God and Study Skills
Topic outline
-
God and Study Skills is a collaborate research project funded by a Common Awards Seedcorn grant. It was based primarily at the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham, but involved input and collaboration from across and beyond the Common Awards community. The core research team is grateful to the Common Awards team for the the financial support made available by the initial grant. We're also grateful to the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham, for hosting the project. And we're especially grateful to the many collaborators who have, in various ways, joined us for conversation and shared their wisdom along the way.
The aim of God and Study Skills
The research project invited a fresh look at ‘study skills’ as understood, taught and reflected upon in the context of ministerial formation. Within the HE sector there are all sorts of resources designed to provide students with the skills required for formal academic study: essay planning and writing, efficient reading, responding to feedback, critical thinking, compiling bibliography, referencing conventions and so on. While these resources are helpful, we found ourselves wondering whether they fully translate into the particular context of ministerial formation and the kind of theology of learning that lies at the heart of the Common Awards.
Our aim, then, is to think deeply about why study skills matter - that is, why they theologically matter. One of the overarching questions we have in mind is: how can a deepening in the basic skills required for academic study lead to a deepening in relationship with God?
About these resources
The aim of the e-resources gathered on this page is to help you to reflect theologically on three key study skills: reading, writing and referencing. We’re not trying to provide a comprehensive theology of study skills, and we're not attempting to tell you exactly how and why the academic practices of reading, writing and referencing are best understood theologically (although we think they are!). Instead, we're seeking to develop a set of activities that will help you to think theologically about study skills and the role of your academic formation in your wider preparation for Christian ministry.
While these three areas can be considered separately from each other, we also encourage you to think about what might emerge between the three areas – e.g. how might understanding reading differently lead to a change in writing habits? How might this have an impact on the way we go about referencing?
Core research team
- Ash Cocksworth (Senior Lecturer in Theology and Practice at the University or Roehampton).
- Nicola Slee (Director of Research at the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham, Professor of Feminist Practical Theology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam).
- David Allen (Academic Dean at the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham, where he teaches in areas of biblical studies).
- Jen Smith (PhD student and recipient of the John Hull Scholarship at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham).
-
Reading is one of those activities that is often taken for granted in most arts and humanities programmes, including theology. Why is this? Perhaps it’s because by the time a student gets to degree level work, it’s simply assumed they know how to read and what to do with their reading, and why reading is important in the first place. When reading is reflected upon, the focus often becomes achieving ways of reading more 'efficiently'. Speed reading has become synonymous with academic reading. Some theologians have called this 'consumerist' reading, in the sense that it depends on models of consumption of information. It’s precisely some of these assumptions we want to unpick in these e-resources. They are designed, not so much to help you read (we hope they will), but to help you understand better how significant reading is in shaping your mind, heart, imagination and will. Even more, we want to reflect on how reading can help us to learn more about, and come closer to, reality – and ultimately, to God.
-
This resource is a short video that explores the figure of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is regarded in Christian tradition as 'reader' – the one who hears and receives the Word in such a way that it quite literally takes flesh in her body and she gives birth to it in the form of Jesus, the Word made flesh. A fascinating, if somewhat uncommon, iconography has emerged around Mary as reader - the one who is taught to read, reads for herself and teachers others, including her son, to read.
-
This resource is a series of three podcast style conversations with members of the Cambridge based 'Theologies of Reading' project. You can read further details about the project here. The first resource is led by Dr Simone Kotva on 'Reading and Attention'; the second is with Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft on 'Reading, Meaning and Truth'; and the third and final podcast is on 'Ways of Reading' with Dr Laura McCormick Kilbride.
-
This resource draws from the three kinds of reading Paul Griffiths explores in his book Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (OUP, 1999): academic reading, 'Proustian reading' and 'Victorine reading'. The resource invites you to read a single text (Augustine's Confessions) three times using a different mode of reading each time.
-
This is a short reflective exercise inviting you to reflect on your own experience of reading.
-
-
The claim that academic writing is theological might come as a bit of a surprise. Especially in the midst of essay writing, you would be forgiven for approaching the task of writing in instrumentalist terms. That is, to see writing as the process which prioritises the outcome whether that's the assignment you're working on or sermon you're preparing. While the end product is integral to the kind of training in academic study involved in formation for ministry in the church, there is deep learning in the actual process of writing, in the crafting of your words, in the ordering of your ideas. Writing, in this sense, is a theological process.
These exercises, like the exercises above and below, are designed to help you think about what it means to think theologically about writing. What is it about writing and engaging with the writing of others that helps us engage in learning? How can we think about writing as a process which connects us to others and to God? Is writing a rite -- a sort of liturgy, a kind of prayer?
-
This resource takes the form of a conversation between Al Barrett, Ruth Harley, Nicola Slee and Ash Cocksworth on the topic of 'interruptive writing'. Al and Ruth have published a book on the theme of 'Interruption', published as: Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church's Mission from the Outside, In (London: SCM Press, 2020) and the conversation picks up on many of the themes in the book as well as thinking theologically about the process of writing itself.
-
This resource has been adapted from a video Jason Goroncy produced for his students on the theme of theological writing. It explores theologically the process of writing: re-writing, editing, drafting, sentence structure, time and effort, the lure of perfection in writing, and many other themes.
-
This resource, borrowing the words a Twitter thread written by Mike Higton, describes the difficulties even the most experienced writers face when writing. There is nothing easy about the nature of writing about God because there's nothing easy about the nature of God. And sometimes we need reminding of this.
-
This is a short reflective exercise inviting you to reflect on your own experience of writing.
-
-
When we talk about 'referencing' w usually mean ‘how’ and ‘when’ to reference: styles, conventions and rules. Should I use Harvard? Should I use APL or MLA? Where should that comma actually go? And why did the devil invent endnotes?
While these are vital skills to get right as part of our training in formal academic learning, the risk is in rush to get the formality of references right we skip over the theological issues implicated in the practice of referencing. A theological approach to referencing is more concerned with what theologically we're up to when we reference rather how we should present references in essays and assignments. Some of the questions we have been exploring include: How does the naming of sources relate to our formation as Christians? What are the politics involved in who we cite and what we read? What might it mean to think of referencing in terms of ‘honesty’ and of ‘joining in’ an ongoing conversation? What does the Christian tradition offer to help us in our thinking in these areas and in what ways has it failed? The following resources explore some of the questions.
-
This resource, developed by Rachel Starr, explores the theology of referencing. 'To cite is theological', is the overriding message of this resource. And because referencing is theological it is political, economical, and spiritual. The resource spans issues around human vulnerability and asks question about imaging God and the voices that are included and excluded from the ways we have come to imagine God through there references we cite.
-
This resource is a podcast style conversation with Dr R. David Muir. David shares some of his wisdom about the politics of referencing and some of the ideological assumptions implicated in practices fo referencing.
-
This is a downloadable 'check-list' that invites you to attend more closely to the 'who' and 'what' we are referencing when we write our assignments.
-
-
The project team is grateful to the Common Awards for the funding that made this work possible. We would like to thank all those who contributed to the 'God and Study Skills Project' and in particular:
- Al Barrett
- Sarah Brush
- Ruth Harley
- Andrew Hayes
- Mike Higton
- Liz Hoare
- Laura McCormick Kilbride
- Simone Kotva
- Michael Leyden
- Dulcie McKensie
- R. David Muir
- Sanjee Perera
- Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft
- Rachel Starr
- Andrew Stobart.
We hope that these resources will develop and evolve over the years; and we would be thrilled if you might be able to contribute to the further development of these resources. If you would like to develop a resource, please be in contact with someone from the core research team. You can find contact details on this page.