Art, Religion, and Theology (ART)

ART in Orvieto is an advanced summer studies program in art, religion, and theology located in Orvieto, Italy, a magnificent hill town 90 minutes north of Rome. The program offers an ecumenical exploration of Christian understandings of the arts. It provides a three weeks residency designed for artists, graduate students in relevant fields, and other adult learners interested in engaging the intersection of art, religion, and theology.

For further details, please see the dedicated ART in Orvieto webpage.

Art, Religion, and Theology: Theologies of Art in the Christian Tradition

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS AiO 120102 / 220102 S23*

ICH3350HS / ICH6350HS L4101**

Syllabus

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Artists' Workshop

Dr. Rebekah Smick, and David Holt

ICS AiO 1501VAA / 2501VAA S23*

ICP3851HS / ICP6851HS 0101**

Syllabus

Experiential Learning in Faith and the Arts: Writers' Workshop

Dr. Rebekah Smick, and John Terpstra

ICS AiO 1501WA / 2501WA S23*

ICP3861HS / ICP6861HS 0102**

Syllabus

Intensive, July 9 - July 29, 2023

Orvieto, Italy

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Enrolment Notes:

Instructions on how to apply are available on the program page. February 28, 2023, is the application deadline for courses in the ART in Orvieto summer program. ICS reserves the right reject applications when the maximum capacity has been reached.

*NOTE: Each course is approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

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

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. Participants will consider a deeply Christian vision for their lives as educators and reflect on teaching practices in light of faith and spiritual practices. It is intended to guide educators on an inner journey as they pursue a path of refreshment and renewal in their work within Christian education.

This course seeks to answer the following questions:

• What is my calling as an educator?
• How should I intentionally live out my calling to teach?

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICSD 260001 S23*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 21, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

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

Leadership is not about personality, authority, position, influence, or power as such. Leadership is an art, a craft, a practice, to which everyone is called sometime or other, in widely different situations. Leadership 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. Leadership is the work of motivating a group of people to act in certain ways as they shape what they share.

In this course we will explore two kinds of leadership, positional leadership and contributory leadership, and two kinds of leadership practices, algorithmic leadership practices and heuristic leadership practices. Positional leadership is the kind of leadership that comes with a particular, recognized position in a group, and contributory leadership is the kind of leadership that you can contribute regardless of your position in a group. Algorithmic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals, and heuristic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are not (or not yet) clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals and that demand imaginative discernment. We will attend to leadership with regard to both making beneficial change happen and ensuring needed maintenance.

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICSD 132504 / 260003 S23*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MWS, MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 21, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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

State, Society, and Religion in Hegel’s Philosophy

This course explores the interrelation of political, social, and religious life in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. Readings will be drawn from Hegel’s lectures on art and religion, as well as his works Elements of the Philosophy of Right and Phenomenology of Spirit. We will explore the political and social conditions of human experience through the lens of what Hegel calls “objective spirit,” focusing in particular on how our freedom as self-conscious beings is enabled and supported by the domains of ethical life, law, and civil society. We will also explore Hegel’s account of the human engagement in “absolute spirit,” here attending to the distinctive practices of art and religion, and to how these practices are interwoven with social and political life. We will also consider Hegel’s role in the historical construction of the modern West’s category of religion, and on what is involved in thinking about religion and religious difference (and Hegel’s philosophy itself) beyond Eurocentrism.

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt

ICS 153303 / 253303 S23

Intensive, July 4 - August 10, 2023

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1 pm - 3 pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register June 30, 2023. 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.

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

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” --Karl Marx

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, revolutions, organizing, and theological reflection, important questions were raised, if not always solved. Were the first Christians communists? 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?

This class will explore these questions by reading several Marxists on Christianity (e.g. Lenin, Luxemburg, Castro) and several Christians on Marxism (e.g. McCabe, Soelle, West) to better understand where these perspectives 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.

Dr. Dean Dettloff

ICS 132902 / 232902 S23

Intensive, June 12 - July 19, 2023

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Mondays & Wednesdays, 7 pm - 9 pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register June 9, 2023. 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.

Faith, Freedom, and the Meaning of Politics: Liberalism and Its Discontents (IDS)

The political liberalism that has shaped the constitutional arrangements of many nations and that has been hegemonic in international relations since 1989 is currently facing the most serious challenges of recent decades. In international relations the liberal world order is facing challenges from autocratic states like China and Russia and from movements like political Islam. In the North American context liberal democracy is facing serious challenges from a new nationalism and from Christian integralism. In this interdisciplinary seminar we will focus on reading key texts in the current debate conducted in the English language between contemporary proponents of liberalism, nationalism, and integralism, engaging these texts with help from the work of the critical theorist Raymond Geuss and two pluralist philosophers in the Reformational tradition, Jonathan Chaplin and Lambert Zuidervaart, and with contextualizing reference to the work of one Canadian political philosopher, James Tully.

Drs. Ron Kuipers, Gideon Strauss

ICS 2400AC W23

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 6pm - 9pm ET

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

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. Participants will consider a deeply Christian vision for their lives as educators and reflect on teaching practices in light of faith and spiritual practices. It is intended to guide educators on an inner journey as they pursue a path of refreshment and renewal in their work within Christian education.

This course seeks to answer the following questions:

• What is my calling as an educator?
• How should I intentionally live out my calling to teach?

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICSD 260001 W23*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*NOTE: Approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

How to Coach A Strong Team: Leading People, Building Institutional Capacity, and Securing Accountability

How to Coach A Strong Team is a course for current and aspiring school administrators who want to cultivate their people skills. The course will focus on the competencies involved in having crucial conversations and coaching colleagues for professional development purposes, while also providing opportunities for learning about the competencies relevant to talent acquisition and employment termination. The backbone of the course will be a series of meditations (in the Reformational philosophical tradition) on being human: imaging God in the world.

How to Coach A Strong Team is a remote learning course consisting of six synchronous sessions including three school visits and a debriefing session with an expert practitioner, thirteen weeks of asynchronous online interaction, and the writing of a playbook by each student taking the course for credit. All of the synchronous sessions will be by means of online video, with the possible exception of one of the school visits. The exception may include an on-site, in-person option as part of a hybrid package, depending on circumstances. Team auditors will have access to five of the six synchronous sessions (including the school visits and the expert practitioner debriefing) and a team audit study guide for reading and talking through the course materials in their team contexts.

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICSD 260005 W23

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

Dates TBA

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

Nothing Can Separate Us…!: The Dialectical Materialism of Slavoj Žižek

This seminar will map out the Dialectical Materialism of Slovenian philosopher, psycho-analyst, and cultural critic Slavoj Žížek. A communist and atheist, Žižek's thought is an original Lacanian inspired repeat of Hegel that recalibrates Materialism. Žížek's incisive structural insights will be explored even as his faith in the Void as the eternal traumatic Real is contrasted with faith in the steadfast Love of God.

Dr. Jim Olthuis

ICS 140908 / 240908 W23

ICT5704HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Wednesdays, 6pm - 9pm ET (Starting January 18, 2023, and finishing April 19, 2023.)

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. 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.

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 W23

ICT3702HS / ICT6702HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 10am - 1pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. 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.

Spiritual Exercise as Christian Philosophy from Augustine to Bonaventure

This seminar examines the notion of spiritual exercise as it evolved in Hellenic and Hellenistic philosophy to understand the emergence of ‘Christian philosophy’ as a cultural project within the Augustinian tradition of theology and spirituality, a tradition that begins in Augustine’s own writings and can be said to find its medieval high point in the work of St. Bonaventure.


Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 120402 / 220402 W23
ICH5017HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 6pm - 9pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)


Syllabus


Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. 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.

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Practice

CANCELLED

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Practice is a course which seeks to help Christian educators develop deeper learning. We will consider what it means to be image-bearers of God called to care for our neighbours and to be engaged in real work that is part of God’s story. Our consideration of these ideas will inform classroom practices and signature pedagogies in apparent, unintended, and even transformative ways. Together we will examine the importance of global citizenship as a form of deeper learning and the impact it has on developing a caring and just world.

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICSD 260004 W23*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 3 of the CSTC

CANCELLED

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 F22
ICB2010HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 4:15pm - 7:15pm ET

(MWS, MA, MA-EL, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 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.

**NOTE: Approved for Area 1 of the CSTC

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept

Following Ephesians 2:8, grace is, for Christians, a free gift of salvation bestowed on humankind by God regardless of human merit. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” As the means by which humans participate in God’s plan for humanity, grace is a central theological concept in all forms of Christianity. 

In the history of Western aesthetics, the term "grace" is also of considerable importance. Generically it indicates beauty in movement and expresses the lightness, spontaneity, and naturalness of this movement together with the charm it exerts. By the 18th century, parallel to the birth of modern aesthetics, the achievement of grace in art was routinely considered art’s highest ideal, the “je ne sais quoi” - the inexplicable something extra - that guarantees artistic success. 

At first glance, these two meanings for this one term seem very far from one another. One attempts to account for the quality of God’s interaction with humanity, while the other seeks to describe the surface effects of expressly material goods. It is thus not surprising that these two understandings of grace are rarely thought to intersect, a state of affairs compounded by the fact that the academic study of grace has traditionally only taken place in discrete fields of research. Because of doctrinal differences in the theology of grace, the teaching of grace in Christian seminaries is often part of systematics. Among  historiographers of the arts, the historical concept of grace is often reduced to a matter of style. 

By contrast, this interdisciplinary seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to more fully understand its historical significance, the points of intersection between its contemporary uses,  and its potential usefulness for the philosophy and theology of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, Augustine, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner) as well as works of art and literature for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept.

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS 120103 / 220103 F22

ICH3758HS / ICH6758HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 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.

Imagining the World with Ricoeur: Narrative, Action, and the Sacred in Ricoeur's Hermeneutic Phenomenology

This course will focus primarily on two essay collections by Paul Ricoeur: From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, as well as Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. These collections cover (roughly) a period from the early 1970’s to the early 1990’s. Together, they form an excellent introduction to Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, which he developed as an alternative to those theoretical options, such as psychoanalysis and semiotics, with which he struggled throughout the 1960’s.  

In addition to exploring Ricoeur’s evolving thoughts on such topics as textual interpretation, action, imagination, revelation, and a religious imaginary, these essays will also serve seminar participants as an effective springboard into Ricoeur’s larger thematic works, such as Rule of Metaphor, Time and Narrative (Vols. I-III), Oneself as Another, or Memory, History, Forgetting. Beginning with From Text to Action, the seminar will explore the general shape of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, including such themes as text, action, explanation, understanding, ideology, and utopia. 

With this basic grasp of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology in hand, we will go on to explore his understanding of the disclosive force of religious texts and uses of language in the anthology Figuring the Sacred. Among other things, Ricoeur there ponders how Christian communities might best face the task of appropriating a textual heritage from which time has distanced them, and concerning which they have lost a certain original naivety. This seminar will explore Ricoeur’s recommendation that Christians risk assuming a “second naivety” as they take up the responsibility of receiving and interpreting their religious tradition for a new generation. Imagining the world with Ricoeur, we will discuss how his recommendations on this score might help or hinder our effort to find meaning and inspiration amidst the crises and fragmentations that run through contemporary life.

Dr. Ron Kuipers
ICS 120504 / 220504 F22

ICT3732HS / ICT6732HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 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.

Meaning/Being/Knowing: The Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Implications of a Christian Ontology

“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. 

Implicit in Dooyeweerd’s vision of and for Ontology, we might say, is the provocative claim that creation does not “have” meaning but “is” meaning (a paraphrase that, tellingly, uses the language of Being to relativize Being). But what does Dooyeweerd mean by “meaning”? And what difference might this systematically relational, spiritually open, with-reference-to-self-and-beyond re-centering make (a) to the detailed, nitty-gritty work that needs to be done in any given academic field, and (b) to the theoretical integration that requires both intra- and inter-disciplinary reflection? After an opening discussion about the phenomenon of “post-truth,” to which we shall return at the end of the course, we shall explore the inter-play between Meaning, Being, and Knowing via a close reading of Hendrik Hart’s Understanding Our World: An Integral Ontology, paying careful attention to the ways in which his interpretation of Dooyeweerd’s ideas—not least the discussion of “meaning” that occurs at the midpoint of his Appendix (see 8.1.4) and in a pivotal section within his central chapter (see 4.4 and 405–406n37)—might deepen our insight into how what is known in faith and articulated via our web of beliefs can help us identify and evaluate the core concepts and the conceptual-ontological connections that play such an integral, influential role in the scholarly disciplines with which we are engaged. In paying attention to developments in Hart’s Ontology and Epistemology since the publication of this work, we shall also ask whether the broadly Dooyeweerdian position he initially adopts is as post-metaphysical as it may first appear. 

In this iteration of the course, we shall pay special attention to the central concerns of political theory and aesthetics, including their respective interests in the way we posit societal principles and protect, reveal, expand, and find ourselves via the symbols that make up the fabric of our life, history, and society. In further probing the relationship between the aesthetic and political dimensions of created meaning, and between the mystery of our selfhood and the structural contours of reality, we shall also be asking what the development of an Ontology in the Reformational tradition might offer to the scholarly search for disciplinary integrity and interdisciplinary integration—this being a neo-Calvinism in which the unity and diversity we rightly seek are typically seen as covenantally, rather than ontotheologically, grounded. 

Given this relational emphasis, we may well wonder what might happen if “Being” were to make way for—or make a way for—“Loving.” Perhaps, following Dooyeweerd’s (post-metaphysical?) turn to “Meaning,” we may find that a Christian scholarly approach to knowing and understanding our world and ourselves “after Being” may have something new to say to the peril and promise of life “post-truth”!

Dr. Nik Ansell

ICS 2105AC F22

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Thursdays, 6:00pm - 9:00pm ET

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*NOTE: This course is only available to ICS Junior Members. Completion of 1107AC or 2107AC is a prerequisite for enrolling in this course.

The Craft of Reflective Practice

We humans make sense of things by telling stories. In this course we will learn how to do critical reflective practice, primarily by telling stories about our everyday professional lives. We will zoom in on the story of an ordinary day at work, and then zoom out to the story of our career to date, zoom out further to the story of our work community, and zoom out even further to the overarching story of God’s world. In the process we will learn qualitative research skills, receive an introduction to phenomenology (the philosophical study of lived experience), develop our own approach to praxis (that is, the craft of morally-oriented, theoretically-informed, and theory-generating critically reflective practice), and, most significantly, come to terms with who we are in what we do.

Dr. Gideon Strauss
ICSD 132501 / 232501 F22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MWS, MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

Transformative Teaching: The Role of a Christian Educator

Transformative Teaching is a course for instructional leaders as they consider their roles as Christian educators called to be transformers of society and culture by seeking justice 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?

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICSD 260006 F22*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

Biblical Foundations

What is the Bible? Is it a guidebook, a legal text, a book of poetry? The simple answer is that the Bible, in its entirety, is none of these. Perhaps, then, the better question is what can the Bible do? In this sense, while it's not a guidebook, it can guide us. That is, the Bible can help us reflect on our lives—our personal lives, our work lives, our church lives, etc.—and rouse a productive surprise. Such a productive surprise causes us to rethink our practices, opening up the possibility of doing things differently instead of unthinkingly pushing on ahead.

This course will explore the Bible by examining selections from across the canon, reading thought-provoking secondary sources and learning hermeneutical strategies along the way. We will read these selections with two competing emphases: consonance and dissonance. In terms of consonance, we will examine how the Bible is the story of God's presence in the world for and through his creatures. In terms of dissonance, we will examine how we cannot distill the Bible down to one single narrative. In this way, when we read Scripture, we must be open to being surprised. When we find ourselves surprised, we can respond to the call of surprise: to rethink our assumptions and think differently. Accordingly, our approach to reading Scripture, we will find, is the same as our approach to relating to Scripture in our various practices; responding to Scriptural surprise prompts us to follow the implications of that surprise into all aspects of our lives.

Dr. Nik Ansell, and Mark Standish
ICSD 1108AC/2108AC S22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MWS, MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 19, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*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 social and cultural contexts, racial justice, indigenous perspectives, human sexuality, and restorative practices and how these topics impact and form school and classroom cultures.

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

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

• 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 the community?

• How can school culture be a vehicle for social change?

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

Course Format

This course is an online course consisting of six synchronous discussions and ten weeks of asynchronous online interaction. Specifically, participants will:

• Write weekly reflective responses to the assigned readings (April 25 - June 30)

• Participate in ten weekly forum discussions (April 25 - June 30)

• Participate in six 3-hour online, interactive Zoom sessions (starting late in April and concluding in an intensive series of sessions on three consecutive days early in August)

• Zoom 1: Thursday, April 28

• Zoom 2: Thursday, May 19

• Zoom 3: Thursday, June 16

• Zoom 4: Tuesday, Aug. 9

• Zoom 5: Wednesday, Aug. 10

• Zoom 6: Thursday, Aug. 11

• Complete a project that applies their understanding of Cultivating Learning Communities of Grace (Final draft due September 2);

• Provide feedback on the projects of other course participants;

• Share their project with an authentic audience; and

• Post their project in an e-portfolio.

Dr. Edith van der Boom
ICSD 260008 S22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 19, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 2 or 3 of the CSTC

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

Leadership is not about personality, authority, position, influence, or power as such. Leadership is an art, a craft, a practice, to which everyone is called sometime or other, in widely different situations. Leadership 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. Leadership is the work of motivating a group of people to act in certain ways as they shape what they share.

In this course we will explore two kinds of leadership, positional leadership and contributory leadership, and two kinds of leadership practices, algorithmic leadership practices and heuristic leadership practices. Positional leadership is the kind of leadership that comes with a particular, recognized position in a group, and contributory leadership is the kind of leadership that you can contribute regardless of your position in a group. Algorithmic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals, and heuristic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are not (or not yet) clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals and that demand imaginative discernment. We will attend to leadership with regard to both making beneficial change happen and ensuring needed maintenance.

Participants in the course will read from a carefully curated selection of texts on the practice of leadership, will engage one another in asynchronous online forum discussions about their own leadership experiences in relation to these readings, will meet in a series of six synchronous online video sessions (starting late in April and concluding in an intensive series of sessions on three consecutive days early in August), and will draft and workshop two papers on topics selected from a set of options but all oriented towards the leadership practice and professional development of the participants. Participants are encouraged to take a complete break from coursework during the month of July. The course will conclude with each participant organizing and reflecting on a celebration of learning done in the company of their own confidantes.

Dr. Gideon Strauss
ICSD 132504/260003 S22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MWS, MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 19, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 2 or 4 of the CSTC

The Visible, the Invisible, and the Revealed: Phenomenology and Christianity

“Christian philosophy,” writes Jean-Luc Marion, “dies if it repeats, defends, and preserves something acquired that is already known, and remains alive only if it discovers what would remain hidden in philosophy without it.” Is “Christian philosophy” simply the practice of thinking, from a Christian perspective, about problems and data independently available to philosophical consideration? Or, as Marion claims, does Christian philosophy “invent…—in the sense of both discovering and constructing—heretofore unseen phenomena”? Guided by these basic questions, this seminar offers an advanced introduction to the phenomenology of religion, focusing especially on the unique and decisive contributions of Christian life to our understanding of the nature of human experience as explored in phenomenological description. We will explore philosophical innovations—such as love, faith, grace, Word, and incarnation—that a phenomenology of Christianity makes available to thought, as well as other philosophical themes—such as attention, embodiment, language, and community—that are enriched by the intersection of phenomenology and Christianity.

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt
ICS 153302 / 253302 S22

Intensive, June 13 - July 22, 2022

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10am - 12pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD) Syllabus

Enrolment Notes: To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register is June 15, 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.