Religious Studies News

There are two primary reasons I designed the Civic Engagement Project. First, it fulfilled a pedagogical commitment I have had for a number of years. During my first year of teaching in a full-time, tenure-track position, a colleague said to me, “Swasti, just because you lecture it, does not mean they are going to get it.” The truth of these words, and the discussions that followed, transformed the way I teach. Through subsequent research, conferences, and faculty development workshops, I have become convinced of what much of the literature is saying regarding “learning centered,” “engaged,” “embodied,” and “transformative” pedagogies. In the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data, for example, Bain, Brookfield, Lakey, Wagner, and many others indicate that there is a clear correlation between the degree of student engagement and student learning: the more students are involved in their learning process, the more they actually learn and retain. While I still prepare copious notes and mini-lectures, my focus in the classroom is now on creating an environment in which the students have the opportunity to engage the material critically, to present the ideas expressed in it accurately, to discover their own questions and articulate their own answers, and ultimately to have a transformative learning experience.

David Concepción and Juli Thorson Eflin define a pedagogy as truly learning-centered “when its primary attention is to the experience students have; learning-centered pedagogies think most about how they will get students to do things that are valuable for the students to do” (188). They indicate how carefully designing assignments that inspire students to ask questions rather than merely requiring them to list answers may better prepare them to be critical thinkers, to have a deeper understanding of issues, and to actively engage the world in which they live. 

Being part of the learning process that enables our students — and us — to be productive, involved citizens in our democratic society is the second reason I designed the CEP assignment. In our application for our Wabash grant, for example, we acknowledged the following: “Contemporary conversations around higher education and civic engagement highlight the importance of fostering students’ critical thinking as future citizens, providing public spaces for open discussion and exchange of ideas, and promoting civic engagement by involving students in activist pedagogies and/or service-learning.” Through the CEP assignment, students not only had the opportunity to learn particular content regarding their selected topics; they were also participating in a process of becoming engaged citizens through the projects themselves. They were taking public stands in a carefully articulated, well-grounded manner, educating their peers and members of a broader public, and encouraging others to take some kind of action as well. For several students, this proved to be a transformative experience.

According to the theorist Jack Mezirow, “transformation theory” focuses “on how we learn to negotiate and act on our own purposes, values…rather than those we have uncritically assimilated from others — to gain greater control over our lives as socially responsible, clear-thinking decision makers. As such it has particular relevance for learning in contemporary societies that share democratic values” (8). The CEP assignment was grounded in just such an idea. The students were not just memorizing facts or reading about how to do something; they were actually doing it. Through this experience, the students worked together, established their own values and the purposes of their respective projects, developed their arguments, and chose how to present it. They were participating in a democratic process. A few of the projects even directly engaged the political system. For example, a “puppy mill bill” was before the Iowa State legislators, and the students ran an information and signature campaign calling for the passage of this bill. And the end result was a letter, signed by over sixty individuals, to their local House Representatives and Senators.