Articles & Essays Archives

Articles & Essays Language and Culture Learning

Christian Faith and Language Pedagogy

This piece was first published as the editorial for the Spring 2008 issue of the Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages. The relationship between Christian belief and language pedagogy is one of the core concerns of this journal; it has also begun to figure in…

David I. SmithMay 11, 2026

Articles & Essays Featured Technology in Schools

“Save Time with AI”: How Software Disciples Us

I offer you a close reading of a single line of text that startled me as I was perusing a seventeenth-century educational treatise. I am sitting at a writing retreat, drafting a research paper. Those who know me would be unsurprised to learn that the…

David I. SmithMarch 17, 2026

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Articles & Essays Featured Scholarship Voices from the Past

Your Work Matters. And it Doesn’t. Be Glad.

Note: This essay first appeared on the Christian Scholar’s Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. I sit in an empty computer lab, surrounded by the sleek machinery of digital existence, propped in the curvature of an adjustable office chair. I have been here all day, all…

David I. SmithAugust 13, 2025

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Scholarship

An Excellent Conversation

Note: This essay first appeared on the Christian Scholar's Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. Some months ago, I rode to the airport with Uber, as I have done many times before and since. I noticed before the car arrived that the driver had…

David I. SmithFebruary 13, 2025

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Language and Culture Learning Voices from the Past

Lost in translation? Accessing past Christian educational reflection

This essay was published as the editorial for the International Journal of Christianity & Education 28:2, July 2024. Scholarly discussion of the relationship between Christianity and education is, of course, far from being a recent endeavor. The study of how faith is implicated in education…

David I. SmithDecember 5, 2024

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured

Positions, Perspectives, and Practices

Note: This essay was first published at the Converge blog: https://converge.education/positions-perspectives-practices/. Find out more about the Converge conference, Feb. 24-26, 2025 in Orlando, FL, at https://converge.education/. A few years ago, I had a conversation with a student at my university that remains emblematic of one…

David I. SmithDecember 5, 2024

Articles & Essays Featured Language and Culture Learning Resources Voices from the Past

Teaching for the Real World

“Our textbooks today are much more focused on practical things.” The student’s comment, offered in a class on world language pedagogy as we discussed historical examples of language textbooks, stood out as requiring more response than I quite knew how to pack into the moment.…

David I. SmithNovember 1, 2024

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured

Civic Hospitality, Pedagogical Engagement, and Faith-Framed Learning

One of the possible functions of Christian beliefs and practices in teaching and learning contexts is to act as framing devices. When concern for student wellbeing is named as pastoral care, when environmental responsibility is connected to stewardship or creation care, or when language learning…

David I. SmithMay 16, 2024

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Spiritual Development

Hospitality, Teaching, and Pauses for Reflection

This post originally appeared on the Christian Scholar’s Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. DAVID: Some years ago, I was teaching an intensive graduate class in curriculum studies to a group that included students from multiple countries. The first significant written assignment came a…

David I. SmithApril 10, 2024

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Spiritual Development

The Rhythms of Imagined Faith

This post originally appeared on the Christian Scholar’s Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. In the preface to her recent book on theological education, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier describes some of the repeating patterns that she experienced during her childhood as a member of a Latin@…

David I. SmithOctober 24, 2023

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