Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2013): 52-65
Book Reviews Smith, David I., and James K.A. Smith, eds. Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith & Learning. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. 240 pages, $14.28 Reviewed by Mary Ellen Fuquay They attend regularly, submit assignments on time, take part in group discussions, and generally seem to invest themselves in their courses. They are the successful students who, not unexpectedly, make their instructors feel successful. Most professors who teach such students likely stay in touch with new concepts, texts, and technologies that move their courses forward, but those same professors may not feel motivated to dramatically change their course goals and objectives each year. By contrast, in 2009 a number of professors, most of whom teach at Calvin College, joined a project of the college’s Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, and each agreed to create a course incorporating one or more Christian practices. After teaching the newly designed courses, the professors presented their results and then wrote the majority of the essays collected for Teaching and Christian Practices. The title does not fully illuminate the content of the essays. The subtitle, on the other hand, focuses the reader on the book’s purpose—Reshaping Faith & Learning—to explore how the professors moved from a generalized use of “faith and learning” to courses in which students were expected to fully engage in more measurable “practices” in approaching content or even in the types and schedule of assignments. Essay topics range from discussions of the reasons and background for using Christian practices in education to practical applications for class scheduling, types of assignments, group discussions, collaborative projects, and course assessments. In light of numerous published books and articles on faith and learning, this book of essays expands the topic and would seem to be especially useful on residential campuses where a majority of students choose an institution because of its Christian mission. Less clear may be the book’s effectiveness as a guide to instructors whose students come from widely varied educational and spiritual backgrounds. The authors’ classes followed a number of practices such as prayer, hospitality, testimony, timekeeping, charity, listening, and interpretation (approaches used in hermeneutics but applied to economics, for example). Most of the authors alluded to three desires for their courses: They sought to change their courses from straight lecture, they wanted their courses and instructional