Almost five years since the first COVID-19 lockdown, tension and anxiety persist in the practice of online learning, including online theological education. Members of the learning community are overwhelmed with this ever-changing learning shift born from a traumatic historical event overlapping with other social endemics. However, recent research suggests that the pandemic brought positive changes to education, generating hope and creativity amid trauma through relationship-building and meaning-making in learning communities. The connection, communication, and innovation which online learning affords has been used to see and seek hope amid trauma, prompting alternative ways of being in community that align with values of the Christian faith such as justice and dignity of all persons. This paper explores a trauma-informed critical pedagogy as an adaptive challenge in online theological education. The digital component is not primarily concerned with the latest technology and learning tools; rather this approach centers on how the learning experience resonates in learners’ bodies in all modalities, especially raced and gendered bodies who bear the disproportionate impacts of this syndemic reality.
I begin by establishing a foundation of intersectional critical pedagogy. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and related texts present an alternative to the banking model of education where the instructor is the sole arbiter of knowledge and deposits said knowledge into students. Freire offers a problem-posing model characterized by dialogue and praxis that leads to conscientization, or social consciousness. It is with this awareness that the oppressed learn to read and respond to the world around them, thus resisting the dehumanization of oppression. Building upon Freire’s foundation, the work of bell hooks is also essential as she offers critical intersectional analysis, discussing the impact of race, gender, and class on the teaching and learning process.
The second part explores the pandemic positives identified in K-12 and higher education that demonstrate potential for a transformative educational experience amid trauma. The data from the surveys and stories collected form models that can be applied to theological education. To support this, I engage the contributions of Mary Hess who, since 2005, has investigated the relationships between technology and theological education. Her work continues as she explores ways to address racism and use digital storytelling to heal from the trauma of multiple, overlapping pandemics.
To conclude, I reflect on how I incorporated this pedagogical approach to two hybrid-synchronous courses: one as a TA in a one-week intensive course on educating Christians for social change and the other as the primary instructor with an Educational Assistant for a semester-long course for first-year seminarians on baptism, Eucharist, and ministry. Both collaborative learning experiences were with women-identifying teaching partners and our embodiment informed how we engaged the content of the courses, our students, and each other. What resulted was a liberative learning environment for instructors and students alike as they were encouraged and supported to bring their context into the classroom, no matter their modality, allowing for a grounded, responsive, and empowering learning experience.
This paper explores a trauma-informed critical pedagogy as an adaptive challenge in online theological education. The digital component is not primarily concerned with the latest technology and learning tools; rather this approach centers on how the learning experience resonates in learners’ bodies in all modalities, especially raced and gendered bodies who bear the disproportionate impacts of this syndemic reality, implicated in multiple, overlapping pandemics. I begin by establishing a foundation of intersectional critical pedagogy using the work of Paulo Freire and bell hooks. I then explore the pandemic positives that have been identified in K-12 and higher education research that can be applied to online theological education. To conclude, I reflect on how I incorporated this pedagogical approach to two hybrid-synchronous courses with women-identifying teaching partners. The resulting learning experiences were empowering for instructors and students alike as they centered context and community.