Dr Carissa Sharp
As our Cross-Training in Psychology for Theologians project is drawing to a close, we thought it would be fitting to end with a look back on the past few years, and reflect on the successes and lessons we have learned from running a cross-disciplinary training programme. While this post is about this programme in particular, we hope that our experiences will be relevant for anyone embarking on engagement with new disciplines from their own.
Goal: Researcher Capacity Building
It would probably be helpful to start with the context of the “Big question” we set out to answer in our grant application: “How can we better equip theologians to conduct science-based theology research, and ensure that contemporary theology engages with and is informed by the latest psychological research, concepts and theories?” One of the goals that we wanted to achieve was to build researcher capacity – that is, to train theologians to do this kind of work. To do this, we funded 30 cross-training fellowships, across 2 cohorts based around different themes: 1) “how humans conceive of and think about divine realities,”; and 2) “the relationship between religion and human flourishing in social relationships.” The fellowships involved training in psychology as well as the practical experience of conducting a small grant project (of up to £20K) on a topic of their choice.
We wanted to build a community of science-engaged theologians who will be able to work independently and collaboratively to undertake new research in psychology-engaged theology, but there was no extant “formal” curriculum for this kind of cross-training. With this in mind, we developed the programme, planning for an iterative development of best-practice insights, allowing us to refine our materials and approach along the way. This means that the Fellows (and the psychologist mentors we paired them with) have been crucial in the development of the programme and the learning process.
The fellowships were necessarily quite intensive, with more “formal” and “informal” elements, as we wanted to make sure that, by the end of them, people felt equipped to continue to do this research themselves. We ran an initial, 2-week residential workshop that was designed to give a “crash course” in psychology, psychology of religion, and science-engaged theology.. We also ran 12x virtual workshops which were responsive to desires of the Fellows, and included topics like: survey design, reading a psychology article results section, and a deep-dive into qualitative methods.
The “informal” side of the training was just as important. It included mentoring from the project team and the Fellow’s psychologist mentor (who was paired with them based on having expertise in the subject of their small grant project). This mentoring included helping with designing the project for their grant proposal, advice on the “psychological” side of the research they were conducting, and troubleshooting any issues that arose over the course of the project. Another crucial element of the “informal” training was peer support. The 2nd residential workshop focused on troubleshooting/getting feedback from the project team, but especially from peers. Furthermore, because of the intensive residential workshop at the beginning of the Fellowship, and the continual engagement through virtual workshops, the cohorts developed social relationships and would often engage informally via email and WhatsApp groups to support each other through the research process
Successes:
The cross-training programme has been incredibly successful, and includes:
- 30 successfully completed fellowships
- Development of mentoring and peer relationships
- A suite of academic dissemination including publications and conference presentations
- An impressive list of public-facing dissemination
- Development of new research directions/projects/career paths
Lessons learned:
You don’t have to become a psychologist (you can keep your identity)! One of the things that we were careful to emphasize from the very beginning of the programme was that we were not trying to turn our theologian Fellows into psychologists. This was a cross-training programme, but not one that meant people had to “change” their identity. We just wanted to give people the skills to engage with psychology in a meaningful way in their research. This seemed to alleviate some of the hesitation/tension people had in terms of the cross-training.
There is no one “correct” way to do psychology-engaged theology (or interdisciplinary research in general). Something that became very apparent over the course of the programme was that there are many different ways in which people might conduct cross-disciplinary or interdisciplinary research. Some of our Fellows were interested in incorporating qualitative or quantitative psychological methods into their research, and others were more interested in engagement on a theoretical level. What was important to acknowledge is that any of these different models are still psychology-engaged theology, they just look a bit different!
Psychology-engaged theology projects can be the first step in a new line of research (OR it can be the next step in an existing one). Relatedly, just because you’re doing cross- or inter-disciplinary research doesn’t mean that you have to tackle entirely new topics. There may be fruitful work to be done within the topics that you are already familiar with, or you might feel inspired to do something entirely new.
You don’t have to learn how to use statistics or engage in empirical research to do psychology-engaged theology. Following on from this, one of the biggest “blocks” that many of our Fellows had when engaging with psychological literature and methods was statistics. But it’s not necessary to become a statistician in order to engage with psychological research! And given the collaborative nature of much psychological research, it is often possible to team up with other scholars who are interested/skilled in empirical research, if that is something you’re interested in pursuing.
BUT: trying out new research methods/styles of presentation can be generative. I lost count of the number of conversations I had with Fellows where engaging with a new kind of research method or style of presentation (e.g., posters) was generative for them. Sometimes this was just adding a new “weapon” to their arsenal of research methods, sometimes it was realizing they were more comfortable with something than they realized, and sometimes it generated deep reflection and/or critique of the “standard” way of doing things.
Leave competition at the door. One thing that became apparent in running this programme was that people necessarily worked at different paces when conducting their small grant projects. Some people were able to make very quick progress because they had some relevant background or experience in doing this kind of work. Others needed to negotiate using new theories and/or methods for the first time. Some of our fellows who were conducting empirical research for the first time discovered that their institutions weren’t set up with ethical review boards and needed to find work-arounds to ensure that they had ethical approval for their work. These kinds of frustrations can be demoralizing when comparing your progress to that of someone who has not had to face those kinds of challenges, so best not to make comparisons.
Be patient with yourself and trust your own expertise. I have frequently said that I felt as if my role as PI and “supplemental” mentor to all of the Fellows was most often that of being a cheerleader. I very often had conversations where people were feeling overwhelmed or frustrated or out of their depth, and I just needed to encourage them to trust themselves and their expertise, and to continue moving forward. Sitting with those kinds of feelings and working through them can make the experience more rewarding, but can also lead to new insights that can only be found from existing in this “liminal” space between and within disciplines.
Mentoring is particularly helpful when starting to engage in cross-disciplinary research. Relatedly, having a mentor who can help to guide you through a new (to you) discipline’s expectations, norms, and quirks can be extremely helpful. Mentors can help with providing advice on sources, troubleshooting issues (e.g., with participant recruitment, survey design, etc.), and putting into perspective whether a problem you’ve encountered is catastrophic or just frustrating (one of my favorite examples of this was a case where data collection didn’t work out as planned, and both myself and the Fellow’s mentor’s response was “oh, that’s a bummer, but these things happen”).
There may be different kinds of audiences or publication venues you want to target (and different expectations of that writing). One thing to be aware of early on is that, because you may be venturing into new types of research, you may find that there are different audiences or publication venues that you will want to engage with. These may have different kinds of expectations in terms of what that dissemination looks like (e.g., the very structured nature of a psychology journal article), so being aware of where/how you might want to publish beforehand can save you some frustration later on.
It’s ok to have fun!! And possibly the most important lesson of all is that it’s ok to have fun! We can get so caught up in the importance of our research, and in needing to build up our CVs that we can overlook the fun of research and of being part of a research community. Being curious and engaging in new lines of research can be incredibly enjoyable, particularly when supported by a community of peers, and the aspect of this experience that has made it particularly rewarding for me is the friendships and community that we have built together.
Conclusion
When we developed our programme, there wasn’t a set template for us to follow. We knew the kinds of things that would be important to cover with regards to training in psychology, and we were confident that giving our fellows the chance to run their own research project would be a good way for people to build their knowledge, skills, and confidence in psychology-engaged theology. However, what we couldn’t predict is what our Fellows would “bring to the table” – their background knowledge of psychology, their particular interests in terms of subject matter and methodology, and how they navigated the intersection of psychology and theology. This is one of the aspects that made our programme so exciting and rewarding – seeing the many different “flavours” of psychology-engaged theology that our Fellows developed.
Thanks
I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of making this cross-training programme a success, including the project team, our Fellows, and our Mentors. And of course, a huge thank you to the John Templeton Foundation for making this programme possible and changing the research trajectory of so many researchers.
