

On Graced Learning: Can Schools be Beautiful?

What do beauty, prayer, imagination, and teaching have to do with one another? This piece explores the connections through reflection on a prayer and some related ideas from the great Didactic by John Amos Comenius (as well as some metaphors for nursing). It also continues…

David I. SmithMay 26, 2009

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Language and Culture Learning

Christian Faith and Language Pedagogy

I came across a short piece that I wrote as a journal editorial a little over a decade ago. I think several of its themes are still pertinent. It was published as the editorial of the Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages, since renamed the…

David I. SmithApril 10, 2008

Articles & Essays Language and Culture Learning

The Gift of the Stranger Revisited

What is hospitality and is it a good thing? My first full-length book, published in 2000, was The Gift of the Stranger: Faith, Hospitality, and Language Learning, co-authored with Barbara Carvill. This piece from 2006 is one of the couple of occasions when I have…

David I. SmithApril 1, 2006

Articles & Essays

What Year Is It?

Ending Well

Some Doubts about “Incarnation”

Christian mind ≠ Christian pedagogy

Resisting Homework as Solitary Confinement

Seeing Anew, Choosing Engagement, Reshaping Practice

Shouting at your Neighbor: Why we Bother with Other People’s Languages.

On Graced Learning: Can Schools be Beautiful?

Christian Faith and Language Pedagogy

The Gift of the Stranger Revisited

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