Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
Interview about teaching Spirituality and Responsibility
Andrew Cochrane
(1) What do you teach and where do you teach it?
Trans-disciplinary teaching around moral/professional responsibility.
(2) Who do you teach this to?
1st, 2nd and 3rd year undergraduate students at Leeds Metropolitan University. This is taught as part of the Personal Development Profile (PDP) that all students undertake as part of their study. Every student takes one module per year. PDP's aim is to prepare students for professional employment.
MA in Spirituality and Professional Practice (starting 10/2009).
Considering offering an undergraduate module on spirituality and life-skills.
(3) What does your teaching involve?
We are currently running a pilot scheme, aimed at replacing the PDP. PDP's are built up through individual (stand-alone) sessions exploring a particular area of personal development, such as reflective practice or enterprise. The aim of the pilot scheme is to connect all the themes into the wider curriculum.
In Year 1 the focus is on responsibility and academia. It takes a broadly Aristotelian approach, looking at underlying world-views about academia in terms of personal development/occupational utility etc.
The students talk to different people in the universities about the role of academia (e.g. Governors, academics). The basic aim is to show that one cannot develop academic skills unless one understands the value of academia (instrumental and intrinsic value combined)
In Year 2 the module focuses on Civic and Professional Responsibility
This can be done locally or as study abroad. The main aim is to consider responsibility in the light of identity, particularly in terms of the value of work within society, and what employability means. The work of York and Knight is drawn upon, who have an understanding of employability that ties into meta-cognition and belief. The aim here is to connect employability, amongst other things, with identity, and particularly with an understanding of the multiple identities that we possess.
In Year 3, the focus is on Global Responsibility (awareness with respect to the environment and community/ies).
This encompasses skills of leadership and universal responsibilities (the latter drawing on the work of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman [University of Leeds]). This is the central route through which underlying spiritualities are brought into focus and discussion.
(4) What is the mode of delivery of the module?
A controlled critical conversation. I.e. a facilitated group discussion.
(5) Why do you adopt this method of delivery?
It allows for a broader range of issues to emerge and be engaged with. In particular, it allows different spiritualities to emerge and be engaged with.
Students are encouraged to explore things such as doctrine, since these have a bearing on things such as personal and professional responsibility, and reflection about the status of secular normative guidelines.
Engagement with faith and spirituality is encouraged when it arises in discussions about responsibility, as this is part of 'real conversations'.
(6) How is the MA is Spirituality and Professional Practice taught?
This will begin with the enjoyment of being spiritual. It is centred around reflective practice, and involves a broadly Aristotelian approach of working through the virtues, including doctrine and spirituality.
(7) Who will the MA appeal to/target?
The MA will be aimed at practicing medical health professionals. The NHS is going to send ten students for the first year that the MA will be run.
(8) What would be the aim of running a module on spiritualities and life-skills? Who would this be aimed at?
The aim would be to provide an interfaith module, exploring religion in the public sphere. Central questions would involve the relation of theology to applied ethics. Theological discussion is part of real conversations about applied ethical questions and issues, and discussion can (and should?) incorporate reflection about doctrine, which can be productive, and need not be isolated from secular thinking when we consider our engagement with professional and moral norms. Discussion of spirituality can be relevant to moral education and critical thinking.
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
