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THE DISRUPT-REFLECT-LEARN CYCLE: HOW RESILIENCE WORKS WITH REFLECTIVE PRACTICE TO SUSTAIN INTER-RELIGIOUS LEARNING A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of Claremont School of Theology In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by Stephanie Vamon-Hughes May 2015 ©2015 Stephanie Lorraine Varnon-Hughes ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This dissertation completed by Stephanie Varnon-Hughes has been presented to and accepted by the faculty of Claremont School of Theology in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Doctor of Philosophy Faculty Committee Najeeba Syeed, Chairperson Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook Frank Rogers, Jr. Dean of the Faculty Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook ABSTRACT THE DISRUPT-REFLECT-LEARN CYCLE: HOW RESILIENCE WORKS WITH REFLECTIVE PRACTICE TO SUSTAIN INTER-RELIGIOUS LEARNING by Stephanie Varnon-Hughes All forms of education necessarily invoke and address disequilibrium as it precedes learning. Inter-religious education in particular deliberately sets out to invoke encounter with something new—the very “inter” as prefix points to a plurality of viewpoints: perspectives will be raised amongst, between, or against others. Sometimes, the encounters are fraught with surprise, discomfort, or unexpected angst; at other times, the encounters provide a bas-relief for deeper or renewed understanding of one or both perspectives. For these reasons, the process of inter-religious education demands that we be mindful about needs of students encountering alterity. This study posits that resiliency and reflective practice are essential for inter religious learning and aims to determine if these are indeed key ingredients, and to what degree they are necessary (or not). Previous research on resiliency has focused on children and young adults in therapeutic and school settings; some research has included belonging to a faith community as one factor in resiliency, but no one has connected resiliency as a trait that makes inter-religious learning more fruitful. Previous research on reflective practice has focused on the facilitator, not the student. In religious education, reflective practice is an ingredient of spiritual development, but no one has yet aimed to discover how reflective practice influences inter-religious learners. Because this study seeks to understand if and how certain capacities for learning are fostered in inter-religious educational settings, and in an emerging field, from practitioners who themselves have both contributed to a new field and spent a great deal of time reflecting on their work, grounded theory provides a phenomenological method to query those concepts allowing question and answering to resonate with one another. In two stages of interviews, open-ended questions are used to first elicit responses from ten professors and facilitators in inter-religious educational settings about their ideas, reactions, concerns, and practices, and then to explore whether and when these specific competencies arise in their settings. Then, “artifacts” of inter-religious education are examined, including syllabi, course and program descriptions, and institutional and organizational mission statements, to help build a thick understanding of how these competencies potentially emerge and engage inter-religious education. Finally, a survey of an even wider field of instructors, facilitators, and practitioners is conducted to confirm or validate conceptualizations of these competencies. The intuitive inquiry cycle is used to analyze data information. As inter-religious education and dialogue can be discomfiting and transformative, it is likely that connecting resiliency and reflective practice to inter-religious education will benefit instructors, practitioners, colleges, seminaries, and programs that seek to develop and foster interfaith education and initiatives. This research is a starting point for considering how inter-religious educators can best facilitate spaces, methods, and encounters that lead to the kind of personal and community transformation inter-religious education makes possible. V DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to Mrs. Ann Johnson, my teacher for fourth grade, seventh grade, and many after-school and summer school arts programs. For years, Mrs. Johnson commented generously and extensively on many of my stories and poems; she was this writer’s first reader. Mrs. Johnson took time to hear me recite poetry, to give me extra books to read, to encourage my writing, and she treated me like a real author. I decided long ago that when I wrote my first book, I would dedicate it to her. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction 1 Background 1 Statement of the Problem 3 Significance of the Study 4 Research Question 8 Defining “Inter-Religious Education” 9 Research Design, Qualitative Research, Data Collection and Analysis 17 Limitations 21 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW: A STORY OF THE FIELD 23 Prelude: Dissonance Defined, or: Why Inter-Religious Students Might Need to be Resilient 24 Beginning: Resilience, Reflective Practice, and Religious Education 25 Middle: Narrative Pedagogies, Religion as Resource 49 End: Why This Research, and Why Now 54 CHAPTER 3: EXPLORING REFLECTIVE PRACTICE AS A CAPACITY FOR INTER-RELIGIOUS LEARNING 56 Introduction 56 Reflective Practice: From Schon’s Professionals to Transformative Classrooms 57 Current Applications of Reflective Practice 61 Analysis of Reflective Practice in Teaching: The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes 65 Is Reflective Practice Essential for Inter-Religious Learning? 75 CHAPTER 4: EXPLORING RESILIENCE AS A CAPACITY FOR INTER-RELIGIOUS LEARNING 83 Introduction 83 From Vulnerable to Invulnerable: Moving from Negative to Positive Attributes in Children in Resilience Research 85 Facets of Resilience Research: Competence, Coping, and Community 88 Competence and Coping: Focus on the Negative, Focus on Individuals 88 “Person-Environment Interactions:” How Relationships and Community Support Resilience and Lessons for Interfaith Learning 95 Religion and Resilience? Current Research on Possible Links vii and Limitations 97 Limitations of Applying Resilience to Inter-Religious Education, and Further Questions 98 CHAPTER 5: METHODOLOGY 103 Introduction 103 Research Design 103 Qualitative Research 105 Methodology 110 Grounded Theory 111 Role of Researcher and Philosophical Sensitivity 112 Theoretical Sensitivity 113 Context of the Study 114 Population 115 Sampling 116 Operationalization 118 Purposive and Theoretical Sampling 118 Data Collection 121 Interviews 121 Data Analysis and Researcher Interaction with the Data 125 CHAPTER 6: RESEARCH FINDINGS 129 Introduction 129 Purpose Statement, Methodology, Sample 129 Interview Participants and Methods 131 Data Emerged and Confirmed 133 Data Analysis 139 Patterns and Themes of Significance 155 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSION, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 167 Introduction 167 Results 167 Knowledge, Attributes, Postures, and Traits in Transformative Inter-Religious Learning 168 Artifacts as Evidence and Echo 172 Limitations of the Study 174 A Grounded Theory of How Resilience and Reflective Practice Work Together to Sustain Inter-Religious Learning 174 Contributions of the Research 175 Recommendations 17 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 180 APPENDIX A.l: IRB Proposal 184 viii APPENDIX A.2: Institutional Review Board Proposal 196 APPENDIX A.3: Certification of Researcher’s CITI Completion 199 APPENDIX A.4: General Information on the Research Project 200 APPENDIX A.5: Agreement with Transcription Service 206 APPENDIX B: IRB Approval 213 APPENDIX C: Informed Consent Form 214 APPENDIX D: Interview Invitation and Research Summary 219 APPENDIX E: Interview Process, First Interviews 221 APPENDIX F: Interview Process, Second Interviews 223 APPENDIX G.l: Invitation to Potential Survey Participants 224 APPENDIX G.2: Follow-up Invitation to Potential Survey Participants 225 APPENDIX G.3: Survey Instrument Questions and Results 226 APPENDIX H: Field Notes 230 APPENDIX I: Code Categories and Frequencies 235 APPENDIX J: Index of Artifacts 236 APPENDIX K: Table of Themes from Artifacts 238