James W. Fraser

This document represents the final report of the Cheswick team, a cooperative effort among five team members, which stands now as a collective contribution. The team's hope is that this report will strengthen cooperative ventures in North American theological education. The structure of the report is as follows: Chapter I provides an introduction to the research methods and theoretical underpinnings of the study. Chapter II offers a brief overview of the evolution of cooperation in theological education. Special attention is given to the consortia movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter III describes the major findings that emerged from the questionnaire survey and the interviews conducted in the United States and Canada. It reports on the wide variety of cooperative undertakings which exists in theological education as it is practiced in the mid-1980s. Finally, Chapter IV concludes with recommendations based on the findings of the research. The appendices include the questionnaires and lists of persons interviewed.

Explores religion's historic and present-day role in American universities. Once the unifying center of American higher education, religion has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past 220 years. From its origins as the core of a unified understanding of truth as it was taught at the nation's first colleges to its current presence on the periphery of campus life, religion has both shaped and been shaped by the evolution of the American university. In Religion and the American University, James W. Fraser explores the complex relationship between faith and higher education. While many histories of higher education rarely focus on religion after the Civil War, and studies of religion often neglect its ties to academia, this book bridges the gap between the two histories, offering a richly detailed, chronological account of the shifting role of religion in American colleges and universities over more than two centuries. Through key institutional examples, Fraser illuminates how the place of religion evolved—from the dominance of Protestantism in the nineteenth century to the broad spectrum of faiths, spiritualities, and secular philosophies represented on campuses today. This compelling study examines how student-led organizations, chaplains, religious studies departments, and local communities have kept faith vibrant in academia despite its absence from the dominant university culture of the twenty-first century. Essential reading for educators, historians, faith leaders, and anyone interested in the intersection of faith and education, Religion and the American University offers a fresh perspective on why religion remains a vital and misunderstood aspect of campus life in the twenty-first century.

Is teaching for me? Who will I teach? How can I make a difference? Teach is a vibrant and engaging Introduction to Education textbook, organized around real questions students ask themselves and their professors as they consider a career in teaching. Using vivid and contemporary examples, veteran teacher educator James W. Fraser continually encourages readers to reflect on their experiences and engage in a dialogue about the most current issues in education. The thoroughly updated third edition includes fully rewritten chapters, including one discussing the current debates about classroom discussions of race and sexuality and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on schools and another on today’s newest technologies and their impact on teachers and schools. In each chapter, newly selected primary source readings provide students with the latest in education-related scholarship and integrates the intellectual foundations of education throughout each chapter, offering scholarly and current content in a student-friendly format. Features and updates include:• In a new, thoroughly revised and up-to-date but also much more compact version, the third edition of the popular Teach textbook for basic courses in a teacher education program invites aspiring teachers and the simply curious to ponder many of the most essential questions of what a career in teaching might look like in the next decades of the 21st century.• Up-to-date coverage of new legislation and school policies that impact teachers including debates about discussions on race and Critical Race Theory, sexuality and the importance of LGBTQ+ history and current rights that influence curricula, school policies, and teachers' free-speech rights, with particular emphasis on the declining role of the Common Core State Standards.• A completely rewritten Chapter 8 offers an up-to-the-minute overview of how technology can help improve and challenge teachers and teaching.• Features such as “Teachable Moment” and “Notes from the Field” encourage readers—through a variety of prompts and exercises—to reflect on their own educational experiences and goals, and challenge prospective teachers to imagine themselves in similar situations.• Short chapters and digestible sections provide an approach and format to reach students without compromising on high-quality content.• The concluding chapter explores the question, “Where do I go from here?” to help prospective teachers develop a plan for their career and design a personal philosophy to guide them. Teach presents an overview of the field in a way sure to keep students reading and gives those with questions about teaching the tools and information they need to continue a rich dialogue about their possible careers.

Is teaching for me? Who will I teach? How can I make a difference? Teach is a vibrant and engaging Introduction to Education textbook, organized around real questions students ask themselves and their professors as they consider a career in teaching. Using vivid and contemporary examples, veteran teacher educator James W. Fraser continually encourages readers to reflect on their experiences and engage in a dialogue about the most current issues in education. The thoroughly updated third edition includes fully rewritten chapters, including one discussing the current debates about classroom discussions of race and sexuality and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on schools and another on today’s newest technologies and their impact on teachers and schools. In each chapter, newly selected primary source readings provide students with the latest in education-related scholarship and integrates the intellectual foundations of education throughout each chapter, offering scholarly and current content in a student-friendly format. Features and updates include:• In a new, thoroughly revised and up-to-date but also much more compact version, the third edition of the popular Teach textbook for basic courses in a teacher education program invites aspiring teachers and the simply curious to ponder many of the most essential questions of what a career in teaching might look like in the next decades of the 21st century.• Up-to-date coverage of new legislation and school policies that impact teachers including debates about discussions on race and Critical Race Theory, sexuality and the importance of LGBTQ+ history and current rights that influence curricula, school policies, and teachers' free-speech rights, with particular emphasis on the declining role of the Common Core State Standards.• A completely rewritten Chapter 8 offers an up-to-the-minute overview of how technology can help improve and challenge teachers and teaching.• Features such as “Teachable Moment” and “Notes from the Field” encourage readers—through a variety of prompts and exercises—to reflect on their own educational experiences and goals, and challenge prospective teachers to imagine themselves in similar situations.• Short chapters and digestible sections provide an approach and format to reach students without compromising on high-quality content.• The concluding chapter explores the question, “Where do I go from here?” to help prospective teachers develop a plan for their career and design a personal philosophy to guide them. Teach presents an overview of the field in a way sure to keep students reading and gives those with questions about teaching the tools and information they need to continue a rich dialogue about their possible careers.

Teacher education in America has changed dramatically in the past thirty years—with major implications for how our kids are taught. As recently as 1990, if a person wanted to become a public school teacher in the United States, he or she needed to attend an accredited university education program. Less than three decades later, the variety of routes into teaching is staggering. In Teaching Teachers, education historians James W. Fraser and Lauren Lefty look at these alternative programs through the lens of the past. Fraser and Lefty explain how, beginning in 1986, an extraordinary range of new teaching programs emerged, most of which moved teacher education out of universities. In some school districts and charter schools, superintendents started their own teacher preparation programs—sometimes in conjunction with universities, sometimes not. Other teacher educators designed blended programs, creating collaboration between university teacher education programs and other parts of the university, linking with school districts and independent providers, and creating a range of novel options. Fraser and Lefty argue that three factors help explain this dramatic shift in how teachers are trained: an ethos that market forces were the solution to social problems; long-term dissatisfaction with the inadequacies of university-based teacher education; and the frustration of school superintendents with teachers themselves, who can seem both underprepared and too quick to challenge established policy. Surveying which programs are effective and which are not, this book also examines the impact of for-profit teacher training in the classroom. Casting light on the historical and social forces that led to the sea change in the ways American teachers are prepared, Teaching Teachers is a substantial and unbiased history of a controversial topic.

Today, the ongoing controversy about the place-or lack of place-of religion in public schools is a burning issue in the United States. Prayer at football games, creationism in the classroom, the teaching of religion and morals, and public funding for private religious schools are just a few of the subjects over which people are skirmishing. In Between Church and State, historian and pastor James W. Fraser shows that these battles have been going on for as long as there have been public schools and argues there has never been any consensus about what the "separation of church and state" means for American society or about the proper relationship between religion and public education. Looking at the difficult question of how private issues of faith can be reconciled with the very public nature of schooling, Fraser's classic book paints a complex picture of how a multicultural society struggles to take the deep commitments of people of faith into account-including people of many different faiths and no faith. In this fully updated second edition, Fraser tackles the culture wars, adding fresh material on current battles over public funding for private religious schools. He also addresses the development of the long-simmering evolution-creationism debate and explores the tensions surrounding a discussion of religion and the accommodation of an increasingly religiously diverse American student body. Between Church and State includes new scholarship on the role of Roger Williams and William Penn in developing early American conceptions of religious liberty. It traces the modern expansion of Catholic parochial schools and closely examines the passage of the First Amendment, changes in American Indian tribal education, the place of religion in Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois's debates about African American schooling, and the rapid growth of Jewish day schools among a community previously known for its deep commitment to secular public education.

The preparation of America's teachers is among the foremost issues facing education in the United States today. In this compelling account, James W. Fraser, an eminent historian of education, takes readers through two centuries of teacher preparation to uncover its development from colonial times to current standards-based models. Fraser examines a broad array of institutional arrangements, such as more familiar ""normal schools"" and less well-known arrangements, including teacher institutes and high school programs in rapidly expanding cities, segregated communities, rural areas, and Indian reservations. For any reader wishing to understand how to prepare teachers and reform schools, Fraser's incisive survey provides much-needed historical grounding.

This book is a result of a ten-year-long program sponsored by Lilly Endowment, Inc. through Auburn Theological Seminary in New York to study the history of various phases of theological education in the United States. It presents the major themes involved in the development of Protestant theological education in the U. S. between 1740 and 1875. It was during these years that most of the institutional structure of contemporary theological education was built. This study of the schooling of the preachers focuses on six major changes or crises in these institutions. This text presents a selection of examples which describe the general pattern of development in the institutions, formal and informal, devoted to the training of future ministers.