How does your Christian worldview affect your educational practice?

12/05/08 16:06 Filed in: Worldview education | Questions | Assessment | Lesson plans | Engaging instruction
Worldview affects educational practice. How does your Christian worldview affect your educational practice? When responding to this question, teachers at Christian Academy in Japan indicated that their Christian worldview affects:
  • The essential questions they ask.
  • The content and skills they teach.
  • The assessments they give.
  • The instructional strategies they use.
  • The way they manage their classrooms.

Real question: The real question isn’t “How does your Christian worldview affect your educational practice?" The real question is “How will you help your students develop a Christian worldview?"

Take action. Today.

Here’s are the responses of CAJ teachers:
  1. The Bible is at the center of the curriculum. All subjects…are taught on the basis of the truth of the Word of God
  2. Knowing that God has given us the ability to reason, I must be intentional in emphasizing questions that give students more opportunities to think critically. The questions I've used in the past few weeks have stretched the 8th graders in ways that were sometimes uncomfortable. For example, when I asked them to write the last chapter rough draft of their autobiographies, entitled “Who am I now?”, many struggled with writing what they believed when they know that they act one way but say they believe the opposite.
  3. I have students ponder higher-level questions such as “Is there such a thing as a just war?” or “Should Christians support research on genetic engineering?” or “What is my calling in life?"
  4. Questions – these should ask things that matter to God; should be core to a better understanding of the nature of God and humanity. Content/skills – should teach process over content (which is the great luxury of English classes) in that we need to know how to apply and understand worldview rather than just what it is.
  5. In my curriculum I need to look for the larger principles or topics and not just the details of the unit. What are the life skills and issues I want students to learn and think about? Examples: How do I solve problems with friends? How do I get along with people? How do I serve others? How do I serve God?
  6. I teach them to recognize numbers in God’s creation, giving them more appreciation. We look at social issues with the perspective of numbers, giving them another viewpoint to draw upon.
  7. What I test, I value. I have to be careful about what I test. Does it really help students to articulate a Biblical worldview? Does it help them answer the core questions? For instructional strategies, I focus heavily on collaboration. I used to have my proof text for collaboration up in my room: Proverbs 27:17. I guess I’ve internalized that and seen the value over and over again of students working together…. As for classroom management, my worldview of people being made in the image of God comes out in this area. Students working together in a class will respect each other, listen to each other, and value each other as God’s creations.
  8. Because I believe that my students are made in the breathtaking image of the invisible, triune God, each of them an active meaning maker with significant contributions to give and receive in the classroom community, I have them do many group activities, I challenge them with tough questions and/or choice, and I model, encourage, and require them to connect subject matter, faith, and life. Because I also believe that image is heartbreakingly defaced and distorted by the Fall, I realize the carrot method won’t always work. I try to make expectations clear and enforce them firmly—expectations regarding behavior, due dates, prompts for unit assessments, and school policies like dress code and late work.
  9. My Christian worldview affects how I respond to students and how I teach them to respond to others. I put a lot of emphasis on teaching about treating each other fairly and that each person is talented in their own way.  I spend time teaching about right ways to speak to others, what it means to be uplifting, and what respect looks like. Part of this focus comes from personal hard experiences growing up with peers. My biggest reason for this emphasis is how often it is talked about or shown in stories in the Bible, especially in Jesus’ life. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment, and Jesus showed so often that He cared about those others overlooked. He placed a huge emphasis on relationships, and that has been something I have always wanted to focus on – valuing relationships and keeping them healthy.
  10. I value students learning to be responsible for themselves. This affects the way I teach the students to care for the classroom including materials, clean up procedures, desk organization. I value a variety of ways for students to show their understanding and so I do not give a lot of tests. I like to give students opportunities to apply their learning and so projects and process oriented ways to assess are used. I value and appreciate that all learners learn differently and so I use a variety of instructional strategies. I use a variety of groupings (whole group, small group, and individual conferences) and an approach that scaffolds the learning where needed.
  11. As a Christian, I believe that every child has been created in the image of God, the Creator. This means that every child is creative in some way. In the art curriculum, I want to provide a wide variety of projects and assignments that give each child a chance to express themselves creatively. I want my questions to trigger thought and discussion that would help students learn more about God and His character and their relationship to Him. (What can we learn about God and his character from studying art? What is Christian Art? What does studying the principles of art tell us about God?)
  12. I try to take every available opportunity to get my students to see a question from a perspective they have never experienced before. I do this because I believe that people are naturally (fallenly) bent in on themselves, preferring to see only themselves and the world as it appears and applies to them. By broadening their horizons, then, I can encourage them to take their attention away from themselves and be truly e-ducated (Latin: led out). I don’t do this because I believe that all perspectives are equally valid (they aren’t), but because resistance to seeing other perspectives is a symptom of selfishness.