On Christian Teaching - Excerpt

On Christian Teaching Practicing Faith in the Classroom

David I. Smith

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 www.eerdmans.com © 2018 David I. Smith All rights reserved Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ISBN 978-0-8028-7360-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Smith, David, 1966– author.

Title: On Christian teaching : practicing faith in the classroom / David I. Smith.

Description: Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018001801 | ISBN 9780802873606 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Teaching—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Teachers—Religious life. | Education (Christian theology) | Christian education—Teaching methods.

Classification: LCC BV4596.T43 S64 2018 | DDC 248.8/8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001801

Contents

Preface 1. The Pedagogy Gap

vii 1

2. The Whole Nine Minutes

14

3. Patterns That Matter

27

4. The Movement of the Soul

41

5. Motivated Design

54

6. See, Engage, Reshape

68

7. The Work of Imagination

81

8. Life Together

97

9. Designing Space and Time

114

10. Pedagogy and Community

128

11. The State of Christian Scholarship

139

Notes

154

Index 171

v

On Christian Teaching

Watch any classroom and you will see people stand, sit, raise limbs, yawn, manipulate objects and devices, point, discuss, look at screens, and so on. Yet listing these behaviors gets us only a limited way towards understanding what is happening. It matters what the participants imagine is going on.1 Consider some possible stories that might explain the act of arm raising. Perhaps the student has reached a difficult or ambiguous point in the assigned task and wishes to learn more about what to do next out of fear of making a mistake, and so they ask for clarification, which the teacher provides. Perhaps the student is impatient with the overly simple task but intellectually curious, and asks a question that it had never occurred to the teacher to address. Perhaps the student has noticed that their neighbor has a need and is seeking help on their behalf. Perhaps this student has figured out that when you ask this particular teacher interesting questions in the last five minutes of a class period, it significantly increases the likelihood that the teacher will forget to assign the homework. Perhaps (this is a real example) students have learned before the teacher arrives that one member of the class has not completed the homework, even after dire warnings following previous failures. He is anxious about the consequences, but skipping class would be risky; he might be caught out of the classroom. So the class decide to hide him behind a cupboard in the back corner of the room. Whenever the teacher roams dangerously close to that part of the room, students in the front rows ask questions at strategic moments to draw him back to the front and reduce the risk of discovery. Each of these stories changes the relevance of the raised arm to learning. We do not know what something as simple as a raised hand means until we know something about the students’ imagination. What participants in learning imagine is happening is part of what is happening.

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The Work of Imaginatio If this is the case for something as simple as hand-­raising, it is even more true for more complex actions like “learning a language,” or “learning science,” or “preparing for the real world.” It is possible for us to be in the same space, apparently engaged in the same behaviors, but each telling ourselves rather different stories about what is going on. When these stories diverge too sharply, it can lead to breakdowns in learning, communication, and respect. Sheila To­ bias’s fascinating study of students who drop science in favor of other subjects in college offers numerous instances of mismatches between the imagined world offered by the professor’s pedagogy and the students’ own picture of how the course should go. One student reflected: What was I supposed to be learning in chemistry? A way to look at the subject? Do the problems correctly? Become analytical? And what were the professor’s goals? Did he wish us to succeed? Was I to be an inheritor of a vast, multifaceted science? Or just a technician? . . . In the humanities and social sciences we are taught to ask “why” questions. In chemistry I felt we were only being taught to ask “how.” How certain chemicals behaved when mixed, how we find the limiting reagent in a reaction, how we derive the molecular mass from amu. If we didn’t know “how” we surely couldn’t pass the exams. [I felt that] those of us who prefer “why” questions do not survive in this course. It has no use for us, no patience with us, and we are pushed away.2

Another student, in a physics class, wrote of “the absence of a ‘road map,’ and the feeling that ‘curiosity questions’ have no place in class discussions.”3 For these particular students, there was a gap between the way they imagined the process and purpose of learning and the world offered by the course practices.

They came to science class expecting big ideas and a nurturing of curiosity, and they encountered a focus on discrete problem-­solving and getting answers right. This lack of shared imagination between professor and students stymied their engagement with the course material, and steered them away from continuing to learn science.

Imagination, in the sense that matters here, is not something that simply wells up out of the inner worlds of teachers and students. Imagination is fostered and sustained through an ongoing backdrop of social practices.4 The questions asked and not asked, the examples offered, the images used, 83

On Christian Teaching the assignments, room layouts, and grading criteria, all of these provide what Etienne Wenger calls an “infrastructure of imagination.” An infrastructure of imagination is a kind of symbolic scaffolding provided by our practices that supports or fails to support particular ways of imagining the nature and purpose of what we are doing, and within which we develop an “identity of participation,” a sense of who we are supposed to be in this setting.5

A Tale of Two Teachers Any teacher comes to the task of imagination building with an imagination already pointed in certain directions. When my children were in high school, I attended a parent-­teacher conference that left a lingering impression.6 Two of the science teachers shared a corner of the school gym, and my wife and I spoke with them both in quick succession. The first—I think he was a chemistry teacher—shook our hands, introduced himself, found out which student was ours, and reached for his grade book. He opened it, ran his finger down the list of names until he found the right one, then read aloud, one by one, each grade given for each assignment across the semester. He then commented briefly that it had been a successful semester’s work and waited expectantly for any questions we might have.

We then traveled about ten feet to the right for an audience with the physics teacher. He shook our hands, introduced himself, found out which student was ours, and then paused. After a few moments’ reflection, he commented that there was another student, sitting in the row behind our child in class, who had some learning difficulties and often found it difficult during long science classes to keep track of what was going on. He had noticed our child choosing tactful moments to turn around and make sure that this other learner knew what was happening. He particularly appreciated this, he said, because he had been emphasizing throughout the semester that the class should function as a Christian learning community, and that meant that there should be a shared focus on making sure that all were included and enabled to learn. He saw the moments of turning around to help another student as an important contribution to the class, and he let that valuation be known.

He concluded with some further comments on the class, and invited our questions.

84

The Work of Imaginatio These two conversations left me wondering how many physics teachers see it as part of their pedagogical responsibility to teach students how to participate in Christian community. What is included in the imagined role of the science teacher? Both teachers taught science in the same Christian school.

Both seemed to be achieving academically admirable results. As far as I know, they may have been equally competent in scientific terms and equally effective at helping students to understand the nature, processes, and findings of science. Yet it seemed they imagined their role differently. They clearly imagined parents and the task of communicating with parents differently—one used the interaction to reiterate grade information that was already available through other channels, the other took the opportunity to communicate a broader vision for Christian education. It also seemed that perhaps they imagined the task of teaching science differently. Neither denied that a science classroom is focally about learning science, but only one of them explicitly saw the science learning as related to the practice of Christian virtues. It was as if one were focused on cutting stone blocks into perfectly square shapes while the other knew that he was helping to build a cathedral.7

Explaining Photosynthesis Another conversation with science teachers took place when I was leading a professional development day at a Christian secondary school. I was asked to spend time with each department discussing their contribution to Christian education. As I sat down to begin a conversation with the science department, an older, experienced biology teacher spoke up. He began by assuring me that he did not need to be persuaded that he should have a Christian worldview and apply it to his work. He had been to plenty of talks reminding him of that, and he was long since on board. He was seeking to craft an identity as a Christian teacher and was already committed to applying his faith to his teaching with integrity. He did not want to be exhorted to do so one more time. “The trouble is,” he confessed, “most of the time I’m just explaining photosynthesis.”

Three things troubled me in his comments. First, it seemed that his expectation was that if someone from Christian higher education had been brought in to talk about Christian learning, he was going to get a philosophical exhortation accompanied by little practical guidance for the task of 85