MISSIOLOGICAL RESEARCH GUIDE
RESEARCH
RESEARCH AS FOUNDATIONAL TO [MISSIOLOGICAL] EDUCATION — The theological classroom that makes research foundational to education will have the following features:
1) A shift of responsibility for knowledge assimilation from faculty to students. This will not demand that all lecturing cease but that lectures be shorter and deal with more complex aspects of the subject matter. Students will be more responsible to acquire their knowledge base outside of the classroom.
2) A concentration on the sources of information in the discipline—what they are, why they are regarded as valuable, who are the major players, how they came to become such, and so on.
3) A classroom emphasis on practicing the discipline rather than learning about it from the outside.
4) A great deal of work done in class with the primary sources and key secondary resources to demonstrate the best practices for evaluating texts, the argumentation patterns of notable practitioners, and the methodologies that work most effectively to advance the discipline. The display of the professor’s disciplinary expertise in this manner invites students to participate as increasingly able practitioners who can inform their vocational understanding by virtue of their ability to address the issues important to a discipline.
5) Research papers take on a new prominence in such a context. They are not merely adjuncts to information dissemination but actually form an integral part of the invitation to students to practice the discipline. To enhance student abilities in this practice, the now common practice of breaking research papers into separately submitted components can be a useful tool, in that each submission can provide the professor an opportunity to critique and further their students’ method. (Summarized by Mr. Sandy Ayer).
Source: William Badke, “Student Theological research as an Invitation.” Theological Librarianship: An Online Journal of the American Theological Library Association 5, no. 1 (January 2012): 41-42, accessed June 28, 2013, http://catholicdistance.org/BadkeSTR.pdf,