Transforming the World: The Role of a Christian Educator

Transforming the World is a course for instructional leaders as they consider their role as a Christian educator. We will consider our context as Christians as we are called to be transformers of society and culture by seeking justice and righteousness for those who are marginalized and disenfranchised. In this course we will consider constructivism, a dominant educational theory in the twenty-first century, through the lens of scripture and investigate the assumptions that it makes. We will explore our calling as Christian educators to transform culture in our schools, local community, and the world. 

This course seeks to help Christian educators find clarity in answers to the following questions: 

1. Context - Who am I called to be as a Christian educator?

2. Constructivism - How does constructivism inform my practice?

3. Culture - What role does education play in creating culture?

ICSD 260006 W21*
Dr. Edith van der Boom
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*Subject to approval by the ICS Senate

Capitalism(s) in the West: Intellectual History, Core Institutions, and Architectonic Critique

This course explores the intellectual history of and thematizes the current core politico-economic concepts and institutions under the umbrella of capitalism and brings the Reformational architectonic critique to bear thereon. The concept and terminology of capitalism remain contested by critics and proponents. The seminar will explore the conceptual characteristics and institutional dimensions of capitalism and aims to distinguish - both historically and conceptually - merchant capitalism, plantation capitalism, industrial capitalism, and finance capitalism, to name but a few of the prominent forms. The aim is to develop a Christian critical view of the constitutive and normative foundations of such concepts and forms in capitalism as market, property, exchange, value, profit, transnational corporations, and the like.

Dr. Michael DeMoor, and Samir Gassanov
ICS 243101 W21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 11am - 2pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*Attention UT/TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

God/Sex/Word/Flesh: Gender, Theology, and the Body

How is our agenda for theology related to our gender? Is “God” a male word? Is the “Word made Flesh” a male God? Does the experience of women change how God is (made) known? Is sexuality—are sexualities—embraced by the resurrection? Attentive to the work of feminist theologians, biblical scholars, and philosophers, we will attempt to develop an “embodied” theology open to the biblical vision that God will be “all in all.”

In addition to engaging several well-established works of theoretical and textual liberation (by Rosemary Radford Ruether, Phyllis Trible, Susan Bordo, and others), participants in this iteration of God/Sex/Word/Flesh will also have the opportunity to respond to a recent fictional or autobiographical contribution to the discussion, such as Naomi Alderman’s The Power or Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.

Dr. Nik Ansell
ICS 220804 W21
ICT5220HS L0101 / L9101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 5 - 8pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

Religion, Life and Society: Reformational Philosophy

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 1107AC / 2107AC W21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Mondays, 8pm - 11pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise

This seminar examines the ancient and medieval discipline of rhetoric and its practitioners’ claim that it represents a properly philosophical discourse. It does so in terms of a selection of texts drawn from the works of Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Abelard and Heloise. In the process, it explores the relationship between affectivity and discursive validity as an implication of the cultural intent of philosophy, i.e., whether historical philosophies are best thought of as a speculative sciences, arts of right living, or whether they call out to be thought of in other terms altogether.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 220407 W21
ICH5720HS L0101 / L9101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 2 - 5pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

IDS: Meaning/Being/Knowing

“Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood.” With these enigmatic words, which form part of the introduction to his magisterial New Critique of Theoretical Thought, the neo-Calvinist philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd signals his intention to de-centre the central concern of Ontology by relativizing (which is to say thoroughly relating) the philosophical notion of Being to Meaning, even to the point of (re-)defining creation’s being as meaning—all in the conviction that this will enable us to engage in (rather than circumvent or supersede) the work of Ontology (and thus Epistemology) in a truly systematic, integrally Christian, way. Although it might seem as though Dooyeweerd is merely substituting one metaphysical idea for another, his reference to the nature of our selfhood here indicates that, for all its theoretical import for Philosophical Anthropology, this highly suggestive proposal also has profound implications for how we might both appreciate and pull upon our deepest (religious) self-knowledge, which takes shape before the face of God as we face the world. To do the work of Ontology well—to gain genuine insight into the “nature of things” and to identify the contours and coherence of the world’s general structures without undermining investigation or denaturing experience—will require that we also draw upon a pre-theoretical form of Knowing, and a spiritual grounding and hope, that will always precede and exceed our understanding.

Drs. Nik Ansell, Ron Kuipers, Bob Sweetman
ICS 2400AC W21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 10am - 1pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Action

Deeper Learning is a course for instructional leaders. It explores learning as a journey from wonder to inquiry to action. This course seeks to help Christian educators develop Deeper Learning within the context of:  

    1. A celebration of the learner - What it means to be created in God’s image? 

    2. A mindfulness towards learning design - How does curriculum, instruction and assessment inspire us to live out our lives as Kingdom Ambassadors who are intentional about character formation and loving our neighbours?  

    3. A responsiveness to culture - How do we embody our mission in every aspect of school life and live it out in God’s world?

(Source: Deeper Learning in Christian Schools: Playing our Part in God’s Story; cace.org) 

ICSD 260004 W21*
Dr. Edith van der Boom
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*NOTE: Approved for Area 3 of the CSTC

How to Finance a Vision: Setting Direction and Managing Change within Financial Limitations

How to Finance a Vision is a course for new and aspiring principals and leadership teams. The course provides frameworks and tools for leadership in making the connections between the vision of a school, the budgeting process, and fundraising. 

The course starts with an introduction to Henri Nouwen’s spirituality of fundraising. It continues with an introduction to the basic financial documents that a principal should be able to read and to the Canadian Revenue Agency documents relevant to schools. It explores the art of communicating the story told by school budgets as a necessary element of fundraising. It concludes with the processes necessary to gain competency in working with both school boards and staffs (with an emphasis on financial and advancement staff) on the financial aspects of school management.

How to Finance a Vision is a remote learning course consisting of three synchronous discussions and three virtual school visits using online video and thirteen weeks of asynchronous online interaction. 

ICSD 260007 W21
Dr. Gideon Strauss
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Body, Language, Power: The Question of the Human in 20th Century French Philosophy

Following the groundbreaking phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, philosophers in France in the 20th century developed a uniquely existential phenomenology that emphasizes our concrete experience as subjects situated in a world of meaning. This course studies key representatives of this tradition, focusing on the ways that our experience as human beings is defined by our relations to other people, our embodiment, and our concerns about freedom and authenticity. We will explore the challenge that philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Frantz Fanon pose to the familiar image of the human as primarily rational, individual, and autonomous, and we will work towards developing instead a “relational” understanding of the human being as characterized by desire and as cultivated in socio-political contexts. We will also trace the development of existential phenomenology toward the critique of “the subject” in works by Julia Kristeva and Michel Foucault, exploring the ways that human beings are produced in systems of language and power, while at the same time capable of reinventing or “revolting” against these systems. 

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt
ICS 220608 W21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 2 - 5pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*Attention UT/TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.