Christ at the Heart of

Leading Change in

Pedagogy: challenges facing classroom

teachers

AASSH 26th September 2014

Is it OK? What does it look like?

Transforming Lives Project

The Church of England

Background No Church school can be considered as part of the Church’s

mission unless it is distinctively Christian. (Dearing)

Church schools are places where a particular vision of humanity is offered. (Dearing)

Faith and spiritual development at the heart of the curriculum and ensuring that a Christian ethos permeates the whole educational experience. (Chadwick)

A Church school curriculum that includes implications for pedagogy, curriculum content and school organization (Chadwick)

School leaders are the

interpreters of faith for the

community

Leadership and faith: working with and

learning from school leaders (NCSL)

The Challenge

Unwitting compliance with values and principles that may compromise those that they seek to promote (Helen Jelfs)

Have assimilated the prevailing educational paradigm (Roger Street)

The Driving Seat?

Performance leads

pedagogy?

Pedagogy improves

performance?

Christian Ethos

Ambience

Curriculum Content

Pedagogy

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the act of teaching together

with its attendant discourse of educational

theories, values, evidence and

justifications. It is what one needs to know

and the skills one needs to command, in

order to make and justify the many kinds of

decision of which teaching is constituted.

Robin Alexander

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the heart of the enterprise. It

gives life to educational aims and values,

lifts the curriculum from the printed page,

mediates knowing and learning, engages,

inspires and empowers learners…or sadly

fails to do so…Good teaching makes a

difference. Excellent teaching can

transform lives

Robin Alexander

Distinctively Christian

Anthropology?

The tourist’s world is defined by immediate survival requirements, leisure activities and pragmatic transactions; paying for services, asking directions, securing help in case of an emergency and the like. It is a world that is often bereft of any spiritual experience

Distinctively Christian

Anthropology?Foreign languages education should prepare students for two related callings: to be a blessing as strangers in a foreign land and to be hospitable to strangers in their own homeland.

What if Learning…? Connecting Christian faith and

teaching

Seeing anew:

How could a Christian understanding of God, people and the world provide a different way of seeing a lesson/unit?

Choosing Engagement:

How could the students engage with this new way of seeing?

Reshaping practice:

What changes to my practice do I need to make as a teacher?

The approach

www.whatiflearning.co.uk

Reinhard Heydrich

Heydrich was one of

the architects of the

“Final Solution”. He

chaired the Wannsee

Conference.

Heydrich was

educated at a Church

School

First Question

What vision of

who our pupils

might become

inspires our

school?

Second Question

What do our

pupils imagine

they are doing in

our lessons?

Why are we doing this?

Their experiences of what they are doing and their sense of self in doing it are rather different. This difference is a function of imagination. As a result, they may be learning very different things from the same activity.

(Etienne Wenger, 1998, p.176)

The RE Teachers:

GCSE Christianity

St Mark’s Gospel

End of Life Issues (assisted suicide)

The PE Teacher:

The Push PassWe were learning

how to encourage

someone else in

their skill

development.

Coaching as the

framing concept

Research Findings

“Weird”

“Levering in”

Is it Christian enough?

The impulse to tell

A Fundamental Challenge

There has now

emerged in our

society a concept

of education

which makes the

whole idea of

Christian

education a kind

of nonsense

Professor Paul Hirst (1974)

Religious Faith as Clutter

Shared human

values are

entirely

independent of

religious beliefs

Richard Norman, On

Humanism, 2004

Robin’s Response

There’s a sense in which anything that

doesn’t see people becoming Christians

isn’t fulfilling the ultimate vision.

Wishy-washy or tokenistic

I also got the impression from Jesus’ life

that even people who didn’t give their

lives to him benefitted from his existence

Interpreting and Applying the

Bible

We are looking

for and at a

vocation to be

the people of

God in the fifth

act of the drama

of creation.

Tom Wright

formerly Bishop of

Durham

Building for the Kingdom of God

Reduces gospel

to going to

heaven

Is insufficiently

biblical

Revd. Professor NT

Wright, St Andrews

University, formerly

Bishop of Durham

Surprised by Hope

Tom Wright

What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…..What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbour as yourself – all these things will last into God’s future… They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom. (2007, p205)

Distinctively Christian?

Faithfulness to

the Christian

tradition in the

way that schools

undertake the

tasks of education

Uniqueness by

distinguishing

Christian

schools from

every other kind

of school

Tent of Meeting

Respectful witness

which

accommodates

differences and

unresolved

debate.

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