9 What Are Christian Education Theories?
Reginald and his wife were glad to finally have their children securely enrolled in Christian school. They had taken a few years before making the commitment. Now that they had, they were both relieved that their children would learn about their Lord not just on Sundays in church, at home in the evenings, and on the weekends but also in school throughout the week. Reginald’s only reservation, more like curiosity than any serious concern, was how the school’s teachers would actually teach. Reginald wanted to know whether their Christian faith helped them see students’ needs and capacities, and meet those needs and capacities, any more effectively. Reginald decided to stay in close touch with his children’s teachers to try to discern any difference and maybe also to speak with the school leader about it.
Theories
Teaching and learning theory, although sounding abstract, can still matter to your child’s instruction. Children learn in a variety of ways. Indeed, different children develop different capacities for learning in different ways, at different stages and ages. The more adept a teacher is at discerning a student’s development stage and related learning needs, the more effective the teacher may be at helping the student learn. Discerning whether and how students are learning can require that a teacher understand teaching and learning theory. Teachers need frameworks for designing instruction and assessing its effectiveness. Theory helps teachers understand what is going on with struggling students and how better to serve them. That insight may be obvious enough. Some parents, though, may question whether and how Christian school teachers embrace and apply teaching and learning theory and approaches differently. Consider the following discussion on that subject.
Differentiation
The prior paragraph already hinted at one important teaching and learning theory, when it stated that students at different stages of learning may need teachers to instruct and serve them differently. Differentiating instruction is itself a teaching theory. Some schools assume, and some teachers believe, that all students learn or should learn the same way, responding to the same methods, and that the struggling student’s role is to adapt to standard instruction. Differentiating instruction to meet particular student needs takes the opposite approach. Those schools assume, and their teachers believe, that they should vary instructional methods to meet the needs of students who are not responding to usual instructional methods. Those schools and teachers may also vary their methods for students who respond so well that they can advance farther and more quickly in their learning. Differentiation of instruction is an approach that Christian school teachers can be more willing and able to apply, given their focus on developing the whole student, their passionate commitment and sensitivity to each student’s development, and the school’s generally smaller class size. Expect your child’s Christian school teachers to exhibit a heartening willingness to meet your child’s learning needs with alterations in instruction.
Transformational
Christian school teaching models itself after the teaching of Jesus Christ. Jesus sought transformation above transaction. Jesus wasn’t simply offering information in his Sermon on the Mount and other teaching. Jesus wasn’t selling a self-improvement course. Jesus was instead inviting his followers to become a new person after a transformative spiritual birth. Christian education likewise invites students into their continual transformation through spiritual birth, within the instructional program. By presenting and revealing Jesus in all academic studies, Christian teachers let Christ’s Spirit open student minds and hearts to receive each subject’s Christian wisdom. The relationship of a Christian school student to the knowledge and skills they study isn’t a transactional relationship but instead a transformative relationship. The Christian wisdom embedded in academic subjects enters and transforms students, so that they embody and act out the wisdom. Christian school teachers teach to see students come alive in Christ, in a transformational relationship to Christ’s pattern, principles, and image revealed in the school’s subjects. Students in Christian schools don’t simply learn knowledge and skills so much as allow the Christian truth within what they learn to remake them in Christ’s authority, truth, and image. Truth and wisdom in the person and image of Christ call to students, inviting them to accept their transformation.
Relational
Christian school teaching, again modeling itself after the teaching of Jesus Christ, is also relational. Christ didn’t teach his followers to improve their knowledge and skills. Christ instead taught to offer himself in service and sacrificial relationship. Christ poured himself out, both figuratively and literally, for his followers, to make them his Father’s adopted children and his own brothers and sisters. Christ did so, though, with the desire and expectation that his followers would receive him humbly and gladly, with deepest gratitude, while stewarding his gift with their greatest commitment. Christian school teachers likewise don’t stand as authorities over students as much as offer themselves sacrificially in service to students, inviting and expecting students to receive the offer gladly, with gratitude, and in stewardship of the gift. Christian school teachers do so because they have received Christ’s teaching and person in the same manner, humbly, gladly, in deepest appreciation, and with the commitment to steward Christ’s gift. Christ transforms the teacher-student relationship, as he transforms all things that he touches.
Discovery
Christian school teaching also models Christ’s manner of teaching in its discovery-based learning. Christ taught in parables that required his listeners to pay close attention to the implied relationships between the parables’ objects and figures, and the profound insights Christ wanted his listeners to draw. As Christ would say, let those with ears hear and those with eyes see. Jesus insisted that those who wished to learn must exercise the spiritual perception and active understanding that learning requires. Jesus did not, in other words, routinely spoon feed his listeners but instead engaged them in discerning and discovering their own learning. Christ’s indirect manner of teaching sometimes confused or even frustrated his disciples but only in a purposeful manner, to require his disciples to pay closer attention for his deeper meanings. Christian school teachers model Christ’s discovery-based learning, both in Bible lessons and in academic subjects. Christian school teachers challenge students to investigate, explore, infer, construe, and discover.
Symbolic
Christian school teaching also models Christ’s teaching in its symbolic nature. In Christ’s parables and other words and expressions, Christ routinely used one object or event to represent another object or event, in symbolic or allegorical nature. Christ even at times decoded his parables for the benefit of his disciples, revealing how he expected his followers to see the material world as representative of deeper designs, patterns, purposes, and principles. Christ, after all, came from the spiritual realm generating and sustaining those designs, patterns, purposes, and principles. Christ even described his parable of the sower, also known as the parable of the four soils, as a sort of key to understanding his other parables, wherein Christ is the implied sower, the word of God the seeds, and the human heart the four soils. Christian school teachers likewise urge students to see the material objects of their learning as representative of deeper spiritual truths. For to a large degree, all knowledge is symbolic. Students must learn to construe everything they encounter, even like these squiggles on the page, as symbolizing aspects of God’s purpose and design.
Contextual
Christian school teaching also models Christ’s teaching in its contextual nature. Christ’s teaching isn’t overtly intellectual, obscure, foreign, or abstract. Christ instead taught using contexts familiar to his followers. He set his revelations, insights, wisdom, and principles within the context of the ordinary, everyday lives of the people who gathered to listen to him. Christ spoke, for instance, of the roles of husbands, wives, mothers, and fathers, and the actions of fishermen, farmers, shepherds, builders, and homemakers, as well as kings, princes, and priests. The images in his teaching were also familiar, things like coins, fish, nets, lamps, cups, jars, salt, bread, and yeast, along with sparrows, sheep, wind, water, wine, and different kinds of trees. These images were the daily context for the pastoral people whom Christ encountered and taught. Christian school teachers likewise use objects and images familiar to students, to contextualize their learning. Students need familiar context both for understanding and to recognize the relevance and value of their learning.
Emotive
Christian school teaching also models Christ’s teaching in its emotive aspect. Christ didn’t teach in a boring, dry, and distant manner. He instead taught using humor, mockery, cajolery, foolery, affront, and other devices to engage his listeners’ emotions. Christ’s teaching was so engaging as to draw huge crowds, even on the rural hillsides, plains, and shores where he often taught. Crowds flocked to Jesus, and his teaching held them spellbound for hours. Yet Christ taught in an emotive manner not simply to entertain or even to draw those huge crowds. He instead taught involving his listeners’ feelings and emotions because doing so helps listeners learn. Learning isn’t all head work. Learning speeds and grows more memorable and secure when the instruction involves the whole learner, including the learner’s emotions. Students must care about the instruction for them to learn effectively. Christ showed his listeners their interest in his teachings by his ability to invoke and involve their emotions. Christian school teachers likewise involve the whole student in engaging instruction, including invoking their feelings and emotions.
Sensory
Christian school teaching also models Christ’s teaching in its sensory nature. Students learn best not only when instruction involves their feelings and emotions but also when instruction can involve their senses. Simply catching sight, smell, or sound of something can invoke associated memories from long ago. The sun sparkling across the water may evoke memories of a lost friend. The smell of burned toast in the air may evoke memories of a mother’s care. The sound of a foghorn in the early morning may evoke the memory of a long trip to a distant land. Christ thus wove descriptions of tastes, sights, smells, sounds, and other sensations into his teaching. He also taught continuously across multiple indoor and outdoor environments, helping his listeners preserve, transfer, and recall their learning from association with multiple environments and stimuli. Christian school teachers likewise encourage sensory learning, stimulating students’ senses with soothing music, beautiful images, delectable snacks, and pleasant aromas, while moving instruction around the classroom, into the gymnasium or auditorium, and outdoors on the grounds and fields. Outdoor learning is a popular program in Christian schools.
Intuitive
Christian school teaching also models the intuitive approach that Jesus took with some of his inquirers. Jesus did not always speak plainly, especially with the educated, arrogant, rich, and powerful. Jesus sought instead to invoke and discern a change of heart in his challengers and inquirers, before confronting them with precious truth. Why, Jesus asked, give to dogs what is sacred or cast pearls before swine? One doesn’t teach only to face ridicule. Arguing with those who are already hostile to truth gains nothing. Thus, Jesus initially responded to the religious leader Nicodemus more so with allegorical puzzles than straight-up education, forcing his inquirer to draw on intuition. When our minds are not ready to learn, the teacher must speak instead to the unconscious soul or spirit, until the mind relents and opens itself to the teacher’s wisdom. Christian school teachers likewise give students the grounds and opportunity to intuit truths, using their spiritual discernment. Christian education is not a program of coercion and manipulation. Christian education works instead because it draws on students’ open spiritual discernment.
Reflection
What teaching approaches or theories worked best for you when you were in grade school? What teaching theories or approaches do you believe work best for your child or children? Would you like to see your child’s teacher be able to use different instructional approaches if your child needs differentiated instruction? Do you want your child to have a transformational school experience? Would you like your child to learn in a highly relational manner, trusting and respecting teachers while having good relationships with classmates? Would your child benefit from discovery-based learning, where your child gets to actively explore and discern? Do you want your child to discern the highly symbolic and representative nature of communication, objects, and the world, having profound spiritual discernment? Do you believe that your child will learn best from familiar contexts? Do you want your child’s instruction to draw on your child’s feelings, senses, and emotions? Do you want your child to learn to value and trust your child’s intuition, grounded in spiritual discernment? Would your child benefit from frequent demonstrations of your child’s learning, from teachers and peers, and frequent practice?
Key Points
Teaching approaches and theories can make a difference to instruction.
Christian school teachers may differentiate instruction for students.
Christian school teachers seek student spiritual transformation.
Christian school teaching is highly relational and respectful.
Christian school teachers value discovery-based student learning.
Christian school instruction helps students recognize symbolism.
Christian school instruction occurs in familiar student contexts.
Christian school instruction is generally emotive and sensory.
Christian school instruction encourages intuitive approaches.
Read Chapter 10.