As we conclude this series of articles by examining the work of teaching, let me ask a few more questions. Whether in the church setting or not, what are some of your best memories of teachers and teaching? What formal or informal teaching approaches most helped you learn and grow, and what made the difference? As you teach, to what extent do the shape and nature of your text and the goal of your teaching determine how you arrange and present the material? How do you come at the subject and invite your listeners to participate with you in hearing from the text and the Lord? How do you guide your hearers to integrate the learning into their lives? Keeping in mind what we have found in the first three articles, here are a few suggestions for increasing our teaching effectiveness.
The Nature of Teaching – How would you describe teaching, and what should be the goal of teaching? How do your learners understand the nature and goal of teaching? I believe teaching is a work of facilitating learning rather than conveying information, and I believe the goal of teaching should be transformation and overall growth in Christ-likeness rather than the recollection of facts or even the ability to state the theoretical application of those facts.
The Relationship of Teaching to the Overall Church Purpose – In our first article, I pointed out that teaching is only one function in the overall work of the church and thus, only part of how the church makes Christ-like followers of Jesus. So, let’s look at teaching in relationship to the larger purpose. First, formation in Christ may be facilitated through every aspect of the church’s life and function, and traditionally-conceptualized teaching times (Sunday school, small groups, discipleship meetings) may be used to help learners process the various aspects of church life in relationship to the Scriptures and to overall Christian formation. Second, a safe teaching context may be used as a sort of Biblical laboratory where we use life experience and church experiences as the real-world material for exploring our Biblical knowledge and the integration of Biblical teaching to life and church. [Note: there are more and less “safe” groups for doing this and more or less “safe” levels of disclosure and subjects of conversation.] Third, teaching may be worked into other church functions and settings. For instance, envision a deacon meeting, finance committee meeting, or other setting where an issue is discussed. Now, think about how you might teach asking something like, “What do we know from God’s Word that helps us understand this issue, and what we might do about it?” or “What action on this issue is most true to God’s Word and what we believe about Christian life?” You may also have to address some issue with direct Biblical correction in some private or public interaction. My experience has been that people tend to leave Biblical learning in the Sunday school room even though we Baptists claim to use the Bible as our guide.
Mental Models, Basic Assumptions, and Prior Knowledge – Learners bring certain things to the learning experience. Their prior knowledge and experiences shape how they hear and interact with the material, the Lord, each other, and you. They have subconscious and conscious understandings about how things work, how the Bible should or should not address life, what is and is not true, etc. Allow for these, and help learners surface and articulate them so the learning material and discoveries have a better chance of having an impact. One example of this issue, although by far not the only manifestation of it, is the reality that some people tend to think there is one lesson for any given passage, even though Scripture is much richer than that.
The Beauty of Interaction – One of the great things about teaching, is that it can be discussion-based and interactive. This does not mean Bible study should be an unguided time of voicing equally accepted ideas of what each person feels a certain passage says to him or her. As a professor of mine used to say, “Any passage says one thing. It does not say one thing to you and something else to me.” The passage may impact us differently, as it meets us at different places in life and experience, but it says one thing. A teacher needs to convey (or facilitate discovery of) what a passage says, along with helpful background information and learning supports, but you facilitate deeper learning by guiding interaction with the text and the subject. Questions, discussion, and other learning activities come help the teacher and learners surface mental models and assumptions, discover why they need what the passage is teaching, and lay their lives and church alongside the principles to develop faithfulness in Christian life. So, discussion should not consist simply of asking learners to give information or basic application. It should have learners identify and interact with the Biblical principles, ideally relating them to other Biblical principles, evaluating life based on those principles, and constructing a Biblical approach to life and church. One final note about interactive teaching – you need to arrange the teaching space to be conducive to interaction.
Formative Assessment and Summative Assessment – Formative assessment happens at the front end of teaching and consists of discovering relevant prior knowledge, mental models, and assumptions brought to the learning context. Summative assessment is finding out, at the end of the teaching time, how effective the teaching was as gauged by learners’ grasp of the truths in accordance with your teaching objectives. In an ongoing teaching context, summative assessment is formative assessment because it tells you what needs to be addressed moving forward. As you think about assessment, avoid closed-ended questions, as they do not elicit as helpful of responses as do open-ended questions.
I want to encourage you to be a learning teacher. There is so much more you can research that will help you teach more effectively. You may want to read about such topics as age-appropriate teaching methods, creative teaching strategies, learning styles, concrete vs. abstract thinkers, inductive vs. deductive teaching, the use of different types of media, and how to set up a teaching space for optimum learning.
Photo Credit: Cover photo used by permission of Andy Barlow of Barlow Creative of Rockport, TX