It is award season! The Mythopoeic Society released its 2025 Awards shortlists earlier this year. While I had good intentions to read a lot more, there is only one category I was able to work through all of the finalists: the Inklings Studies scholarship award. This year’s slate of finalists was entirely Tolkien-focussed—four monograph (single-book) studies and a manuscript study. I have submitted my votes for the Inklings Studies Scholarship Award committee, but I have not heard the results yet. In this in-between moment, I decided to share my brief notes on each book—not full reviews, but something like a chatty “stub.”
For more information about the Mythopoeic Awards, visit the Awards section of the Mythopoeic Society website. The winners of this year’s awards will be announced at the Online Midsummer Seminar 2025, “More Perilous and Fair: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy,” which runs August 2-3, 2025, on Zoom and Discord.
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies: 2025 Finalists
Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Cartographies by Anahit Behrooz (2023)
From the book’s website:
“In this cutting-edge study of Tolkien’s most critically neglected maps, Anahit Behrooz examines how cartography has traditionally been bound up in facilitating power.”
This is quite a great description, actually—knowing that “maps” and “cartography” have more and less literal and metaphorical meanings in the study. And all to the good. I am a lover of maps and someone who has been toying with GIS-mapping for professional pleasure. Berhooz was able to bring me immediately “there” in their project. Maps really are “political” as they chart (see what I did there?) the ways that humans interact with the non-human (land, creatures, seas, skies, the cosmos etc.).
Mapping Middle-earth is a smart book that plays with mapping in all kinds of ways. The introduction and chapter one are some of the best things I’ve read. The book closes with a compelling reading on Tolkien, race, culture, and empire (which pairs well with Stuart’s volume on race and racism). I simply didn’t resonate with the middle chapters, but this could be my issue rather than a problem with the book. I have a love-hate relationship with the F-word in scholarship–Foucault–which is a critical part of chapter three. I’m not always fussy about the conversation partners (theorists) Berhooz uses, but I think it works well overall.
It is also worth noting that the “Bloomsbury Perspectives on Fantasy,” edited by Matthew Sangster and Dimitra Fimi, is becoming a globally leading series in the field.
Tolkien’s Transformative Women: Art in Triptych by Annie Brust (2024)
In Tolkien’s Transformative Women, Annie Brust is trying to invite us into a broader vision of Tolkien’s female characters in Middle-earth using an artistic lens. I am quite sympathetic with her project as I find Tolkien’s work quite visual (imagistic, well-woven, etc.), I like the characters as material for study, and gender questions are important to me.
Ultimately, though, I wasn’t sure what to do with this book, exactly. I quite like the way Brust invites us into her material, and her “Triptych” is an elegant structure for the book. Although I am certain that this is a book that took years of careful work to write and produce, I had trouble keeping it together as a whole and (I blush to say) I wanted “more.” While this book covers quite a few women characters, perhaps it needed fewer with a deeper look.
But that is to wish for a different book. I hesitate to say more because I feel like the book grows on me with use, but I was not allowed that time as the copy I got was borrowed on a limited time. Moreover, as I reread the Introduction I have on PDF, I look forward to spending more time here as a study, testing out the themes and arguments.
The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond(2024, 3 volumes)
I will say little right now about this volume as I am working on a larger post. That said, this beautiful 3-volume boxset was my favourite Christmas gift in the last few years.
As entire volumes are dedicated to Tolkien’s poetic works, it is not an exhaustive collection. The selection seems to me wise, careful, and illustrative of Tolkien’s poetic life and work. I used the volume for a careful look at Tolkien’s WWI-era period, including his first forays into verse, his growth and development as a student, his artistic fellowship (the TCBS), and his lifelong editorial and revision habits.
The Collected Poems is, in my view, the most important Tolkien legendarium literary event since The Collected Letters, The History of Middle-earth, and The Nature of Middle-earth. Scull and Hammond have done us a tremendous service—and did it well.
Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth by Robert Stuart (2022)
The description for this volume begins by claiming it is:
is the first systematic examination of how Tolkien understood racial issues, how race manifests in his oeuvre, and how race in Middle-earth, his imaginary realm, has been understood, criticized, and appropriated by others.
Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth is each of these things . . . but it is not the first of any of these claims. Scholars greater than I can tell you whether it is the first to bring these features together. However, for engaged readers, it is a quick-moving, informative, and theory-rooted study of these issues.
The advert for this book then says that the key question is this: “Was Tolkien racist?” Well, this is kind of nonsense. What Stuart does is present for us a careful argument that, given these definitions of race, racism, and racialization, these are the ways that Tolkien was a racist, a racialist, and a resistor of—or even a liberator from—the shackles that these social constructs place upon the racialized.
This volume was my least favourite to read—partly because of the way the material is presented but also because of the heart-stripping nature of the material. I think these are good kinds of studies, but to make “Is Tolkien a racist?” the question at the spearpoint of his study arrogates a kind of spiritual mastery that I cannot, myself, claim to have acquired. I will have more sympathy for studies like these when the author clearly acknowledges they are choosing their future regrets now and they cannot know the ways that they will be viewed as clearly “racist” or “racialist” in the future.
Still, because Stuart so thoroughly engages with the scholarly community, it is one of the most useful books for researchers to begin a study of the kind in race, culture, Indigenous studies, or political studies. Tolkien, Race, and Racism is the work of many years—well-researched and far more carefully written than the (invitingly) witty and occasionally (less-welcome) flippant tone belies. I like spreadsheet books like this one for reference, study, teaching, and provocation rather than sitting down and reading it cover-to-cover for enjoyment (as I did). Finally, Stuart’s self-introduction in the volume is important to remember.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics by Hamish Williams
Hamish Williams, a classics scholar and colleague in the faculty of the SPACE program at Signum University, has produced a thoughtful, well-written, and engaging linked-collection of essays, which could perhaps be called J.R.R.Tolkien’s Eutopianism and the Classics. Like Tolkien’s “eucatastrophe”—the good catastrophe—Williams plays with similar roots of the language to tease out ideas.
I quite enjoyed this intelligent, well-written study in overlapping areas of interest. Williams’ concern is the Greco-Roman corpus of classical literature as it potentially echoes, refigures, or otherwise appears in Tolkien’s work. There are three main movements in the volume:
1) Lapsarian Narratives: The Decline and Fall of Utopian Communities in Middle-earth
2) Hospitality Narratives: The Ideal of the Home in an Odyssean Hobbit
3) Sublime Narratives: Classical Transcendence in Nature and beyond in The Fellowship of the Ring
I resonated most with #2, which opened up a new depth of understanding in both The Hobbit and The Odyssey–though it was the chapter I was initially least interested in. I am hesitant to go all the way with Williams in #3–not because the books don’t share a sense of the transcendent/sublime–but I felt least certain of the pattern appearing in Hobbit and LotR.
This is an academic text that slips into humour from time to time—always a plus for me. There are some academic-y words that cracked my mental palate, but it is mostly accessible to folks with a general reading in the Greco-Roman classics and who love Tolkien’s texts.
It also pairs particularly well with Berhooz.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
I am at one of these professional moments where I am thinking about what I believe are, for me, the essential values, methods, and attitudes of an educator. My Teaching and Research Dossier is dozens of pages, but it is also a living document, always growing and moving. At the centre of this mammoth document is my Statement of Teaching Philosophy, which I am retooling now. As I read my own dossier, I see that I have some news that I had not shared with you, dear readers.
I won the Teacher of the Year award! This Hessian Teaching Award is of a different weight than the specialized teaching award from earlier this year, the MacLauchlan Prize for Effective Writing. Graciously provided by the Hessian family, the UPEI Faculty Association chooses research, service, and teaching awards–including one dedicated to sessional lectures (contract faculty, what you might call adjuncts).
I was pleased to be nominated and thrilled to win.
Apparantly, though, I wasn’t quite as motivated to share the story. This award is actually from the previous school year. If I could blame it on humility, I would. Rather, I’ve celebrated my other awards, like the Elizabeth R. Epperly Award for Outstanding Early Career Paper (see what I did there?). Somehow, though, after a wonderful evening with colleagues and friends–and a lovely spread of Prince Edward Island edibles–I kind of forgot about it.
So, here I am telling you all: I won one of the Prof of the Year awards last year!
While sharing this news is cool enough to warrant its own post, I thought I would also share excerpts from my Statement of Teaching Philosophy. The voice of this version is for a Canadian public university setting. I have left out some aspects of the Philosophy about which I am actively doing research and writing, such as Authentic Intelligence in the Age of AI (noted here), Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), Indegeneity and the University Curriculum, and much of what I would say about Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education, which I talked about last week. I have also left out references to most inside-voice dialogues within the schools I teach in, and added a few pics and links.
The Statement is a two-dimensional document meant to capture the three-dimensional reality of teaching. Still, I hope this gives a hint of what I am thinking about as someone who loves teaching and learning.
Best to all, Brenton
White Board from “The Fairy Story Lecture” by Brenton Dickieson
I love lecturing. The lecture-preparation process disciplines my mind to concentrate on the key elements of the lesson and the learning needs of the students. Even as doubts began to haunt my mind about the efficacy of “the lecture” as the prime meridian of higher education methodology, my relentless pursuit of innovating teaching methods worked to enhance, diversify, and fill out my lecturing style. All the while, though, my doubts increased.
And through it all, I could never shake the memory of a twenty-minute walk with a Newfoundland lad when I was an undergraduate student. In the summer before my senior year, I was part of a large team of students working in a small Newfoundland town. That summer, I was a guitarist in a music team, a camp counsellor, and youth teacher under the leadership of other students, the producer and lead writer of a twelve-episode children’s television series, Patches and Friends.
That summer, I met a ten-year-old camper whose home did not have electricity. He was crawling the walls at camp, so a director asked me to take him for a walk. Excited for the opportunity, he squeezed his shoes onto his feet, leaving the clay-caked laces to click along the deck boards. When we stopped at a picnic table, I decided to teach him how to tie his shoes. It only took twenty minutes, but no one had ever taken that time with him before. After that discovery of the essentials of human learning–relationships–why would I ever have confidence in a sole expert-at-the-front-disseminating-data model of an educator? It could be that the most intensive and effective educational moment of that boy’s life happened outside of the camp curriculum with a few moments of adult attention.
I have never thought that humans were disembodied minds needing a data update. Why would my teaching style treat them that way? Moreover, every one of my students is carrying around at least one all-the-information-in-the-world machine—a cell phone, tablet, or computer. So why would I prioritize data transfer as a teacher in the Age of AI?
I have come to believe that, contrary to what culture teaches us, the people I work with are not at heart analysts, teachers, researchers, workers, and students. People are primarily people. Students are not lines in a spreadsheet. They are not their student numbers. I have seen the limited results of treating workers and students as cogs in some social or institutional machine. Instead of continuing this modern fantasy of learning automation and social efficiency, I have come to believe that education is not an input:output data processing challenge. Education is an encounter with other human beings in the world. Education can only ever take place in the meaningful connections we have with one another.
Myriad experiences have confirmed my belief that, ultimately, teaching is student care. All aspects of scholarship begin with the respect I have for the dignity of individual students and an awareness of the deeply personal journey they are on.
The implications of this pedagogical starting point are intriguing. Indeed, this Statement of Teaching Philosophy is a brief mind map of the consequences of a student-centred approach to higher education. Seeing students as primarily people has provided opportunities for student care and collegiality that extend my work as a classroom teacher and allow me to learn from my students as we explore great and troubling questions together.
Curiosity about the human-learning process drives all of my teaching and research, my engagement with diverse kinds of students, and the traditional and innovative ways I design my curricula.
If teaching is student care, what do we do in the classroom?
I believe that University should be an encounter with ideas, tools for discovery, and other people. As an educator, I curate a classroom environment for transformational experiences. My key pedagogical frameworks keep moving out from this point. As educators talk about “flipping the classroom,” there is a battle in the world of pedagogy between philosophies of outcome-based education and student-centred approaches. There is also an emerging tension between the University as a protected space for critical inquiry and the University as a job preparation tool. I do not believe that these philosophies of education are either universally applicable or diametrically opposed. Different courses and programs will have different outcome requirements and explorative opportunities.
Out of both my pedagogical principles and my observations of the craft of teaching, I have discovered an Inquiry-based Learning in Higher Education (IBL-ED) approach, which I talked about in the chapter that I posted about last week. IBL-HE reorients the roles of “teacher” and “student” by fostering a curiosity mindset through interactive, collaborative, and supportive student-centred learning. In this approach, we provide students with the opportunity, tools, and support to pose their own research questions, design their research methodologies, determine the best ways to share their learning, and reflect on the learning process. We spend more time as teachers providing formative feedback, allowing us to teach “at the elbow,” resulting in greater differentiated learning opportunities in our increasingly diverse classrooms.
Discovering this framework was, for me, like seeing my philosophy of education captured in a Table of Contents.
I have worked hard to engender good student-teacher relationships by being awake to their ways of learning and place in life. With student experience at the centre of my teaching, I intentionally create an atmosphere of “critical empathy” in the classroom. Students are invited to ask any question, knowing they do so within an ongoing personal conversation with colleagues, with the professor, and with the material. The study of literature—reading texts together—is ideal for developing the twin skills of critical thinking and inquiry, and my approach to teaching religious studies and philosophy is also question-driven. We want to give our students the space to learn how to ask the right questions and think through the great problems of human experience.
Throughout the past two years, there has been a good deal of panic about GenAI and education. Instead of running from the question, we integrated the personal and professional questions of the cultural moment in a way that was relevant to our course goals: equipping students to think and write critically, holistically, and empathically by using the tools of informed inquiry. We engage with big questions like “What is AI?” and “Is AI Possible,” combined with technical writing and research tutorials and discussions like “Mis/Dis/Malinformation” or “Are They Lying to Me?”
“Critical Thinking” has become a bit of a buzz term. To disarm the entropic effect of an essential skill, we use curiosity, differentiated learning, and metacognition to help students think creatively and critically. We trust that thinking critically will follow, even without the trademarked capital letters.
Brenton Dickieson receiving the Hessian Award (2024)
There is a lot of discussion today about the university’s role in shaping students for their work-life. This is a discussion that I have been a part of in my role as a university teacher, government researcher and policy writer, and student vocational counsellor—and as a student for most of my adult life. We are in a time of great change as the university is being redefined and the global marketplace continues to evolve. This change has only increased as we have opened the “classroom” to digital spaces during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the emergence of GenAI.
As much as the world around is in a period of accelerated transition, students themselves are also in a period of vast changes and development—perhaps changing even faster than our hyper-speed culture. While a university education should excel at discipline-specific and interdisciplinary preparation, our teaching should meet students in the midst of their life journeys. The classical idea of vocation—a sense of calling—can inform our conversations with students as we create classroom space where they can explore who they are, where they fit in the world, and what roles they want to fulfill in personal, family, work, and community life.
It is, perhaps, easy to forget that university is “real life” to our students, not just a preparation for real life. Post-graduation employment, career development, and success in community leadership depend on the critical thinking, research and writing, oral communications, and literacy skills we provide them in the classroom. However, this happens not merely in the skills we teach, but in our ability to provide a context where students can consciously shape their learning towards becoming successful leaders in the workforce. I aim to effectively use curiosity-based approaches that are open to a wide variety of project outcomes, and to focus essential skills development in ways that are most effective for developing life-integrated competencies in leadership, communication, and critical thinking. From the very first day of class, I urge students to become pilots of their university experience by identifying the skills they are gaining and by seeking opportunities to enhance their education through work, research, and volunteering.
Thinking vocationally and methodologically, different courses and programs will have different outcome requirements and explorative opportunities. Indeed, a multi-modal approach to education adapts ongoing exploration of critical ideas with both the tools and methods available and the intention of shaping students to be workplace engaged. The goal is to create an interactive atmosphere that identifies the skills a student can achieve in the classroom while protecting that space for being curious, exploring ideas, curating self-understanding, and thinking critically.
Indeed, those things are precisely the kinds of identifiable skills that employers require. When we combine the ideas of critical inquiry and learning goals, we can facilitate a student experience that allows learners to shape their own educational encounters. This student-driven and multi-model approach is, I believe, in continuity with classic Liberal Arts education where discussions of literature, history, and culture make the humanities an exciting and broad arena of discovery.
Therefore, I do not feel like it is my job merely to impart knowledge. I do impart knowledge, of course, and my students sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexity of theoretical approaches, the breadth of ideas, or the depth of texts. But my key job is to impart enthusiasm, to excite the imagination, to awaken dreams, and to help students mine the great depths of the human story. Ideally, then, I do not teach classes; instead, I teach students, allowing them to shape their transformational experience as organically as possible while being true to the curriculum.
Besides the practical advantages of a student-centred, curiosity-driven model, IBL-HE gives educators a tremendous amount of space to focus on our teaching strengths while getting support for our weaknesses. I love doing lectures and coming up with innovative ways to share content. However, by creating a culture of openness within the classroom where students are safe to explore and share, I have seen exponential growth in possibilities for student learning.
Practically speaking, this philosophy of teaching means augmenting the lecture and discussion model I have inherited with other teaching methods. Education should be relevant, not just economically and vocationally, but also personally and culturally. I passionately believe that each coming generation—and the generations seem to shorten with time—is charged with the task of changing the world for the better. This seems like a grand statement, but each cohort of students really does stand on the edge of new worlds. The university is a place that shapes the potential of the generation that is before us.
Thus, I am constantly seeking to develop my teaching skills—whether I am providing feedback, developing systems of learning, mentoring students, or concentrating on certain ideas or skills. I demonstrate this by the numerous workshops and seminars I have attended or led. I also seek to expand students’ experience through a variety of teaching methods, including:
Teacher led-discussion
Professor or student debates
Journaling, quick writes, mind-mapping, and other kinds of student response
Team discussions and break-out group activities (often with a shared tablet, whiteboard, or poster-board paper and markers)
Moodle discussion groups, blogs, wikis, glossaries, and video presentations
Blogging and social media interaction (student and professor)
Video and media integration, including YouTube tutorials, lecture supplements, course teasers, and “What’s Ahead” video correspondence
Live-taped lectures in various settings to augment lecture ideas or stimulate discussion, such as Stonehenge, a monastery, a cemetery, etc.
Class dramatic readings, monologues, and student improvised skits
Close readings of texts, films, and artwork
Improvised lectures from outlines designed to be responsive to at-the-moment student needs
Various design tools: PowerPoint, Google Slides, Prezi, Coggle, Blackboard Collab, Canva
I have been working to provide certain students with an outline of the lecture so they can organize their thoughts and reduce anxiety
I purchased my own vibrantly coloured whiteboard markers to enrich my sketchy whiteboard markings
Thought-mapping, mind-mapping, and concept-map development as class exercises or material for lectures
Dozens of kinds of team-teaching
The use of various digital humanities tools, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), AI experiments, and Digital Text analyses
Poetic, fictional, and other arts-based responses
Online teaching enhances some of these methods, challenges others, and offers opportunities for refinement at every point. For me, the critical difference is intentionality: Is the online course intentionally designed for that medium, or are we doing remote emergency education?
In any setting, I continually seek to develop these methods and hone my skills as a communicator and facilitator of learning. As the ultimate goal is student engagement, I will experiment with almost any creative endeavour to draw the students into the material.
As an emerging scholar with significant experience, I am excited about the opportunities to integrate the oft-separated academic pillars of research, teaching, community outreach, and service. Any university education that does not weave those worlds together is, I think, missing the opportunity before them. My scholarship exists both in academic forums as well as in blogs, articles, editorials, interviews, guest lectures, and podcasts. In continuity with my philosophy of education, I have extended the classroom and the research process into the worlds of social media. I am actively engaged on social media, rooting the conversation to my popular blog on faith, fantasy, and fiction (www.aPilgrimInNarnia.com), and extending my work as host of the Maudcast: The Podcast of the L.M. Montgomery Institute.
Admittedly, not every classroom experiment works swimmingly. For example, I was recently doing a section on FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. FOMO is a recent, in-vogue social quality that is usually connected to social media. As the students are much more connected to the digital social moment, I gave my planned lecture time to the class to teach me and one another what they know. I assigned a brief reading and then divided them into breakout groups with some discussion questions. Perhaps it was because of the time of year, or because they only pretended to prepare for class, but as each group was working to present their findings to the class as a whole, it was clear that they were not thinking about FOMO with any clear social media connections.
What should I do in the moment of a failed teaching activity? I could address the lack of preparation, or give them guidance to get back on track. Instead, I decided to follow their lead—as had intended. What resulted was a meaningful conversation about what it has been like for them to be immersed in school—sometimes continents away from home—and miss that stage of family life or fall out of step with their best friends from high school. Because I am open to learning from my students, even when in doubt, the “lecture” time was more intimate and valuable than what I had in mind.
Being willing to be a relevant, student-centred teacher requires active, ongoing attention to their learning and an ability to adapt quickly to changing environments.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
I am pleased to announce that I have a new chapter out in a book on Teaching and Learning: “A Curious Synchronicity: Religious Studies as Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education,” pp. 232-249 in Applying Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education Across Disciplines, edited by Beth Archer-Kuhn, Stacey L. MacKinnon, and Natalie Beltrano in Cambridge Scholars Press, 2025. It is an academic book, so a little pricey. Thus, I would appreciate it if you could ask your local research university to purchase or otherwise make this text available for their libraries. Also, please share this note with anyone you think might be interested (like Religious Studies scholars, theologians, and curious teachers who love students). As regular readers know, I love teaching, and I have been enjoying researching the hows, whys, and wherefores of the craft (what we call pedagogy).
I’ll provide a little background about my own piece and an excerpt, including the Table of Contents. First, though, I wanted to talk about what we mean by Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education (IBL-HE).
Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education (IBL-HE)
Since 2015, I have been a core member of the University of Prince Edward Island Inquiry Studies team, led by Stacey L. Mackinnon. In this course, we work to reorient students’ understanding of their role by inviting them to be the pilots of their university (and lifelong) education. We do this by curating a curiosity-driven, student-centred, teacher-supported environment of collaboration and openness. Rather than being the experts in a discipline, we provide students with the frameworks and tools they need to see themselves in this new light.
Stacey MacKinnon and her University of Calgary colleague, Beth Archer-Kuhn, are the leading scholars in IBL-HE. In Reigniting Curiosity and Inquiry in Higher Education: A Realist’s Guide to Getting Started with Inquiry-Based Learning (2022), Stacey and Beth introduce the 8-fold structure of fundamentals in IBL-HE: 1) Fostering a Curiosity Mindset; 2) Being Student Driven; 3) Focusing on Collaboration; 4) Balancing Content and Process; 5) Scaffolding Choices; 6) Reflecting and Self-Reflecting; 7) Managing New Learning; and 8) Expecting to Learn from Students. Current cohorts of Inquiry Studies are receiving this training as part of an IBL research project where students choose their research question, develop a research plan and methodology, and even choose how to share their discoveries. I have included a more detailed description of the 8 Fundamentals at the bottom of this note
Around this concept, a number of scholars throughout the world have been experimenting with IBL in the university and college curriculum. Beth and Stacey decided to follow up their groundbreaking framework with a series of essays on these IBL-HE experiences across (and sometimes within seemingly odd combinations of) the various academic disciplines. Natalie Beltrano joined Beth and Stacey on the editorial team, the foreword is written by Peter Felton and Josh Caulkins, and other contributors include Oluwakemi Adebayo, Nadia Delanoy, Ryan Drew, Sahar Esmaeili, Noor Fatima, Cari Gulbrandsen, Lavender Xin Huang, Mohammad Keyhani, Erika Kustra, Robin Mueller, Rosemary Polegato, Tomas Shivolo, Charlene VanLeeuwen, Justine Wheeler, and yours truly, of course.
Here is the book’s abstract, and you can find a PDF of the forematter at the bottom of this post:
Applying Inquiry-Based Learning Across Disciplines in Higher Education(2025)
This dynamic collection of voices re-imagining and fostering curiosity, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking expands across Canada to include work from Namibia. From AI integration and digital literacy in professional programs of business and social work to music, social sciences, science, social psychology, and religious studies, this book showcases the many unique ways that Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) has transformed students into active investigators. Dive into chapters that explore communities of practice, student self and peer assessment, and navigation into real-world applications of IBL in public spaces, professional ethics and applications outside of academia. These real theories to practice stories, research-informed strategies, and transformative tools expand across disciplines. Perfect for new and experienced educators, facilitators, and academic leaders, this is your guide to student empowerment across higher education through self-directed learning that sticks. It’s not just about asking better questions, it’s about changing how we think, teach, and learn.
“A Curious Synchronicity: Religious Studies as Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education” by Brenton D.G. Dickieson
I had a lot of fun with this chapter. I wrote it in its very rough form in about a week during the summer of 2024–after a year or two of serious research and observation and while I was recovering from an illness. My chapter makes a good introduction to IBL-HE, but it also argues for the fundamentally interdisciplinary matrix of Religious Studies in public education (quoting myself):
Religion scholars—both at the whiteboard and the desk—can explore the great questions of the world using tools and approaches from anthropology, biology, cartography, dance, environmental sciences, fine arts, graphic design, history, Indigenous studies, journalism, kinesiology, linguistics, music, neuroscience, oriental studies, popular culture, quantum field theory, ritual studies, sociology, theatre, urban studies, Vedic textual criticism, writing, xenobiology, Yemeni political history, and Zoroastrian folklore. The core questions students can ask and the theoretical lenses they can apply are endless.
I spent a lot of time on that A-Z list! Here is an abstract of what I wrote in the chapter:
Public scholar, writer, and teacher Brenton Dickieson explores the transformative learning possibilities of an Inquiry-Based Learning in Higher Education (IBL-HE) model in the study of religion—from Atheism to Zen, from the Amish to Zoroastrianism. Classrooms become spaces where students investigate life’s big questions (“What is a human?”, “What do we mean by the Divine?”, “How do we know what we know?”) through their own cultural expressions and personal passions. Dickieson argues that teaching Religious Studies in a public university need not be about experts lecturing; it is collaborative storytelling where a documentary about Yakuza tattoo art, a Nigerian worship song, or curiosity about the weird and wonderful sparks discovery. Dickieson uses his “Japanese Religion and Culture” class at the University of Prince Edward Island to show that embracing discomfort in learning, recentring on student expertise, and providing intentional scaffolding—especially amid crises like strikes, storms, and plagues—makes learning deeper. Curiosity, not certainty—and wisdom rather than expertise—drives the inquiry journey when Religious Studies is taught in an IBL-HE.
I look forward to reading the other chapters in the volume, as I only read a couple of the other chapters in the editorial process. Let your local library know about this great new resource, but I can also provide more if you are interested (junkola[at]gmail[dot]com).
The 8 Fundamental Principles of IBL in HE
From MacKinnon & Archer-Kuhn, Reigniting Curiosity and Inquiry in Higher Education: A Realist’s Guide to Getting Started With Inquiry-Based Learning (2022)
FP 1: Fostering a Mindset of Curiosity – Modeling and encouraging a mindset of curiosity is key to making IBL-HE more than just a pedagogical tool, a classroom exercise, or a set of skills, but a way of thinking that can result in lifelong and life-wide learning for you and for students. As an instructor, let students see your enjoyment of exercising your curious mindset and inquiry skills so that a norm of valuing curiosity becomes the gold standard in your courses, in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Students need to hear and see curiosity from the instructor (and peers) and then practice or experience the validation of their curiosity themselves
FP 2: Being Student Driven – The best way to develop and strengthen students’ curiosity involves questions. Through the use of IBL-HE, students are encouraged, supported, and expected to pose their own inquiry questions, which they pursue throughout the course. They are supported by formative feedback from instructor and peers as the inquiry process unfolds. In an IBL-HE course students follow their own interests and pursue topics they want to learn more about.
FP 3: Focusing on Collaboration Not Competition – In an IBL course, the learning is not fully dependent, nor is it fully independent, but is interdependent (i.e., individual learning is enhanced and strengthened by the contribution of others, contributions the individual has the option to utilize or ignore as they see fit). When we emphasize collaboration (even on individual projects) and put the focus on the quality of learning rather than standing in the class, students are much more willing to offer their insights, consider the feedback of others as truly constructive, pose differing views, and engage in making the most of everyone’s learning, not just their own.
FP 4: Balancing Content and Process/Metacognition – Successful IBL-HE comes from a desire to not only have students learn facts but to think critically and creatively about the content and about the process of their own learning (i.e., metacognition). For the instructor, finding a balance between content understanding and metacognition is an important objective in an IBL-HE classroom. Students’ inquiry skills will allow them to determine what questions need to be asked and how to find the answers, consider multiple perspectives, and communicate their findings.
FP 5: Scaffolding, Choice, and Growth – There are many ways to include IBL in your practice (activity, course, program) and different levels of structure (structured, guided, open) you can choose from. It is fine to start just outside your comfort zone and grow your practice of IBL from there. Starting slowly is recommended. Some things will go smoothly, and others may not. Remaining reflective and using your own inquiry skills will help you to figure out how to support your students’ inquiry learning process. When you make your choices about the type of IBL-HE that you want to implement (structured, guided, open), you will also need to be mindful of the level of student support that is necessary within each IBL type. Remember, the instructor’s role in IBL-HE is a facilitator of student learning. The level of support is highest with structured IBL-HE and decreases progressively as you choose guided or open IBL. Introducing structured IBL-HE then means you are providing a significant amount of student support within a student-led inquiry learning process. This principle requires ongoing check-ins with students about their learning process.
FP 6: Reflection and Critical Reflection – Reflection is key for success, both for yourself and your students. Make note of what works and do it again. Reflect on why things did not go according to expectations, make some changes, and try again. Learn from your students’ reflections on their experience and consult them on ideas you are considering. Be explicit in asking which activities facilitated their learning and which did not, and why. Let them know that you adjust the course based on their feedback. IBL-HE requires more than simply reflecting on experience and behavior though. It necessitates students and instructors critically reflecting on all aspects of the inquiry journey from the creation of an inquiry question through to the effectiveness of different strategies for disseminating their findings to various audiences. Engaging in critical reflection helps us and our students refine our inquiry questions, identify and confront biases, consider causality, contrast theory with practice and identify systemic issues, key issues in creating a mindset of critical evaluation and enhancing the likelihood and quality of knowledge transfer.
FP 7: Embracing the Discomfort of New Learning – Implementing IBL-HE will likely raise the anxiety of some, if not all students initially (not to mention your own). They are being asked to trust a process that they very likely have not been exposed to in their educational career. As we know, new experiences can create anxiety. Although the level of student anxiety will vary, a handful of students experiencing a high level of anxiety, or even one or two, can heighten your own anxiety. How the instructor manages their own and their student’s anxiety will determine how the students’ progress. Transparency and modeling are important traits for the instructor. In terms of transparency, let students know what to expect, that this way of learning is new and different and will likely cause some initial anxiety. Modeling confidence in the process and trust in your student’s abilities will help to ease their and your own anxiety. After the first assessment and/or reflection tasks, students’ anxiety often decreases significantly. Think outside the box when considering how to help students embrace the discomfort of new learning by encouraging them to find support from varied sources: peers, instructors, research literature, and, when possible, community resources.
FP 8: Expecting To Learn From Your Students – Take every opportunity to learn from your students and make your classroom your own IBL project. Use what you are learning to customize the IBL-HE experience for each cohort, to plan for future cohorts, to test out new ideas, and to track your successes as well as your challenges. Remember that if you are doing inquiry well, finding answers will spur the next round of questions. IBL-HE is meant to be dynamic, so each experience brings you new insights, opportunities to try something different, and new questions to explore with your students. Whenever possible collect data on your students’ IBL-HE experiences and consider writing a SoTL paper or presentation to share what you’ve learned with others! Situating IBL in a postsecondary context provides an opportunity to examine its possibilities and implications for applied and nonapplied disciplines.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
Last week, I posted about this very cool talk that I get to do at Mythmoot XII. I am here now, actually, at the National Conference Centre in Leesburg, VA, and have already had dozens of great conversations.
In my everyday life at home, I have been doing a series of writing projects and teaching units on what I’m calling “Authentic Intelligence.” I know that the implications of our sudden leap into the Age of AI are hardly new. We have been reading and writing about the possibilities and implications of human-machine hybridity for generations. The loss of one’s humanity in one’s human activity is a theme that goes back to the ancients, including the Bible. I use the phrase “Authentic Intelligence” because rethinking “AI” from different angles helps me get to the fundamental human questions of science fiction.
Also, I continue to use the term “hnau” when envisioning our human being and doing in the future.
Before WWII, Lewis coined hnau to describe sapient, sentient, spiritually capacious, art- and artisan-making, storytelling, beings of whatever form. He wrote about a number of other kinds of human-like but not humanoid beings, like the Hrossa, Pfifltriggi, and Sorns. I have used Canva’s Magic and all of the possible prompts from Out of the Silent Planet to visualize those three flesh-bodied Hnau, and the results are not terribly satisfactory (I could not get the bot to understand the sinewy implications of life in 0.38g), but they are peculiar and alien and show me features I had never noticed before in the text.
I don’t know if Terrans are the only hnau created in the image of God, but we will, sooner or later, create beings in our own image. It is our human occupation to do so–babies, students, followers, parishioners, apprentices, and all the rest–and very soon, humanoid thinking machines not made out of meat. The way we relate to them will say a lot about what we think is fundamental to our society and race.
While rereading Harry Potter this past winter, I began to wonder if fantasy could contribute in some ways to my hnauological enquiry. Because I live with non-human animals, I know what to do with Fawkes the Phoenix in the series; but what do we do with the Fat Lady and Phineas Nigellus Black–who exist only in living portraits–or the Weasleys’ Ford Anglia–a machine with developing sentience and emotion–or the Goblet of Fire–a magical item manipulated in the way that we program computer technology.
I’m starting to think that Remus’ photo there was not taken with full consent. But it’s important to ask: Is Remus Lupin still human when he transforms? While one of the tensions in the series is the degree to which Goblins, Centaurs, and Merfolk are truly hnau, does the Ministry of Magic’s standardized testing make Trolls an intelligence baseline for sharing humanity? Perhaps the Owls and Cats of Hogwarts are merely superanimals, but what about Nigini, which inhabits the soul of Voldemort? Tom Riddle’s diary makes me wonder whether Voldemort’s flight from death is also a retreat from humanity. Does going beyond humanity make one superhuman or not a hnau at all.
That said, as is usual, I have prepared more than I can talk about. For example, I created a pleasingly narcissistic timeline of the Age of AI that won’t even get a mention:
I love timelines, as long as we don’t take them too seriously.
In any case, you have the link to the slides, and I look forward to seeing how this works in the room bright and early on the solstice, Saturday, Jun 21, 2025.
Being Hnau in the Age of AI: A View from Hogwarts by Brenton Dickieson
The move from the Information Age to something like the Age of AI has, like all fundamental cultural changes, caused us to reflect on what it means to be human. This is old turf for science fiction readers. While it might be a bit premature to make a survival kit out of Charles Stross’s 2005 exponential apocalypse, Accelerando, science fiction always asks fundamental human questions. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Promethean tale as much as it is an Edenic one, going to the core of what it means to be human. Frankenstein is about stealing fire from the gods and the fire that burns in the human soul.
Darko Suvin’s “cognitive estrangement” theory of science fiction argues that SF disturbs readers’ worldview, inviting them to turn a prophetic lens upon their own society. In the 1930s, three wise Malacandrian species cause C.S. Lewis’s hapless protagonist to face the folly of his Eurocentric colonial instincts and renegotiate his understanding of what it means to be human. Lewis coins the term hnau to describe sapient, sentient, spiritually capacious, art- and artisan-making, story-telling, beings of whatever form.
Though Suvin would resist the parallel, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “escape and recovery” in fairy stories has a similar effect. So, I turned to a fantasy world, Harry Potter, to think about the blurred edges of what it means to be hnau in the Age of AI. Although we have not yet seen humanlike Artificial Intelligence, we have begun interacting with AI bots and other sentient-like tools as if they were people—an anthropomorphizing instinct I call the “Wall-E Effect.” Like Lewis’s Malacandria, the Potterverse has other races of hnau, like centaurs or merpeople. But there is also a spectrum of magical somethings that show human-like sentience, from mandrake root or The Weasleys’ Ford Anglia all the way to the Sorting Hat and the paintings on Hogwart’s walls. Read as a recovery of cognitive estrangement, the Harry Potter chronicles offer guidance, warnings, and wisdom for human interaction in the Age of AI.
Notes: This abstract is slightly adapted already (I keep reworking it). I made the images with Canva, and took photos from Creative Commons as available.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
A technical note to readers: I have been banned from Facebook and Messenger–hopefully temporarily, as I am not guilty of espionage or whatever the issue is. If you are one of the more than 500 readers who use Facebook to get your news from A Pilgrim in Narnia, I would encourage you to sign up for Pilgrim Posts in your email box–at least until this is resolved. I’m always reachable at junkola[at]gmail[dot]com–though quite behind in correspondence, as I’ve talked about here and here.
I have been doing a series of writing projects and teaching units on what I’m calling “Authentic Intelligence.” See what I did there? Authentic Intelligence … AI.
Anyway, Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. While I don’t believe that we have AI–or, indeed, that it is possible–as folks in my world–writers, artists, teachers, content providers, designers, and the like–continue to process vocational crises, some more fundamental questions are starting to emerge.
I have confessed that as a science fiction nerd, I find little of this “sudden technological leap” we are experiencing surprising. I am frequently impatient with how slow our technologies are moving, but that might simply be my vice of impatience.
And the implications are hardly new. Honestly, we have been reading and writing about the possibilities and implications of human-machine hybridity for generations. The loss of one’s humanity in one’s human activity is a theme that goes back to the ancients, including the Bible.
Even culture-watchers who are not SF nerds should see the signs: In North America, we have bred functionalism into the DNA of our children; is it any surprise that when given the chance, students, politicians, and business people are apt to choose function over art, ethics, or identity? We left the path of wisdom some time ago when we decided that the heart of man was composed merely of walls, cavities, atriums, and valves.
I get why people are curious and afraid, I really do. I’m rereading Octavia Butler‘s Parable of the Sower (1993) right now, and it reads at points like a decades-old roadmap for our 2025 dystopia.
As I feel like I have been living through a series of technocultural, mediatized phallocracies, I find myself drawing away from culture. I use the phrase “Authentic Intelligence” because rethinking “AI” from different angles helps me get to the fundamental human questions of science fiction.
Also, I continue to use the term “hnau” when envisioning our human being and doing in the future. Before WWII, Lewis coined hnau to describe sapient, sentient, spiritually capacious, art- and artisan-making, storytelling, beings of whatever form. I don’t know if Terrans are the only hnau created in the image of God, but we will, sooner or later, create beings in our own image. The way we relate to them will say a lot about what we think is fundamental to our society and race.
Thus, I am looking to extend my understanding of hnauology in order to shape our evolving consciousness as a species.
While rereading Harry Potter this past winter, I began to wonder if fantasy could contribute in some ways to my hnauological enquiry.
Because I live with non-human animals, I know what to do with Fawkes the Phoenix in the series; but what do we do with the Fat Lady and Phineas Nigellus Black–who exist only in living portraits–or the Weasleys’ Ford Anglia–a machine with developing sentience and emotion–or the Goblet of Fire–a magical item manipulated in the way that we program computer technology. While one of the tensions in the series is the degree to which Goblins, Centaurs, and Merfolk are truly hnau, does the Ministry of Magic’s standardized testing make Trolls an intelligence baseline for sharing humanity? Perhaps the Owls and Cats of Hogwarts are merely superanimals, but what about Nigini, which inhabits the soul of Voldemort? Tom Riddle’s diary makes me wonder whether Voldemort’s flight from death is also a retreat from humanity. Does going beyond humanity make one superhuman or not a hnau at all.
I ended up sketching out so many questions and potential links that I decided I would take this inquiry public.
Mythmoot XII is June 19-22, 2025, at the National Conference Centre in Leesburg, VA. The theme, “Drawn to the Edge,” invited me to reflect on the boundaries of my hnauological sketches, so I decided to pitch my Harry Potter project, “Being Hnau in the Age of AI: A View from Hogwarts.” My accepted abstract is below with some links to relevant pieces, and I look forward to presenting some preliminary findings.
Mythmoot is always an excellent conference. You can register here for on-site registration–and for those not in the neighbourhood, the online version is called “MootHub” and is only $75.
Being Hnau in the Age of AI: A View from Hogwarts by Brenton Dickieson
The move from the Information Age to something like the Age of AI has, like all fundamental cultural changes, caused us to reflect on what it means to be human. This is old turf for science fiction readers. While it might be a bit premature to make a survival kit out of Charles Stross’s 2005 exponential apocalypse, Accelerando, science fiction always asks fundamental human questions. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Promethean tale as much as it is an Edenic one, going to the core of what it means to be human. Frankenstein is about stealing fire from the gods and the fire that burns in the human soul.
Darko Suvin’s “cognitive estrangement” theory of science fiction argues that SF disturbs readers’ worldview, inviting them to turn a prophetic lens upon their own society. In the 1930s, three wise Malacandrian species cause C.S. Lewis’s hapless protagonist to face the folly of his Eurocentric colonial instincts and renegotiate his understanding of what it means to be human. Lewis coins the term hnau to describe sapient, sentient, spiritually capacious, art- and artisan-making, story-telling, beings of whatever form.
Though Suvin would resist the parallel, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “escape and recovery” in fairy stories has a similar effect. So, I turned to a fantasy world, Harry Potter, to think about the blurred edges of what it means to be hnau in the Age of AI. Although we have not yet seen humanlike Artificial Intelligence, we have begun interacting with AI bots and other sentient-like tools as if they were people—an anthropomorphizing instinct I call the “Wall-E Effect.” Like Lewis’s Malacandria, the Potterverse has other races of hnau, like centaurs or merpeople. But there is also a spectrum of magical somethings that show human-like sentience, from mandrake root or The Weasleys’ Ford Anglia all the way to the Sorting Hat and the paintings on Hogwart’s walls. Read as a recovery of cognitive estrangement, the Harry Potter chronicles offer guidance, warnings, and wisdom for human interaction in the Age of AI.
Notes: This abstract is slightly adapted already (I keep reworking it). I made the “HNAU” banner and shield with Canva, with hilarious results, I think.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
