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541-03 Institute for Christian
Teaching 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, MD 20904
USA
July, 2003.
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INTRODUCTION
“To educate, in the Christian sense, is to direct
toward God,
who developed through Jesus Christ”
(Wyler, 1978. P. 20).
All Adventist educators agree with Wyler in thinking that Adventist Schools exist because they
are supposed to be places where the students can develop, live, learn, and
share a Christian worldview.
We usually feel that we have the best possible
educational philosophy. Unfortunately, we are not sure that we always manage to
put our ideas into practice. And this is not because we don’t want to do it, or
because we are not capable of achieving it. Most of the times, it is just
because we haven’t developed the right strategies to implement our philosophy
into practice.
It is also true that “the engagement of the
Christian theological account with the several disciplines does not go on all
the time and by everyone in every classroom”. (Benne,
2001. P. 198). At the same time we are not taking all the opportunities
of using the issues appeared at every field to be brought into dialogue with
the comprehensive Christian theological account. (Benne,
2001. P. 198).
Korniejczuk’s model of deliberate teacher
implementation of Integration of Faith and Learning (IFL) (See Appendix 1) also
shows that not all teachers do the same job in this area. Taking level 6 of her
model as a departure point, we would like to propose a strategy that would
eventually help Adventist institutions to achieve their mission in a better
way: The creation of an active IFL Centre.
The purposes of this paper are then:
1. To demonstrate the
necessity of a sustained and coordinated work among all the faculty and staff
members to integrate our faith in our teaching.
2. To create a procedure
that can help teachers fill the gap between theory and practice: The creation
of an IFL Centre.
3. To describe the
experience carried out at the
Initial Adventist
Efforts toward IFL
More than 150 years of educating is ample
experience for an educational system like the Adventist one.
In fact, there have been many efforts to achieve
a systematic application of the faith in the formal curriculum. Apart from the
Institute for Christian Teaching and the series
“Christ in the Classroom”, following we have selected a number of initial
efforts for your review:
a. Akers and Moon (1980)
presented some ideas that favoured the transformation of faith into action.
b.
c. Another regularly
performed practical experience has been the holding of “Bible labs”, whose
implementation was well explained by Shull (2000).
d.
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An extensive effort at systematizing the IFL was made by the South
Pacific Division when they elaborated the “Curriculum guides for Adventist
secondary school education” in the following subjects: Home economics, art,
bible, science, social studies, computer studies, physical education,
geography, history, English, mathematics, music, personal development,
keyboarding and industrial technology.
e. CIRCLE (Curriculum and
Instruction Resource Centre Linking Educators) is a web page created by
Despite all the efforts made by institutions and
individuals, the results of surveys like the one done in “Profile ‘01”
(Brantley and others, 2001) clearly show that we still face a future challenge
when it comes to putting our theory and our educational philosophy into
practice: Only around 40% of the persons surveyed responded “yes” to the
following statement: “I completely agree that our system has articulated a
clear philosophy that drives our educational practice”. Only approximately
20% completely agreed that Adventist schools were putting their philosophy into
practice.
What is still missing? We’ll try to answer to
this question in the following sections.
Outside the SDA system we can confirm there is
also a perceived need of moral education in many educational sectors.
Kennedy (1998) gives good examples of how Western
governments have
recognized the need to incorporate the area of moral and spiritual development
into the pedagogy of schools.
In recent years we have seen how
1. It establishes a
difference among contents of values, attitudes and rules.
2. It creates a list of
cross-curricular themes (education for peace, solidarity, equality of sexes,
etc).
3. It proposes two options:
Religious Education or Ethics.
We could say that Spanish authorities are very
concerned with this issue and they want their students to receive a holistic
formation. At the moment, Spanish government is finishing a new law (LOCE) that
also insists in the importance of values. According to this new law, all
students will have to choose between “Catholic Religion” and “History
of Religions” (Feijo 2003). Even though some
authors don’t agree with the fact that the Educational Public System is used to
teach Catholic Religion, they feel that the subject “History of Religions”
is a good and necessary way of transmitting moral values.
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Spanish educators are becoming more and more conscious that they can’t
just transmit “contents”. Students need other types of teaching in order to
become valid citizens and to adapt to a society in constant change.
A Need for Coordinated Work
Education is nowadays far too complex to pretend that a
series of well written goals can be carried out without the coordinated effort
of all the educational agents.
All pedagogues agree that moral education,
or education of values should be a concept reflected in all aspects of
education. Escámez (1986) speaks about a
technological proposal for education in attitudes and values where all
resources are used in the institution to carry out what is, in his opinion, the
most important development of the student, his moral education. Delval and Enesco (1994 p. 188)
specify this idea even more when they say that moral values should penetrate
the student’s society and all educational subjects. When a student learns
mathematics or geography, he/she should also be studying moral values.
On the other hand, Puig
(1995) considers that one of the three directions value education must
undertake is the following:
Educators should succeed
in making the school work in an efficient way in all educational aspects
(cultural, scientific, technological, artistic, or physical) without separating
them from the values that must impregnate the contents of all subjects and the
didactic way of teaching them. That way, we will be working not only
professionally, but also ethically. (p.29)
No educational change will be successfully
achieved as an independent activity. Gento (1994)
comments some of the advantages of a participative working system: mutual
enrichment of all participants, conflict reduction and a better work quality. Beltrán and San Martín (2000) say
that we must take into account all the relationships acting within the
educational process: student-teacher and teacher-other teachers. He establishes
3 conditions for successful team work: congruence (even though all agents are
different, they should work toward the same objectives) coordination and
confidence or trust in one’s colleagues. (p. 84, 86)
In regard to the above points, Korniejczuk and Brantley (1994) propose interesting advice
to take into account:
1. Advice for the class and
for educational institutions:
a. Holding of a meeting of
educators to talk about IFL.
b. Give time and resources
to educators to make the IFL a more feasible task.
c. Plan regular work
sessions on this topic.
2. Advice for the education
system in general.
a. The educational leaders
should elaborate in a concise way the essential objectives for each course and
subject.
b. The conventions of
educators should be a place of meeting to debate theoretical and practical ideas
about IFL.
c. Different resources
ready for use in the classroom should be prepared.
d. Suitable formation of
Adventist educators should be provided in SDA colleges and universities whose
curriculum includes practise projects of integration of faith in learning.
We concluded that a good way of working together
toward the implementation of our Educational Objectives was through the
creation of an IFL Centre.
The IFL Centre. Who
Should Coordinate It?
There is no doubt that when we think about IFL,
we also believe that the most qualified people to coordinate this job are the
principals and the administrators of each school. Palacios (1994) underlines
their importance in the IFL and suggests a few ways so they participate
actively in this process. Ferrari de Bizzochi (1994)
affirms that only principals conscious of their mission can coordinate,
motivate and organise the institution in order to achieve an effective
integration of faith and learning. From her point of view, IFL cannot be left
to improvisations or to the good will of the staff. Principals must be
conscious of the different elements that participate in the educational
community and of the different methods of accomplishing such integration.
Brantley (2000) says that the administrative
support in the IFL does not guarantee success but the lack of such support
would eventually lead to the failure of the whole process of integration, since
it is very difficult for an institution to reach far beyond what its leaders
envision. As a result, Brantley states three specific reasons why principals
and administrators should get involved in IFL:
1.
The directors and administrators are in the position
to implement meaningful changes.
2.
They are responsible for distributing the teaching load among the
faculty.
3. They can designate the
resources and energy required to implement the changes. Even highly motivated
staff members will find that effecting changes in the school is very difficult
without the support of principals and administrators through the provision of
the necessary resources.
Despite the need for their
involvement in the IFL and according to the survey carried out by Brantley
(2000), only 41% of the interviewed staff agreed with the next statement:
"The administration of our school was capable of inspiring IFL
throughout the school”, while the rest did not agree or were not
sure. It was clear in this survey that IFL is a top priority on the
administrative agenda in theory but not always in practice.
The situation at CAS secondary
school did not escape this statistic. According to its Principal (Personal
interview, June 5, 2001), although he was very interested in paying careful
attention to the IFL, the number of urgent matters that he had to solve
prevented him from placing IFL as a priority on his daily agenda.
Benne (2001. p. 189) also says that
the principal or the president may need help in setting the overall direction
of the school. He believes that there should be “faith and learning groups” in
Christian institutions:
By faith and learning groups I mean those organizations
that devote themselves to strengthening the interaction of faith and learning
on both the personal and the institutional fronts. They keep track of the
burgeoning literature on Christian higher education, they find ways to
encourage faith and learning interaction in the programs, conferences, and
curricula of the school, and they encourage faculty to do their own faith and
learning engagement. (…) An active faith and learning group, even in orthodox
and critical-mass schools, can serve as a kind of conscience for such schools.
It can monitor their performance, remind them of their current commitments, and
raise the horizon toward which such schools might strive in the future. (p. 205)
Our proposal is the creation of an IFL
Centre in each SDA institution that can help the principals and
administrators in carrying out the challenging task of incorporating our faith
in the curriculum.
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Applied Dimension of the Study: The IFL Centre at the
General description of the school
Although at the present time the campus in Sagunto supports two independent institutions, SAE (Seminario Adventista de España) made up of the Department of Theology, the Superior
School of Spanish and Postgraduate studies, and CAS (Colegio
Adventista de Sagunto) made
up of Primary, Secondary School and the School of Music, when this experience
was carried out both institutions did not have administrative independence.
However, the different departments used to
function with a great deal of autonomy. Therefore, this project only affected
the Secondary School which is made up of 6 levels (12-18 year old students).
See Figures 1 & 2 which show the number of
students and teachers at CAS secondary school in 2001/2002.
Figure 1. CAS
student enrolment 2001/2002.
|
Level |
Dormitory male |
Dormitory female |
Day male |
Day female |
TOTAL |
SDA baptized |
SDA non baptized |
NON SDA |
% SDA |
|
1st ESO |
0 |
0 |
19 |
15 |
34 |
5 |
4 |
25 |
26.47 |
|
2nd ESO |
2 |
0 |
15 |
18 |
35 |
10 |
5 |
20 |
42.86 |
|
3rd ESO |
7 |
1 |
28 |
23 |
59 |
17 |
2 |
40 |
32.20 |
|
4th ESO |
9 |
5 |
19 |
17 |
50 |
14 |
2 |
34 |
32.00 |
|
1º BAC |
9 |
6 |
17 |
15 |
47 |
21 |
3 |
23 |
51.06 |
|
2º BAC |
5 |
3 |
20 |
9 |
37 |
15 |
2 |
20 |
45.95 |
|
TOTAL |
32 |
15 |
118 |
97 |
262 |
82 |
18 |
162 |
38.17 |
Figure 2. Employees CAS secondary
school 2001/2002
|
SDA teachers |
NON SDA teachers |
Total Teachers |
Non teaching personnel |
Total Personnel |
|
21 |
2 |
23 |
9 |
32 |
Circumstances that favoured the
creation of the IFL Centre
1.
The elaboration of our Educational Project (PEC. See Glossary):
Having
to elaborate in writing form our Educational Project according to the
exigencies of the Spanish Educational Legislation (LOGSE), we tried to include
all the aspects that reflect our philosophy of education and our Christian
worldview. So, this law in education that enforced all the schools (private and
public) to write a summary of what they thought education was and how they
implemented it, let us think that we needed to find new strategies to put our
theory into practice.
2.
Lack of the necessary didactic resources:
The
process of discussing and writing this document allowed us to reflect over the
difficulties of putting our ideas into practice. Most of the times SDA
educators don’t have the right materials or they just don’t have the time to
create resources that could help them teach about everything they would like
to. In Spanish we can find some materials that help us teach about solidarity,
peace and other important values but it is very difficult to find interesting
and adapted resources to teach about some SDA specific values that are
important in the Objectives written in our Educational Project (See Appendix
2): All those Objectives have been taken from the Adventist philosophy of
Education, but we consider that, for instance, objectives number 3, 6, 7, 11,
14, 15 can not be taught from an Adventist perspective unless we develop interesting
resources. We know that a true educational change will not be accomplished
until appropriate educational materials are designed to meet the educational
goals because that is where the encounter between the philosophy of education
and the student takes place. The student doesn’t read our “Educational Project”
but he studies what we tell him to; the student doesn’t memorise our
Objectives, but he remembers the discussions with his teachers about things
that affect his life.
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3. Educators’ experience and motivation:
Following a personal interview with the principal, we
considered that the teaching staff had the experience and the motivation needed
to begin a coordinated effort toward a more effective implementation of the
Christian worldview.
All these circumstances favoured the initiative
of creating a Centre that could concentrate on putting the ideas into practice.
Decisions taken by the school in
order to facilitate the creation of that IFL Centre
a.
With the
support of the Secondary School Committee, it was decided to name a professor
to start this work for the first time in CAS.
b.
His
teaching load was reduced by 3 hours.
c.
Objectives
and functions of the centre.
It was decided that the IFL Centre coordinator
should always work in harmony with the academic dean and with the principal.
His main functions or objectives would be:
1. To favour a systematic
reflection on IFL related topics in the Faculty meetings. For this purpose,
there should be at least 15 minutes available in the regular Faculty meetings.
During that time, teachers could share their experiences, documents or anything
that could help improve a better IFL.
2. To have an annual
meeting with the curriculum committee to analyse the different syllabi and to
find better ways of implementing our faith and values through distinct lessons.
3. To look for IFL
resources and make them available to all teachers.
4. To coordinate the “Religion
Department”.