You Are Here: Practicing a Hermeneutic Process in Interfaith Learning

Teaching students a hermeneutic process can help them connect what they learn in interreligious and interfaith studies to their lives outside the classroom. The process begins by acknowledging each student’s unique starting point, and then moves through five further steps: first responses to what I’m encountering, self-reflection on those responses, understanding (including listening with empathy and asking with curiosity), reflection on what I’ve learned, and deciding what’s next. Students engage case studies by writing about their first responses and self-reflections on those responses; then, after applying an analytical template and practicing media-literacy skills to research the issues involved, students articulate how and why their minds have changed and how they’d approach a similar case if they encountered it in daily life. The process aims to foster an inclusive environment and help students practice intellectual virtues and metacognition, and students often report using it beyond the course.