JESU/EDUC 7158 - Jesuit Pedagogy
This three-credit, graduate-level online course examines the distinctiveness of the Jesuits’ approaches to teaching and of their philosophy of education that have propelled their schools to unprecedented success over the centuries.
Course Summary
One key to the unprecedented success of Jesuit education has been the tension between the recognizable mark of uniformity that long distinguished the methods, content, and practices of Jesuit schools and their ability to adapt to different contexts and times. Both aspects—the uniformity and the adaptability—were explicitly supported by the Ratio studiorum, the Jesuits’ foundational plan of studies issued in 1599, which, despite the schools’ many variations and complexities, has retained some influence over time. With the Ratio discarded, Jesuit schools had to clarify what made them distinctively Jesuit, reconciling their mission with the contemporary world. This three-credit, graduate-level class sketches the developments of Jesuit educational endeavors by focusing on both the permanent and changing traits of its distinctive pedagogy.
About the Instructor
Cristiano Casalini, Ph.D.
Research Scholar of the Institute
Cristiano Casalini, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Endowed Chair in Jesuit Pedagogy and Educational History, and a Research Scholar with the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. He teaches History of Jesuit Pedagogy, Social Justice in Jesuit Contexts, and Philosophy of Education. Casalini’s field of research is mainly early modern education and especially Jesuit education. He has worked on critical texts and commentaries of 16th and 17th century classics of education, especially in and around the Jesuit order. He is currently working of editing educational writings and documents as produced by Jesuit during the early modern period. He recently edited a collective volume on Jesuit Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity (Leiden-Boston, 2019). He also provided with Claude Pavur the first volume of a series devoted to the history of Jesuit pedagogy, entitled Jesuit Pedagogy. A Reader (1540–1616) (Boston: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2016). He also wrote a book on the Cursus Conimbricensis and the education at the Jesuit college of Coimbra (Rome: Anicia, 2012; and, in Portuguese, Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2015; in English, New York: Routledge, 2017), which was awarded with the Prémio Joaquím de Carvalho, 2016. Casalini serves as editor-in-chief of a series published by Brill on History of Early Modern Educational Thought.