Center for Educational Practice

How Faith Inspires Learning

by THOMAS R. ROSEBROUGH, PH.D.
University Professor of Education

Recently the Center for Faculty Development here at Union published my article on the distinctive difference that faculty enjoy in teaching under the Lordship of Christ. I now turn to the Rosebrough Center for Educational Practice to share that article from a slightly different perspective. My target audience is the broader landscape outside this university, teachers in Christian schools and professors in Christian universities who have the unique privilege of using their faith to inspire learning in classrooms. And, as you read on, I also write to the many Christians who teach in the public sector whose sense of the sacred can illuminate the secular world.

There are four reasons I claim some authority or at least some credibility in writing about this topic: (1) I have long experience from teaching and serving at four different Christian universities; (2) I have studied learning through the doctoral level, written and presented on the subject of pedagogy locally, nationally, and internationally; (3) I have taught in the public sector at the university and local school level; and (4) I committed my life to the Lordship of Christ at the age of nineteen.

Here succinctly is what I want to say: Faith and learning should be integrated! I have listened to and spoken a version of those words many times, but my exploration of the nature of learning did not really accelerate until I began serving at educational institutions where I was encouraged to use my faith to inspire students to learn. The words “faith” and “learning” in the public sector may seem mismatched because academics is usually viewed in a rather narrow way, not holistically. But in a world of learning where the sacred is familiar and desirable, the two words have a conceptual chemistry.

I have written in other venues about the dynamic synergy between the worlds of the sacred and secular. Theologian Barry Harvey (1999) argued that the Latin root word for secular means “time” or “time-bound,” while a sense of the sacred is “timeless” or “eternal-minded.” Notice that the contrast is not between good and evil. I think this is significant for educators because: (1) We teachers do not have to adopt a Great Commission mindset with our students as though we serve in a church; and (2) It frees Christian teachers and professors, even those who serve in secular settings, to focus on the Great Commandment (Mat. 22: 36-40) of loving others as we love God, with every aspect of our volition, emotions, and cognition. It is a perspective of viewing our students in a sacred, timeless way. Another way of saying it, we are not bound by the idea that we educate or change people by pumping information into empty vessels, especially knowledge that has an expiration date stamped on it. Instead, we can take a more inspired approach of, yes, teaching to inform, but also of teaching to transform students into lifelong learners who make positive, creative, and thoughtful contributions to this timebound world.

Furthermore, just imagine how much more transformational opportunity teachers and professors who serve in Christ-centered institutions have. We work in a conceptual context which actually encourages, even expects, us to share ourselves as faithful to Christ’s Lordship. When we seek to inspire, we can also begin to discover the breathtaking dimensions of the Kingdom of God. By working and teaching for many years in the sacred world of Christian universities., I was able to discover what I had always intuitively known: The integration of faith and learning is the essence of great pedagogy. The term “pedagogy” is defined as the art and science of teaching and learning. The question for me is, “How does my faith impact my pedagogy?”

I must begin with my faith, not vice versa, because I have always believed we are all spiritual beings in our essence. What I believe helps me understand what I may know (a version of Augustine’s “credo ut intelligam”). Genesis 1:27 tells us all are created b’tselem Elohim—in the image of God, which confirms what I know intuitively: Our spirits can and should reflect our Creator. Thus, I look for my faith to impact both the art and the science of my teaching, aimed at vocatio living where students submit their lives as a calling from God.

I do not intend to downplay the world of learning as I prioritize faith. Like most all learners, I ask myself questions like, “Why should I learn this?” and “Does this mean anything to me?” Purpose and meaning are a part of lives lived for the long term, with an awareness that this life is short and eternal goals make more sense. Parenthetically, the search for meaning is also an integral part of brain-based learning science. Nonsense information perceived to be unrelated to learners’ experiences is resisted or rejected by the brain (Ormrod, 2004). Overall, faith impacts my pedagogy in that I know I must teach for eternity, and my perspective toward learners should coincide. Faith and learning: How can they integrate?

It was at Union University that I finally did what I was taught in Ohio State’s graduate school: to name what I was observing in classrooms. It is transformational teaching (Rosebrough & Leverett, 2011). For me the name identifies what I saw at Christian universities but also in great teachers at all levels of schooling. When researching a subject, it helps to have a model. I claim Jesus as not only my Savior and Lord, but also as the model of transformational teaching.

Dallas Willard (1998) says that to teach like Jesus, we must speak words and foster experiences “that impact the active flow of the hearer’s life” (p. 114). For example, in Luke we find the wonderful teaching about a Samaritan who showed mercy and compassion on a victim of a violent crime. This story is perhaps the epitome of what Willard calls a “concrete” or “contextual method of teaching” (p. 112). To me it is teaching with the purpose to transform.

Of interest and great pertinence to teachers is that a question from “an expert in the law,” in other words, a Pharisee, prompted Jesus’ illustration. The question of “Who is my neighbor?” is a test, a trap, in response to Jesus’ evocative statement that to inherit eternal life we must love our neighbor as we love ourselves. General questions like this one can lead us back to where we started if we are not careful in answering. No one was there to digitally record Jesus’ words as he spoke, but his lesson was memorable. Why? Research tells us that the emotional nature of memory may assist us in our ability to retrieve it; that is, highly emotional content is more easily recalled (Reisberg, 1997; Schunk, 2008), helping us direct our attention and elaborate on it over a period of time. We remember what is important and meaningful and emotional to us.

Jesus uses a circumstance and people in the story that his hearers could immediately relate to, both of which Willard says, “impact the active flow of the hearers’ lives.” A man is traveling, stopped, beaten, robbed by bandits and left naked, bleeding, and for dead. A priest comes by, sees him, and moves on. A Levite then does exactly the same thing. Not “my neighbor!” said they. Then comes a third man. The man is a Samaritan, from a culture loathed by the Jews. The man of mercy bound up the stranger’s wounds, put him up and paid for the night, and promised to check on him the next day. The context of experiential familiarity for Jesus’ “students” had to be like opening and slamming doors in their minds. And, Jesus’ key teaching to a man’s compassionate heart sealed the doors shut. Then, Jesus exits the lesson with a question, “Which of the three was a neighbor to the victim of the crime?” “The one who showed mercy,” says the theologian (answering his own question), not bringing himself to say, as Willard notes, “the Samaritan.” The story is concrete and entirely memorable because it is concise, relatable, emotional, and exactly to the point of the question.

Willard notes we must recognize that the “aim of the popular teacher in Jesus’ time was not to impart information, but to make significant change in the lives of the hearers” (p. 112), saying that it is a modern notion to teach things that may not have any effect upon learners’ lives. Informational teaching is necessary, even vital for living an educated life, but it is does not achieve sufficiency from an eternal perspective.

My overall take-away from reading the words of the teachings of Jesus is his authority. We live in a world where we do not know where to turn for authority--someone or something we can consistently trust. No one of us as teachers can emulate Christ’s power and promise, but it should be an aspiration. He taught with an edge that demonstrated the stakes at hand as he rolled out the concepts of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was a mix of preaching and teaching which often posits goals that seem unattainable upon first take. Only the Holy Spirit can make those goals attainable in our everyday walking-around lives (Rom. 12:1-2). Without matching his authority, we can still emulate his pedagogy.

While eschewing a deep pedagogical analysis here, let me just note that our Lord used all the great tools of the ancients as well as current scholars. He excelled at questioning, comparison/contrast through metaphors and similes, aphorisms, repetition, and real-world application with authentic learning opportunities. What is undeniable and most obvious, however, is his soul-focus. C.S. Lewis (1952) reminds us of who we are teaching when he says that we do not have a soul--we are a soul with a body attached. Jesus did not have to pre-test his learners to see what they needed. He already knew.

Our take-away as teachers ought to be the goals and roles Jesus modeled: (1) He saw his learners as souls, as spirits with indestructible essences, to be taught for eternal purposes. This perspective makes all the difference as a teacher “professes” his subject; and (2) He synergized a triad of roles of a faculty member who teaches to transform: of scholar--Jesus knew the Scriptures, the work-a-day world, and the contemporary politics of Israel; of practitioner--He communicated with his hearers with a vast array of teaching methods; and of relater--His learners could see and hear that he risked caring about them as individuals intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally because of his attitudinal qualities (psychologist Carl Rogers’ term). These qualities include realness, empathy, and personal prizing (1969). What does this mean for us?

Realness means that professors reject playing the “teacher role” and remain genuine with their students. Tempered anger and joy are a real part of us as relational human beings—we should not fear displaying these emotions as long we remain one of the adults in the classroom. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. We build strong connections with others when we walk in their shoes, especially if our empathy is informed by really knowing our learners. Prizing perhaps carries the most risk of the three qualities. It means we communicate to individuals that we recognize their distinct identities (recall that the Apostle John termed himself as the one Jesus loved). The mentor role here is critical, because with such recognition, we risk alienating other students who do not perceive their teacher as fair and consistent. All students must be convinced they matter greatly to the teacher. All students should be prized for their individual strengths, for what Howard Gardner (1999) called “intelligences.” Jesus as well as Paul taught with agape love which prioritized a loving recognition of different gifts.

I have found a certain freedom in the contrast between simply teaching to inform and teaching to transform. Faculty who teach to transform certainly are informative with a scholarly depth—professors are confident in their subject (scholar) if they are well-read and they write, present, and publish with relevancy. Writing to publish makes us better teachers because of (1) the research required, (2) the comprehensive cognitive synthesis needed, and (3) the relevancy that we learn. All three of these elements make an indelible impression upon recall of the spoken word of our subject. The content we teach inspires learners with its meaning and depth. Our disciplines already contain God’s truth; thus, I have really never seen our task as integrating faith into our subject. The Author of all knowledge is there to be discovered if we know his Word. We do not have to integrate something that is already there to be found. What we integrate is ourselves into our subject. The informational becomes transformational! Our faith can inspire learning.

Theologian Dallas Willard in his great work, The Divine Conspiracy (1998), describes “informational teaching” as well as anyone has:

In our day learners usually think of themselves as containers of some sort, with a purely passive space to be filled by the information the teacher possesses and wishes to transfer—the “from jug to mug model.” The teacher is to fill the empty parts of the receptacle with the “truth” that may or may not later make a difference to the life of the one who has it. The teacher must get the information into them. We then “test” the patients to see if they “got it” by checking whether they can reproduce it in language rather than watching how they live. (pp. 112-113)

Note Willard’s last sentence in the quote because it is about assessment. How do we know students “got it,” that is, are learning? Certainly “reproducing it in language” is not an invalid assessment of a kind of learning. However, “watching how they live” is what the author recommends. What does this mean in our classrooms? How can we at a university possibly watch how our students live, unless maybe we are dorm parents or rent out a room to them?

I think Willard is saying that we should want it all, that we should begin by looking at our students not just academically, but also socially and spiritually. Academic goals involve relevant book-sense consisting of the accumulated knowledge of the ages. Social goals have to do with learning to relate to, cooperate with, and understand others. Spiritual goals are similar to social goals but are more individual and personal in nature. Reflecting on how to be a better person is a spiritual goal. Unselfish love and patience and hope are spiritual. Willard is saying that holistic learning is not only not new, it is seminal and should be the goal of our teaching to transform. Teachers must first want it all and then watch how their students live and learn.

A window into our students’ learning-lives is through the questions and comments they pose in response to our teaching, and in response to the total learning environment that teachers create. Do they seem to understand the material? Do they exhibit a healthy skepticism? Are they open to new ideas? Are they civil to their teacher and to other students? Are their emotions involved in the learning environment; that is, are they eager or curious to probe further into the content of the course? Our students will often mirror us as teachers if we model enthusiasm, curiosity, creativity, solid analysis, and practical applications of the material we teach.

Educational psychologist Robert Sternberg (2008) is helpful here in how he sees intelligence. He says intellect includes analysis, creativity, practicality, and wisdom (which certainly speaks to the moral dimension). Like good parents (in loco parentis), we must free our students to want to learn without us; only then will they find the key to life-long learning as independent learners and more. As we teach to transform, we travel a road toward our students’ fulfilling their lives’ potential.

Finally, what does teaching to transform look like in Christian university classrooms? Here is a short list:

1. Trust your students. Set boundaries, but trust so that potentially they can trust you, even at the risk of being taken advantage of. Learners are looking for someone to believe in them. It’s like love: Mutual trust is a worthy goal. With such trust, students develop confidence and more independence.
2. Stay grounded and humble. Many professors cannot sleep at night because they cannot wait to hear what they are going to say the next morning. Socrates was right—we must know ourselves. Something I learned when I taught middle school was that until we know our own shortcomings and strengths, we will not effectively relate to and communicate with learners. We must also realize the sheer power of our role as teachers, and vow never to abuse it.
3. We have not really taught anything until our students have learned something. Universities have always perpetuated the myth that good presenters are good teachers. Sometimes they are, but presenting and teaching are not synonymous. On the subject of presenting, sometimes called exposition, here are three basic tips:
   1. Make sure the material is relevant and interesting to the hearers.
   2. Use more aphorisms—their concise nature of short and pithy makes a dynamic combination, like this one: It takes a whole teacher to teach whole learners.
   3. Learn to make plenty of eye contact to engage your students.
4. Here’s a hard conclusion I reached about 15 years ago: Teaching with the purpose of sharing information is necessary but not sufficient. It is only when we have soul-purpose to transform the lives of learners that we reach sufficiency. Knowledge of a discipline as a baseline is vital to students if their lives are to be changed long term. But, application/meaning must be coupled. Ask yourself as a teacher, “Does it seem likely that what I am teaching has meaning and transfers effectively to the real world of students?”
5. Faculty who are transformational are able to synergize their roles as scholars, teachers, and mentors. Most professors routinely fulfill two of the three, often the first two. All three roles are vital for transformation and all three add up to something greater than the sum of each of the parts.

As we know in Christian higher education, it is a privilege to be able to pursue this pedagogical process of transformational holism. To want it all for our students may seem like rowing upstream sometimes for faculty. For me this privilege, this work, is also a joyful, eternal responsibility.

References

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences in the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.

Harvey, B. (1999). Another city: An ecclesiological primer for a post-Christian world. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International.

Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. UK: Geoffrey Bles. US: Macmillan/HarperCollins.

Ormrod, J. (2004). Human learning (4th ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Pearson Education.

Reisberg, D. (1997). Cognition: Exploring the science of the mind. New York: Norton.

Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn: A view of what education might become. Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Rosebrough, T. R., & Leverett, R. G. (2011). Transformational teaching in the information age: Making why and how we teach relevant to students. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Schunk, D. H. (2008). Learning theories: An educational perspective (5th ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Pearson Education.

Sternberg, R. J. (2008). Assessing what matters. Educational Leadership, 65(4), 20-26.

Willard, D. (1998). The divine conspiracy: Rediscovering our hidden life in God. San Francisco: HarperCollins.