Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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Table 8
Colleges with an organized plan of field
education 63.0%
Colleges whose students participate in no
extended parish assignment, but whose preaching
in a parish context is evaluated by lecturers
or parish ministers 20.4%
Colleges with no supervised parish
preaching 16.7%
Survey question 13.a. inquired about the use of
required textbooks. Just over half (52.7%) indicated
that they require all students to read one or more
textbooks.
Question 13.b. asked for a list of books on
preaching that lecturers recommend to students. I
suggested that lecturers merely send a copy of the
preaching bibliography they give to students. Some sent
lengthy bibliographies; others listed, on the survey
itself, only a small number of books. (16.4% indicated
that they neither require nor recommend any specific
books. A complete bibliography of recommended books
appears in appendix four.)
One simple method of comparing these recommended
books is by their date of first publication. The overall
median date of publication for recommended (or required)
books is 1974. (Again, I employ the median, rather then
the mean, in order to prevent the use of a few very old
books from unduly affecting the statistics.)
Another survey question (no. 11) asked the lecturers
to list theologians or communicators who had most
influenced their thinking on preaching. (Appendix five
lists the persons lecturers named in response to this