APPROACHES TO
LEARNING
KNOWING GOD IS IN ALL THINGS, WE THEN CONSIDER HOW TO APPROACH LEARNING. EDUCATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN REFLECTIVE OF WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE WORLD. CLASSICAL EDUCATION was created for the elite in a time when books were only available to the upper class of society. Education was text-centered filled with rhetoric, dialogue and logic. TRADITIONAL EDUCATION emerged when there was a need to train people to work in factories. Schools mirrored these manufacturing plants with students in rows learning from a sage teacher at the front of the class who possessed the knowledge. Students demonstrated learning through rote memorization and competitive evaluation. Today, there is a personalized approach of PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION. It considers how each person can contribute their unique skills where learners engage by doing. There is formative and continual assessment, and technology is leveraged to access information. Teachers are no longer the ones who hold all of the information so they must transform their role in classrooms to guide students as their apprentices to understand how to manage the information and apply it in the best use.
We know that each approach to learning has its own merits. Students need to appreciate the text and discussions that ensue from reading literature and thoughts. We cannot abandon the need to learn basic facts and content. Students must stay current with changing technologies and how to leverage them for the optimal use in locating the right information needed to solve the problems of tomorrow. The intersection of these three approaches to learning is where dynamic instructional relevancy takes place. It is where students will build the skills needed to be prepared for an unknown future; skills such as connectivity, collaboration, critical thinking, communication, creativity, character, and ability to handle change. It will be what they will pull from deep within themselves as they invent careers to solve society’s problems. When you embed the continuum of the maturation of the Christian faith journey, you now have a transformative model in the way anyone does Christian education.