Birthpangs of the New Creation: Judgment unto Salvation in the Book of Revelation

CANCELLED

In our culture, “apocalypse” typically refers to a cataclysmic, catastrophic ending, real or imagined. Often this meaning, in which fear eclipses hope, is traced back to the biblical tradition. But what if the book from which we derive the term, i.e. the “Apocalypse”—or “Revelation”—of John, refers less to the end of the world than to a transition between the two Ages? What if that transition is characterized as double-edged: as both “the death throes of the old world order” and “the birthpangs of the new creation”?  Attentive to the nature of apocalyptic discourse, which typically also features an “open heaven” (or reconnection between the heavens and the earth) motif, this course will seek to develop a key area of systematic theology by exploring the topics of death, judgment, heaven, and hell—the ‘four last things’ of traditional eschatology—as they are portrayed in the book of Revelation. 

In allowing intertextual and intratextual webs of meaning to emerge, we will pay special attention to the way in which Old Testament echoes, together with the book’s own symbolic coherence and narrative logic, can open up new avenues for exegesis, and for theological reflection.  The topic of Final Judgment will be a special focus. How is this to be conceived in the light of the apocalyptic transition? If the first reference to Babylon in the biblical canon, the Babel narrative of Gen 11, refers to a judgment that does not bring history to an end but opens it up once again to the dissemination motif of Gen 1:28, is it possible to detect a parallel “judgment unto salvation” theme in the final book of the New Testament? Our discussions will explore the interface between biblical studies, the “theological interpretation of Scripture,” and contemporary eschatology. Familiarity with New Testament Greek is an advantage but is not a prerequisite.

Dr. Nik Ansell

ICS 120404 / 220404 W22

ICT3736HS / ICT6736HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Wednesdays, 2pm - 5pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

CANCELLED

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Practice

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

    1. A celebration of the learner - What does it mean 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?

Students will gain an understanding of global education and how it can inform one’s Deeper Learning pedagogy.

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

Dr. Edith van der Boom
ICSD 260004 W22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)


Syllabus


Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.


*NOTE: Approved for Area 3 of the CSTC

How to Govern a School: Board Governance, Decision-Making, and Community-Engagement

How to Govern a School is a course for new and aspiring principals, school leadership teams, and school boards. The course provides frameworks and tools for leadership in educational governance. 

The course introduces participants to the work of nurturing the relationships among the school’s stakeholders, with a focus on the pivotal relationship between the board and the executive leadership team (or, in smaller schools, the principal). Different approaches to the work of the board are considered, with particular attention to the stewardship of the school’s vision, mission, and values, to the strategic formulation of policy and the monitoring of executive performance, and to accountability to the school’s parents and supporting community.

Dr. Gideon Strauss
ICS 260002 W22
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)


Syllabus


Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

Foundations and Implications of Phenomenology

This course will look at the philosophical foundations of, and contemporary issues in, phenomenology. We will explore key features of the phenomenological method—including the reduction, the bracketing of the ‘natural attitude,’ the first-person methodology, intentionality, and givenness. We will also look at how the current conversations on these questions have implications for fields as diverse as psychology, religious studies, sociology, music, and more.

Dr. Neal DeRoo

ICSD 223001 W22

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 7pm - 10pm ET

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*NOTE: This course is only available to ICS Junior Members

Individuality in the Franciscan Thought of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham

This seminar will examine the doctrine of individuality developed by the Franciscan thinkers John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham and the configuration of their thought as one or another form of metaphysical “individualism.”  It does so historically against the backdrop of both Franciscan spirituality and the contested “Aristotelianism” of their university environment. The seminar is both an illustration of the value in and a critical reappraisal of a problem-historical analysis of philosophy that centres upon philosophical accounts of our daily experience of both universality in the world, i.e., the fact that creatures come to us in kinds, and individuality, i.e., the fact that it is individual creatures that come to us in kinds.

Dr. Bob Sweetman ICS 120404 / 220404 W22

ICH5151HS L0101* Remote (Online Synchronous) Thursdays, 2pm - 5pm ET (MWS, MA, PhD) Syllabus Enrolment Notes: To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations. *Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

IDS: Colonization, Racial Identity, and what it Means to be Human

The Americas have yet to work through the damaging legacy of European colonization, and the deleterious consequences of the European colonizers’ attempt to dominate or eliminate the different cultural groups with whom they came into contact. This seminar will attempt to confront this legacy by listening to some of the voices that colonizers had sought to silence. In particular, we will consider the work of prominent Black, Indigenous, and Latin American thinkers as they engage Western thought on the question of what it means to be human. The scholarly exchange between these voices and the Western tradition has resulted in an interdisciplinary array of literature that documents the diverse ways in which racialized and marginalized thinkers seek to broaden the human definition beyond the narrow confines set by the assumption of White supremacy. We will listen to these developing philosophical anthropologies as they seek to integrate specific histories of domination and oppression with alternative conceptions of what it means to be human. In doing so, we will also pay particular attention to the role that religious discourses have and continue to play in both the establishment and criticism of White supremacy. This course will provide a survey into such literature, allowing students to dialogue with texts by racialized and minority voices, and empower them to reflect on the effects of European colonization, systemic racism, and white supremacy in the philosophical tradition in which they are apprentices.

Dr. Ron Kuipers

ICS 2400AC W22

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Thursdays, 10am - 1pm ET

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*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.

Recognition or Refusal? Cultural Politics in a Colonial Canada

CANCELLED

Canada is often described as a democratic, “multicultural” nation whose political institutions are capable of recognizing a diversity of cultural identities, expressions, and practices. However, many Indigenous thinkers and activists argue that the politics of recognition that characterizes Canada’s engagement with Indigenous communities should be rejected or refused, owing to the Canadian state’s persistent colonialism in dictating the terms of dialogue, typically in culturally and economically assimilating ways. This Indigenous politics of refusal thus challenges both Canada’s open and accommodating self-image and the liberal notions of culture and cultural diversity that have shaped Canadian political thought. The first part of this course explores the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of recognition, alongside its application within Canadian political theory. It then assesses the adequacy of a liberal politics of recognition for addressing Indigenous-settler relationships in Canada. Our main guide will be Glen Sean Coulthard’s 2014 work Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, which applies the work of anticolonial theorist Frantz Fanon to Canada’s interaction with Indigenous communities. Reading Coulthard’s work alongside other Indigenous authors, we will explore the challenge of pursuing non-colonial forms of recognition in relation to questions about freedom, rights, property, gender, and political discourse, and to the way that Indigenous authors and activists imagine alternative futures and practices of self-determination beyond the terms of Canadian nationalism.

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt ICS 153301 / 253301 W22 Remote (Online Synchronous) Mondays, 6pm - 9pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD) Syllabus

Enrolment Notes: To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations. *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.

CANCELLED

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 W22

ICT3702HS / ICT6702HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 2pm - 5pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

The Radical Theopoetics of John D. Caputo

This seminar will explore John D. Caputo’s Theopoetics, a "weak theology" of narratives, prayers and praise in response to the call of God in contrast to a "strong" theology of predicative claims about the existence and nature of God. 

Dr. Jim Olthuis
ICS 150907 / 250907 F21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 2pm - 5pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*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.

With/Out Reason: Art and Imagination in the Western Tradition

Today the imagination occupies an august, if ill-defined, place in the popular mindset. While we might at some level link the imagination to the arts, its capacities for innovation are thought to span all human creative endeavours across the arts and sciences. In Western society today, thinking imaginatively, or outside the box, is a deeply revered feature of our strongly individualistic culture. Yet, until the eighteenth century, the products of human imagination were understood to be unavoidably communal insofar as they were thought to generate certain palpable effects. For good or ill, works of the imagination were expected to aesthetically impact all those who encountered them. They were never simply the result of abstract thought processes that functioned at a level beyond expected norms. Rather, imaginative inventions were governed by an understanding of the imagination in its most ordinary sense as that which creates mental images.

This course will examine the consequences of this understanding of the imagination for the Western tradition and how it has led to where we are today. Through an investigation of key philosophical and theological texts (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Schelling, Coleridge, Derrida) as well as works of art (e.g. Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth), it will look at the place of image and imagination in a variety of forms of cognition from the ‘objective’ world of phenomenon to the ‘inobjective’ world of the highest truths. It will consider the traditional place of imagination in ethical theory. And it will clarify the inextricability of the arts and artistry from this history as well as offer points of departure for a theory of imagination today.

Dr. Rebekah Smick
ICS 120106 / 220106 F21

ICH5752HF L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 10am - 1pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

The Divine (at) Risk: Open Theism, Classical Theism and Beyond

Did God take a risk in creating the world?  How are divine and human freedom related?  Can we confess God’s sovereignty in the face of evil?  This course will explore the different ways in which the God of history is viewed by advocates and critics of “Open Theism”.  Our examination will stimulate our own reflections on how we might best understand and, indeed, image God’s love, knowledge and power.

Dr. Nik Ansell
ICS 120803 / 220803 F21

ICT3730HF / ICT6730HF L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 2pm - 5pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Recognition in a Colonial Canada

POSTPONED

This course explores and critically assesses the idea of multiculturalism in the context of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous communities. Multiculturalism has long been central to Canada’s national self-identity, and for decades has been reflected in Canadian law and official state policy. To be Canadian, it is said, is to be part of a nation whose democratic institutions recognize and accommodate a plurality of cultural identities, and is to be a member of a populace that is characteristically welcoming of diversity and difference. Taking our cues from Charles Taylor’s seminal 1992 essay “The Politics of Recognition” we will explore the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of multiculturalism as representing the political imperative to recognize cultural diversity and pursue intercultural dialogue. We will then assess the adequacy of a liberal multicultural politics of recognition for addressing the relationship between the Canadian state and Indigenous communities. Here we will be guided by Glen Sean Coulthard’s 2014 work Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, which applies the work of anticolonial theorist Frantz Fanon to argue that the “recognition” of Indigenous claims and communities offered by Canadian state institutions has remained colonial in its dictation of the terms of dialogue, often in culturally and economically self-serving ways. We will also explore what forms of resistance and alternative futures are currently being imagined by Indigenous theorists and authors, as well as what possibilities exist for non-colonial forms of recognition and reconciliation.

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt
ICS 153301 / 253301 F21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Mondays, 2pm - 5pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Brief introductory video to the course

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*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.

POSTPONED

Pragmatism, Race, and Religion: Du Bois, West, and Glaude

This course will explore the work of key Black thinkers in the philosophical tradition of American Pragmatism, paying particular attention to the unique way their reflection upon racialized experience shapes and augments key themes within this thought tradition. How might the strain of tragedy and absurdity sounded by Black pragmatists inflect the sense of meliorism and hope for which American Pragmatism is well known? In pursuing this question, the course will pay particular attention to the differing religious pasts of white and black America and ponder these thinkers' understanding of the relevance and complicatedness of Black religious experience in our racially divided era.

Dr. Ron Kuipers
ICS 120501 / 220501 F21

ICT3771HF / ICT6771HF L9101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10am - 1pm EST

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

The Observant Participant: Applying Research Craft to Professional Practice

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” (Simone Weil)

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” (Simone Weil) 

How do I avoid becoming the proverbial practitioner who, instead of earning ten years of experience, repeats one year of experience ten times over? How do I make sense of my own experience as a practitioner and how do I learn from my experience? How do I learn from the experience of other practitioners? How do I give attention to what matters most? 

In this course we will consider these kinds of questions. We will draw on the critical reflective practices of other practitioners, we will equip ourselves with the methodological tools of qualitative researchers, and we will cultivate an attitude of attentiveness informed by the approach to practice taken by phenomenologists—becoming philosophically skilful students of our own lived human experience. Doing this course together, we will become more observant participants in our lifeworlds and strengthen our capacity as reflective practitioners in our professions and in our scholarship. 

While the focus of this course is on applying research craft to professional practice, the course is also an introduction to graduate level qualitative research and to key perspectives from phenomenological philosophy. 

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICS 132501 / 232501 F21

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL, MWS)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

How to Coach a Strong Team: Leading People, Building Instructional Capacity, and Securing Accountability

CANCELLED

How to Coach a Strong Team is a course for new and aspiring principals. The course provides frameworks and tools for setting directions, building relationships, developing people, developing a school culture and structures to support desired practices, and securing accountability.

The course starts with attention to the character of the leader. It continues with an exploration of the processes necessary to gain competency in the cultivation of vision, the nurture of trust, the leading of change, the building of teams, professional coaching, and the supervision of professional development. It concludes with hiring practices, handling conflict, and terminations of service.

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICS 260005 F21

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

CANCELLED

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

Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation

How can we read and experience the Scriptures as the Word of Life in the midst of an Academy that believes the biblical witness will restrict human freedom and thwart our maturity? How may we pursue biblical wisdom as we “re-think the world” when our Christian traditions seem convinced that biblical truth may be disconnected from—or simply applied to—the most pressing and perplexing issues of our time? 

This course will explore the Bible—from Genesis to Revelation—as the ongoing story of and for God and all God’s creatures, paying special attention to the way in which humanity’s attempt to find its way is interwoven with the story of the Divine presence and with the wisdom and promise of creation-new creation. In asking whether and how the biblical story may find its future in our ongoing narratives, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods and sensitivities might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise. 

If Jesus is the Living Word at the heart of Scripture, does that change our understanding of where biblical truth is coming from and where it is going? Does the Bible have an implicit, sapiential pedagogy that we have misconstrued? Can the familiar Reformed themes of creation and covenant, election and eschaton speak to us in new, reformational ways? These are some of the questions we shall explore together as we reintroduce ourselves to the biblical writings.

Dr. Nik Ansell
ICS 1108AC / 2108AC F21
ICB2010HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 6pm - 9pm EST

(MWS, MA, MA-EL, PhD)


Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

**NOTE: Approved for Area 1 of the CSTC

Cultivating Learning Communities of Grace

Cultivating Learning Communities of Grace is a course for instructional leaders and school administrators in the consideration of both school and classroom cultures. Course content will include attention to diversity, cultural complexity and increasingly blurred markers of origin and ethnicity, racial justice, and restorative practices. 

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

 

• How do we awaken our students’ knowledge, creativity, and critical reflective capacities in our schools and classrooms?

• How do racism and other forms of oppression underlie achievement gaps and alienation within our schools?

• How can classroom learning be linked to larger movements seeking to effect change in community?/How can school culture be a vehicle for social change?

• How do we cultivate learning communities of grace in our schools?

• What is the relationship between the daily behaviour of educational leaders and the cultures of schools?

Dr. Edith van der Boom
ICS 260008 F21
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 17, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 or Area 3 of the CSTC

Leadership in Context (Reformational Philosophy Applied)

This course will present an understanding of schooling in terms of the Reformational tradition in philosophy. It will present a Reformational reading of and orientation to the modern world in which schooling presently takes place. In the process it will examine schooling and leadership within classrooms and schools in terms of key distinctions to be kept in mind when examining that world. In other words, schooling and leadership within schooling will be placed within today’s complex social and cultural environment. That human environment will in turn be placed within a cosmos wide perspective. From this perspective the cosmos itself finds itself within the covenant by which creatures partner in love with the God who creates, upholds, and redeems the creation in the intricate dance of meaningful existence. Schooling will thereby manifest a distinct identity as an elemental building block of our contemporary socio-cultural arrangements. Its identity will relate to other societal institutions and practices to which it is connected by countless ties.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 1107AC / 2107AC S21
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)
Intensive, August 16 - 20, 2021

(MA-EL, MWS)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes: 

Last date to register July 9, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

Lead From Where You Are: Making a Difference in the Face of Tough Problems, Big Questions, and Organizational Politics

Leadership is an art, a craft, a practice, to which everyone is called sometime or other, in a wide array of different situations: it is the craft of mobilizing people to act together in response to a shared challenge. Leadership is not about personality, authority, position, influence, or power as such. It can be practiced with varying degrees of authority, from any position, at varying scales of influence, and with varying access to different sources of power.

 
The approach to leadership that we will learn and practice in this course has to do with diagnosing and addressing both the everyday and the toughest problems experienced by organizations, communities, institutions, and societies. Leadership always requires political skill: the skill to discern the overt and covert concerns and interests, agendas, and alliances within the organizations, institutions, and societies we serve, and to give each their due while not failing to pursue the common good. 

We will learn a leadership language, try out a set of tools and frameworks, and workshop our fresh insights and skills.

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICS 260003 S21

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

Intensive, August 16 - 20, 2021

(MA-EL, MWS)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

Last date to register August 6, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 or Area 4 of the CSTC

Transforming the World: The Role of a Christian Educator

CANCELLED

Transforming the World is a course for instructional leaders as they consider their roles as Christian educators. 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 that informs student-centred pedagogies such as Project Based Learning, 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: 

• Context: Who am I called to be as a Christian educator in my particular place and time?

• Constructivism: How does constructivism inform my practice?

• Culture: What role does education play in creating culture?

This version of the course will consist of:

1. Reading To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey and 5 articles as specified in the Google classroom prior to August 3;

2. Participation in five 3-hour Zoom sessions during August 9-13;

3. Assigned reading and online discussions throughout the month of August; and

4. A project that demonstrates ones learning from the course.

Dr. Edith van der Boom
ICS 260006 S21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Intensive, August 9 - 13, 2021

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

CANCELLED

Finding Joy in Learning

Finding Joy in Learning is a course that will inspire and support K-12 educators in their own personal journey of learning. Educators will gain an introductory understanding of how people make sense of their lives, find their way in the world, and contribute to the cultures in which they participate, and in particular, to become critically familiar with the notions of world-viewing, practice, and culture-making. The course will provide educators with a vocational vision of Christian educational innovation and leadership. It is intended to guide educators on an inner journey as they begin cultivating personal competency in critical and constructive reflection on your professional practice.

This version of the course will consist of:

• Reading The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life by Parker Palmer prior to our first Zoom session on August 3

• Three 3-hour Zoom sessions (August 3 - 5, 2021)

• A project that demonstrates the ones learning in this course

• Assigned reading and online discussions

• An individual mentoring session with the instructor

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICS 260001 S21

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

Intensive, August 3 - 5, 2021

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

Last date to register July 23, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

Faith in Art: Spirituality and Lived Experience

This course explores the various ways in which art and faith can intersect by comparing two important strands within theological aesthetics, the first focusing on art as a bridge to the spiritual and transcendence, the other on the way art articulates human lived experience. Students will explore what different traditions can learn from each other with a view towards developing a better understanding of the nature of art and the role of faith in religious and non-religious artistic practices.

Dr. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin
ICS 131201/231201 S21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Intensive, June 15 - July 22, 2021

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1pm - 3pm EDT

(MWS, 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.

Pragmatism, Race, and Religion: Du Bois, West, and Glaude

POSTPONED

This course will explore the work of key Black thinkers in the philosophical tradition of American Pragmatism, paying particular attention to the unique way their reflection upon racialized experience shapes and augments key themes within this thought tradition. How might the strain of tragedy and absurdity sounded by Black pragmatists inflect the sense of meliorism and hope for which American Pragmatism is well known? In pursuing this question, the course will pay particular attention to the differing religious pasts of white and black America and ponder these thinkers' understanding of the relevance and complicatedness of Black religious experience in our racially divided era.

Dr. Ron Kuipers
ICS 120501 / 220501 S21

ICT3771HS / ICT6771HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Intensive, June 8 - July 15, 2021

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10am - 12pm EDT

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

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

POSTPONED

Fashion Theology

What is fashion? By what logic does it operate? And how does it shape our lives? Moreover, how does Christianity relate to fashion? This seminar is for anyone who has suspected there is more behind fashion than meets the eye. The first graduate seminar of its kind, participants will serve as fellow pioneers in the emerging field of fashion theology—that is, the fascinating ways theology intersects with fashion’s social, aesthetic, linguistic, performative, narrative, ethical, etc., elements. In doing so, participants not only gain essential tools for thinking theologically about fashion, but indeed, about any number of cultural practices that compose our everyday lives.

Dr. Robert Covolo
ICS 1532SC / 2532SC S21

Remote (Online Synchronous)
Intensive, May 26 - June 8, 2021

Weekdays, 1pm - 3pm EDT

(MWS, 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.

The Soul of Soulless Conditions: Marxists on Christianity, Christians on Marxism

Although Marxists and Christians have found plenty of reasons to be mutually suspicious, prominent voices in both historical communities explored creative ways of relating to one another, politically and ideologically, throughout the 20th century and beyond. Through dialogical exchanges, party documents, and theological reflection, important questions were raised, if not always solved. Were the first Christians communists? What do Moscow and Havana have to do with Rome and Nazareth? Does materialism disqualify Christians from Marxist analysis? Can Marxist political parties accommodate Christian believers, and how far can Christians go in participating in Marxist revolutions?

Over the course of thirteen classes, we will read several Marxists on Christianity (e.g. Lenin, Luxemburg, Castro, Horkheimer) and several Christians on Marxism (e.g. McCabe, Soelle, Cone, Zuidervaart) to better understand where these communities found points of agreement and disagreement. Because neither Marxism nor Christianity are entirely unified traditions of thought, the selection of authors will aim to represent at least some of this diversity, although privileging voices that made an effort to bring these two discourses closer together in some way. Reading these traditions together, we will try to uncover how Christianity contributes to the soul of soulless conditions, and also what it might mean to embody that soul in the flesh of political organization.

Dean Dettloff
ICS 132902 S21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Intensive, April 20 - May 27, 2021

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 7pm - 9pm EDT

(MWS)

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.

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 that informs student-centred pedagogies such as Project Based Learning, 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: 

• Context: Who am I called to be as a Christian educator in my particular place and time?
• Constructivism: How does constructivism inform my practice?
• Culture: What role does education play in creating culture?  

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

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 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

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.