Teaching in contexts: Designing a competency‐based religious studies program

Abstract

Over the last decade, the discipline of religious studies has promoted religious literacy as both an invaluable contribution to curriculum and an indispensable social good. While much has been written on the importance of the study of religion for the development of religious literacy, little attention has been given to the identification of the disciplinary skills and content knowledge (or what we refer to as religious studies competencies) a student develops through extended study of religion. In this essay, we present an example of how to integrate a religious studies competency-based model into program design and implementation. We argue that the transition to a competency-based religious studies program has two potential benefits. First, competency program design provides an opportunity to redesign and update religious studies programs in a more responsible manner that aligns with our students, institution, discipline, and profession. Second, competency program design facilitates the conditions where we can better avoid duplicating the much criticized world religions paradigm. KEYWORDS alignment, competency-based education, program design, religious literacy, world religions paradigm

Teaching Religion to Undergraduates in the 2020s: A Preliminary Reconnaissance

“…This way of looking at introductory courses suggests that it is not specific material, such as the frequently critiqued survey of world religions, or even theories and methods specific to a discipline or subdiscipline, that need to constitute the focus and substance of an introductory course in the study of religion (see Locklin et al 2012;Gray-Hildenbrand and King 2019). It is rather a set of problems and questions and a range of opportunities to practice posing and answering them that should constitute the topics focus for introductory courses.…”