Last term I had the opportunity to teach undergraduates for the first time, and alongside that I completed the teaching development course offered by the Humanities division here in Oxford. Part of the course involved writing a teaching philosophy, and so I had to consider: what do I think good teaching is? Specifically, what is good teaching in my discipline?
I am a confirmed lover of Christmas. I love fairy lights and frost on the ground, poinsettias and Christmas ornaments, baking and decorating the tree. I love all the frills. Even though none of these things are particularly ‘commercial’, I’ll admit that none of them are necessarily about celebrating Jesus, either! And it seems I’m not alone among Christians: though we get to celebrate Christ’s presence with us every day of the year, it’s hard to deny that there’s something ‘magical’ about this season.
Reflecting on what Advent might mean for my work, I ended up looking at the connection between teaching and research. About half of this Advent wraps up my first semester of teaching (in a job I recently began), and the other half will give a little more time to pursue research tasks until Christmas is fully here.
A friend of mine who is a primary school teacher recently remarked that she loves working at a Christian school because she can teach children not only how to learn, but why to learn. Creation is a reflection of God’s glory and power and it is worth studying because it boldly declares the glory of its Maker.
Forming a Christian Mind 2018 took place a week ago - and an important sequel is planned for Feb 2019.
There's something special about conversations where you can be on the same page with both faith and work.
This guest post by Richard Russell, with input from Arthur Jones, looks at the way scientific knowledge grows out of philosophical and ultimately religious roots.
At my church, we have been going through Isaiah in this month's sermon series. When we got to chapter 42, I was struck by the call in verse 10 to ‘sing a new song’. This is a phrase I've come across again and again in the Bible (in fact, I've found and listed a handful of these occurrences below) but it was the first time I stopped and pondered: why a new song? Why not an old song? God’s plan for his people was established before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-10). So what is it about the newness of the song that’s important?
Guest blogger Audrey Southgate reflects on lessons drawn from studying a morally problematic figure.
Where does science come from? Historically, the predecessor of what we now call the sciences was natural philosophy, which was, evidently enough, a branch of philosophy. But when we study science at school and university, it's rare to hear much mention of any continuing dependence on philosophy. We seem to study lots of scientific "facts": about the universe, the solar system and the earth, about impacts and reactions, about microbes, plants and animals, and about humans and society. We gradually get introduced to experimental methods as ways of testing hypotheses and perhaps to demonst