The Learning Cycle is an intriguing collection of theoretical and anecdotal reinforcements for the concept that students are spiritual, emotional, social, and behavioral beings as well as intellectual beings.
Teaching Christianly at the Graduate Level
“Teaching Christianly” remains a stimulating and ongoing challenge for us all in our undergraduate courses—I haven’t met a Christian college where that’s not the case.
Jesus Drives Out an Impure Spirit
The miracles are one of the ways that Jesus’ knowledge, authority, and power start to be revealed as he begins his ministry. And by the end of his ministry Jesus is offering these same ministry tools to his various followers.
Christian Views of the Student
Christians don't all agree on the best way to frame a specifically Christian view of the student. Drawing on Niebuhr's idea that there are various ways to think about the relationship between Christ and culture, let's look at three biblically-informed ways Christians have come to view the young humans sitting in our classrooms.
Re-Creating in Nature
Recreation is a way to get an adjustment, to rebalance our facets of personhood, to allow ourselves to be totally physical, totally mental, and totally emotional all at once.
Standardized Testing: Help or Harm?
Outside of the halls of education, we have many real-world ways to test knowledge and skills. If we want to teach someone to bake a cake or do a J-stroke in a canoe, we don’t give a paper and pencil test – we look for successful demonstrations of the skills. Even where we need a paper test for some head knowledge stuff, like when we get a driver’s license, the road test is the real proof of the pudding. In school settings, then, what we really need are valid measures of what students know and can do.