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Curriculum

Practice and local context stand at the heart of our educational curriculum. Each curriculum we design shares a commitment to the idea that practices shape who we are (individually and collectively) and are central to the formation of the systems and structures we create. Hence, we take communities of practice to be essential for the growth, development, and transformation of persons and institutions.
With a focus on accessible, popular modes of co-learning centered on local communities, our curricula aim to foster active learning and learning for action in collaboration and solidarity that draws on the riches of the diversities, assets, knowledges, and needs of those engaged. Transformation for flourishing and life abundant, we believe, proceeds through participatory learning in research and action.
black mountain school curriculum

curriculum

Our curriculum follows an iterative rhythm of listening & learning, collective and faithful theological discernment, and shared action.

This process adheres to the highly efficacious pattern of action research for social justice honed in social movements, broad-based community organizing, and emancipatory action research. Our curricular sources include:

The intentional listening and researching tools of broad-based community organizing

The pedagogies of inclusion and collaboration that inform popular education

The rigorous methods of analysis and representation developed in qualitative/action research disciplines

Interwoven with each of these elements is our reliance on critical theology. A theological perspective that is both self-reflexive and attentive to the structures of violence and oppression, it also unabashedly affirms the role that faith and spirituality can play in the construction of peaceful and just communities.

To this extent, we integrate theological logics and practices in every stage of what becomes a theological action research process.

Listening and learning become expressions of collective prayer and the spiritual reading of (con)texts. Discernment that translates learning into action is not only the product of qualitative analysis, but also Ignatian tools of spiritual reflection that shape analysis.

Actions of community building are informed by a theology of witness that names faithful action as an inalienable element of spiritual reflection moving in concert with God’s own action to restore and heal humanity and creation.

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