Two noted professors on opposite sides of the cultural wars come together and engage in "cooperative argumentation." One, a "Jewish, atheist libertarian" and the other a "mixed blood American Indian" bring to the table two radically different worldviews to bear on the role of colleges and universities in studying social and ecological justice. The result is an entertaining and enlightening journey that reveals surprising connections and previously misunderstood rationales that may be at the root of a world too polarized to function sanely.

Providing a much-needed global perspective-based analysis of the issue of educational values, this volume examines how higher education cultures are embedded within and heavily influenced by national cultures, norms, and structures through the lenses of Teaching, Learning, Curricula, and Assessment.

"In Worldviews and Christian Education, editors W.A. Shipton, E. Coetzee, and R. Takeuchi have brought together works by experts in cross-cultural religious education. The authors and editors have a wealth of personal experience in presenting the gospel to individuals with various worldviews that differ greatly from those held by Christians who take the Bible as authoritative. They focus on the beliefs and issues associated with witnessing to seekers for truth coming from backgrounds as diverse and animism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Marxism, Taoism, and postmodernism." -- Back Cover

Christian schools and colleges that include spiritual formation and Christian maturity within their mission are facing challenges. The challenge of being a Christian college within a secular society is well-recognized. There are intellectual clashes of secular versus religious worldviews to be negotiated, and clashes of social imaginaries where habitual ways of responding come into conflict. These challenges are difficult enough for staff of a Christian college when most students have a Christian background and there may be a common language and assumptions. Even more difficult are the challenges faced by Christian staff of a Christian college when most students identify with non-Christian religions. What does a college’s mission of forming mature Christians mean when students are largely Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, or other non-Christian faiths? Should staff modify curricula to reduce cognitive clashes? Should teaching practices be changed to reduce the dissonance of different social imaginaries? How can staff draw from Christian values of tolerance and respect to support non-Christian students in their formation of values and ethics while still respecting diversity? This volume draws together the work of scholars and researchers who have pondered the nature, purpose, and means of formation. It offers an analysis of the scope, context, and methods of formation of mature people without denying or downplaying the difficulties of formation. It offers hope that people who are mature in all areas of life, including the spiritual domain, can be formed and urges educators to encompass all domains in their formative work.

Co-published with Promoting learning among college students is an elusive challenge, and all the more so when faculty and students come from differing cultures. This comprehensive guide addresses the continuing gaps in our knowledge about the role of culture in learning; and offers an empirically-based framework and model, together with practical strategies, to assist faculty in transforming college teaching for all their students through an understanding of and teaching to their strengths.Recognizing that each student learns in culturally influenced ways, and that each instructor’s teaching is equally influenced by her or his background and experiences, the authors offer an approach by which teachers can progressively learn about culture while they transform their teaching through reflection and the application of new practices that enrich student learning.The key premise of the book is that deepening student learning and increasing retention and graduation rates requires teaching from a strengths based perspective that recognizes the cultural assets that students bring to higher education, and to their own learning. Derived through research and practice, the authors present their Model of Cultural Frameworks in College Teaching and Learning that highlights eight continua towards achieving the transformation of teaching, and developing more culturally balanced and inclusive practices, over time. They present techniques – illustrated by numerous examples and narratives – for building on cultural strengths in teaching; offer tips and strategies for teaching through cultural dilemmas; and provide culturally reflective exercises. This guide is intended for all faculty, faculty developers or administrators in higher education concerned with equitable outcomes in higher education and with ensuring that all student cultural groups learn and graduate at the same rates.

This study advances our understanding of how students are making sense of their encounters across worldview differences related to religion, spirituality, faith, and values at public higher education institutions. Critical sensemaking (CSM) was used as a conceptual framework to understand the in-the-moment process of individual sensemaking and how individual and organizational sensemaking is influenced by the formative, structural, and discursive contexts of higher education (Helms Mills, Thurlow, & Mills, 2010). The study employed content analysis methodology (Mayring, 2000) and a two-tiered structural and concept coding analysis strategy (Saldaña, 2011) to explore secondary focus group data from five public institutions from a qualitative case study dataset created through the longitudinal, mixed-methods Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS) project. The key findings of this study are: 1) students use sensemaking as an opportunity to shed old ways of being and knowing; 2) student sensemaking is highly social and students often make sense of their encounters with worldview diversity through the lens of perceived social norms; and, 3) students perceive the university as sensegiving about worldview through funding allocations, space reservation priorities, staff member availability, and in comparison with other social identity work. These results are relevant to research because they extend the use of CSM to college students as actors, focus groups as data, and diversity as a topic for examination. They also show that two properties of CSM, social and extracted cues, are particularly important to student sensemakers and highlight the relevance of formative, structural, and discursive contexts of higher education influence sensemaking about worldview diversity. Additionally, these results provide guidance for practitioners and faculty who want to help students engage with and across worldviews, indicate that institutions of higher education should more specifically communicate how they support worldview development and difference, and confirm that worldview is a relevant part of student identity at public institutions. Taken together, the knowledge gained through this study about the student sensemaking process can be used to maximize student development related to worldview diversity.

This thesis explores the nature of worldview in one institution of Christian Higher Education (CHE) and the role of narrative in articulating, promoting and or understanding worldview. Currently, even though the term worldview has been highly apparent in branding and mission statements in Institutions of CHE, little research has been undertaken into the ways in which a worldview operates at different levels of an institution over time, how it is sustained or changed, and how a worldview speaks to or for members of an institutional community over time. It is implied in the branding of Christian educational institutions that 'worldviews' embody a particular stance, and exhibit a way of being 'particular' in the world. But what drives this worldview? And how is it experienced by students and professors? In what ways do the worldviews of the professors and students who make up an institution of Christian Higher Education mediate its institutional worldview? In responding to these key questions, this research seeks to provide a nuanced and critical perspective on the highly contested term, worldview, at a time when there is great interest across the world in spiritual values in education (see e.g., Cooling, 2010; Palmer, 2010; Wong & Canagarajah, 2004). The study takes the view that critically engaging with narratives inhering in one particular institution at one point in time and over time is crucial for understanding worldview as it is experienced by professors and students in the institution, and it can provide valuable insights into the social, academic, educational and institutional identities of this institution. Central to my inquiry is a reflexive, institutional ethnographic study (Smith, 2005, 2006) into one institution of Christian Higher Education, exploring narratives of 32 participants over a 35 year time span. This research adds to the broader research on Christian Institutions of Higher Education in North America with a focus on worldview. Dialogic inquiry (Wells, 1999) assists in exploring the need for narrative as a component of worldview awareness. Overall, this leads to a multifaceted exploration involving language, relationships, culture, community and institutional identity. This approach contrasts sharply with so-called scientific paradigms of eVidence-based research that are prepared to overlook nuances of language and cultural specificity in order to present quantitative certainty and what is problematically claimed as 'clarity' (cf. MacLure, 2005). The study emphasises the significance of understanding an institution's systemworld and lifeworld in light of that institution's mission or mission statement. It investigates the role of disequilibrium (Wolterstorff, 1987, 2002) -such as between a mission statement and a student or professor's experience of life in that institution -as perhaps an indicator of a problematic institutional worldview but also potentially a significant contributor to institutional growth. In representing examples of disequilibrium and dialogic encounters between text and experience in one institution of Christian Higher Education, I propose a framework by which to identify and understand the nature of an embodied institutional worldview. The research draws attention to the function and role of narrative in engaging with worldviews. Indeed, narrative (including my own autobiographical narrative) is a crucial methodological tool in examining and understanding worldview as a concept and worldview in this institution. The research suggests that this provides a valuable medium through which institutions of CHE can better reflect on, understand and promote their worldview in ways that can still appreciate diverse intellectual positions within that institution and not compromise robust academic debate.