What is a worldview and Why is worldview integration so important for a Christian teacher to implement?
Assignment is attached. All chapters do not need to be read, they are there to browse if you’d like.
Requirements: 400 words
Biblical Worldview Paper Assignment Instructions
Overview
To prepare for this assignment, read the MacCullough (2016) textbook (Chapters 1-3 and 11-17) and view the Watch: Biblical Integration item in Module 4: Week 4. Then, write an informal essay that addresses the following four questions:
What is a worldview?
Why is worldview integration so important for a Christian teacher to implement?
What does it mean to “integrate”?
How can a teacher begin to develop worldview integrative activities into the curriculum regardless of whether they teach in a Christian, private, or public school setting?
Instructions
Your essay must follow these guidelines:
It must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document containing your last name in the file name (e.g., FritzBiblicalWorldviewAssignment.doc).
It must include a brief introduction and a brief conclusion.
It must have at least four complete paragraphs for the body (one for each question addressed). Each paragraph must contain a minimum of 100 words.
It must include at least one in-text citation for each paragraph. These may be specific references, quotes, examples, etc., from the text, the presentation, and/or credible websites in order to support your answers to each question.
It must include a title and references page using current APA format.
It must have Times New Roman 12-point font, be double spaced, and have one-inch margins.
It must contain proper grammar, spelling, mechanics, etc.
One
What Is a Worldview?
The term worldview enters the conversation of sports figures, political aspirants, news commentators, and writers, and may be found in blogs, tweets, and other social media daily. Often, it is used to label a divergent viewpoint: “They are coming at this from a different worldview” is a common statement today.
This current, rather sloppy usage of the term can be confusing. In order to understand a worldview approach to biblical integration, one must first be clear as to what constitutes a worldview and how that relates to biblical integration as a curricular issue.
Several common definitions, more targeted than the popular usage of the term, will be provided. From these, a composite working definition will be developed upon which to build a framework for the development of a worldview approach to biblical integration.
A Personal Journey in Defining Worldview
Worldviews are concerned with the basic, foundational questions of life: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose, if any, for the human being? Must we create a purpose? Disasters such as war or hate crimes precipitate a common worldview question: “What is wrong with our world?” A worldview answers these questions, among others.
Here is a typical dictionary definition of the term worldview, taken from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition: “The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group” (2011).
My early attempts to define and use the concept of a worldview in a school setting were before the term exploded in popularity. The first education-related definition that I encountered was in a resource book for sixth grade social studies. In The Human Adventure (1971), worldviews were “controlling ideas”—ideas or beliefs that control our actions. The book addressed nine questions answered by a worldview. Finding and using these questions was, for me, the beginning of the development of a worldview approach to biblical integration. My early definition of a worldview was simply “the controlling ideas or beliefs that answer the big questions of life and guide one’s thinking and acting.” I have modified that original definition by reading others on the topic since that time; however, that definition served as a beginning point.
After graduation from the Wheaton College graduate program, I fully intended to enter public education when my husband and I moved back to Philadelphia. However, at the invitation of my pastor, I ended up interviewing for a position in a Christian school. The school was seeking an interim principal because the current principal had been diagnosed with a lifethreatening disease. I took the position. This came with obvious responsibilities—developing a PE program and a library were first on the to-do list—but I had a deeper concern: what I should do differently in a Christian school than in a public school.
After a new permanent administrator was hired and my own children were both in school (preschool and first grade), I began to teach full-time, but the question stuck with me. Which aspects of the curriculum would be a distinguishing marker for truly Christian education? The journey to understand biblical integration began. I started with a “questions” approach, leading the class in answering the nine “controlling idea” questions for Christianity. This is how I began a worldview approach to biblical integration in a school setting. I have continued to develop the model ever since and have personally found this approach very natural and enriching.
A Sampling of Christian Definitions of “Worldview”
In Creation Regained, Dutch theologian Albert Wolters defines a worldview as “the comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things” (2005). “Things,” in his view, includes everything in our life and world “about which we can have beliefs.” In Wolters’ discussion of worldviews, he differentiates between a general philosophy of life, a theology, and a worldview. Wolters writes:
Whatever its semantic history, the term “worldview” (or its equivalent “world-and-life view”) seems to pinpoint a useful distinction between philosophy as a methodologically rigorous academic discipline … and the commonsense perspective on life and the world, the “system of values” or “ideology,” which in one form or another is held by all normal adult human beings regardless of intelligence or education. In this sense, worldview does indeed precede science, and is therefore quite different from philosophy in the strictly theoretical sense…. For Christian philosophers, the obvious implication is that they must seek to orient their philosophizing to a Christian worldview. Or to put the case a bit more strongly and accurately, the Christian must seek to philosophize on the basis of the Christian worldview—that is, the biblical worldview. (In Hart, Hoeven, and Wolterstroff 1983; emphasis added)
Using the above description of a worldview and a philosophy of life, it should be evident that most humans may not have a philosophy of life, but all have a worldview. Worldview precedes the development of a general philosophy—or an educational philosophy, for that matter. A philosophy has been analyzed, systematized, and intentionally accepted as a rigorous academic discipline. Worldviews are often messier and held without significant conscious critique. The development of worldview thinking is vital to all Christian school educators who desire to operate out of a distinctively Christian philosophical base, and it
Two
A Brief Historical View of Curricular Integration
Biblical worldview integration in an academic setting must be understood as a function of the curriculum. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the integrated curriculum has swung on a pendulum, alternately condemned as a “corruption of sound educational practices” or lauded as an answer to the shortcomings in the educational enterprise.
Curricular Integration in Schooling
The first major push to resolve the growing fragmentation of the K–12 curriculum in schools came in the 1920s with John Dewey’s Progressive movement. The early years of the movement stressed the societal benefit of education, as opposed to individual benefit that would later enter educational philosophy. Modern-day curricular wars have been fought over whether schooling exists for society or for personal development. Both philosophies have found curricular integration useful, though other educators, concerned about a diminished emphasis on content, reject the notion of curricular integration altogether.
Curricular integration has been part of educational conversation in Western school education for almost 100 years. It is still a prominent topic today in most teacher education curricula.
Recently, educators have revisited Ends and Means by Aldous Huxley, which addressed the weaknesses of education in the early twentieth century, focusing specifically on the two popular educational systems of the day: the academic school and the technical school. Neither style of education bore the fruit for which Huxley, a humanist, hoped:
Many of those who are able to stay the course of an academic education emerge from the ordeal either as parrots, gabbling remembered formulas which they do not really understand; or, if they do understand, as specialists, knowing everything about one subject and taking no interest in anything else; or, finally, as intellectuals, theoretically knowledgeable about everything, but hopelessly inept in the affairs of ordinary life. Something analogous happens to the pupils of technical schools. They come out into the world, highly expert in their particular job, but knowing very little about anything else and having no integrating principle in terms of which they can arrange and give significance to such knowledge as they may subsequently acquire. (1937; emphasis added)
Huxley goes on to suggest that a good education “is supposed to be simultaneously a device for fostering intelligence and the source of a principle of integration.”
Huxley found Western education lacking because it was fragmented. Education of the day did not enhance the human as a whole person. He was concerned that the integrating core of education, if any, was mainly scientific naturalism, which left out the human as a unique being. If human beings are simply part of the material universe, he wrote, one “doesn’t see why [humans] shouldn’t be handled as other parts of the material universe are handled: dumped here, like coal or sand, made to flow there, like water, ‘liquidated’ … like so much ice over a fire.” He called for a curriculum with an integrating principle for the entire educational enterprise. Rejecting the dehumanizing philosophy of scientific naturalism, Huxley proposed humanity itself as the integrating core.
Huxley’s book was reprinted in 2012, and is now experiencing a must-read status for those interested in curricular integration. Readers have remarked how up-to-date this 1937 work sounds. Today, however, the popular integrating principle is not the dehumanizing scientific naturalism that Huxley denounced, but rather multiple principles provided by alternative worldviews, most of which (intentionally or by default) propose the individual self as an integrating core.
Early Attempts to Develop Curricular Integration
Curricular integration has oscillated between being embraced and being ostracized in education, depending on the dominant educational philosophy of the day. The pioneers of curricular integration, intent on teaching students the value of education in a democracy, developed lessons to help students make sense of their ongoing schooling. Social studies served as the core for this society-focused education. Later, the language arts replaced social studies, only to be supplanted by science and math in the early 1960s, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Naturalism, and its focus on science, dominated educational reform for a time, and the curriculum fragmented again. Values education was relegated to the home, schools were for academics, and teaching was a scientific enterprise. Behaviorism reigned supreme as the scientific theory of learning. The curriculum was to be objective and scientific. There was to be little integration of cultural values. The humanities, existing outside the scientific field, were not a primary focus. America tested the values-neutral school curriculum and found it wanting.
Early progressivism’s emphasis on society met a challenge in existentialism, and the pendulum soon swung back toward personal development and personal choice. The humanities, though still not the major focus, were welcomed back into the curriculum.
Recently, the standards-based curriculum has come under fire for fragmenting education, reducing knowledge to bits and pieces of disparate content and trivializing content with high-stakes tests. The current innovation, the Common Core, has also come under fire. Educators promoting the Common Core assert that it combines the strong content of the standard-based curriculum with a focus on critical thinking and curricular integration, but this focus may not satisfy the critics. The integrating core—the knowledge thought to be most worth knowing—is usually the critical issue. In truth, curricular design is a philosophical matter!
Selecting the Integrating Principle in Curricular Integration
It was Herbert Spencer who wrote in the
Three
Defining and Describing Curricular Integration
“Marti,” my friend said, “I am furious! The school is talking about developing an integrated curriculum and I have been listening to the Christian radio commentators who say that this is a movement that will destroy good education and it is anti-Christian. What do you think of the integrated curriculum?”
I could only wonder where she had gotten her information—either the school in question had failed to describe the integrated curriculum, or my friend had picked up her opinions from biased sources. We chatted for a while, and the conversation was eye-opening. I had assumed curricular integration was well understood. I was wrong.
At times, we in Christian circles dismiss ideas and potential curricular changes without fairly evaluating them, just because they have been adopted and promoted in public education. This can be counterproductive to Christian education and one of the reasons that Christian teachers and administrators should be developing a philosophy of instruction informed by a Christian worldview. Educators need a cogent, thoroughly examined philosophy of education with which to evaluate new ideas. This chapter will offer a brief look at definitions and descriptions of curricular integration to help us frame what will be developed in the latter half of the book.
The General Concept of Integration
Take a minute to think of a definition for integration as it is used in media and in casual conversation. Write four or five descriptive words that come to mind when you think of the term and then write a definition that reflects how you currently use the terms integration, integral, or integrate. Compare your descriptive words to the dictionary definition below:
To incorporate into a larger unit; bringing together into a larger whole.
The Collins English Dictionary, among others, defines integration as “the act of combining or adding parts to make a unified whole.” Dictionary.com offers some helpful bullet points:
1. To bring together or incorporate (parts) into a whole.
2. To make up, combine, or complete to produce a whole or a larger unit.
Notice the concept of bringing together into a larger whole in the definitions above. This idea will be helpful as we examine what we need to do as we design the Christian school curriculum for worldview integration. What is the “larger whole” in biblical worldview integration? Is it just the eight or so biblical answers to worldview questions, or does it include more? A Christian worldview includes not only the view of reality as God sees it but also the knowledge from any domain of study that fits with that view. All disciplines in the school curriculum are God-ordained as part of His creative order, whether science, mathematics, social sciences, physical and social activity, or the humanities. All have some residual characteristics of their original creative design in spite of human sin.
Worldview integration is a connecting process as well as a distinguishing process. Thus, a biblical worldview grows as the basic questions of life are answered by a biblical view and enhanced by knowledge found in any area. Views that fit with a biblical worldview fortify worldview development. This is the growing “larger whole.” Further, when incompatible views are distinguished from a Christian view, the Christian view becomes more robust and distinctive in the mind. When knowledge found in specific areas clearly conflicts with Scripture, the distinguishing process acts as a contrast. When knowledge in specific areas clearly connects with a Christian biblical worldview, it serves as a complement, helping to expand the worldview. Students and the teacher develop a better understanding of people who hold to differing belief systems and can therefore appreciate them as human beings while distinguishing their own beliefs.
Integration in the Medical Profession
Merriam-Webster defines integration as “the coordination of mental processes into a normal effective personality or with the individual’s environment.” In this definition, integration leads to an effective, healthy personality.
The medical profession uses the term integration in relation to human health, paralleling Nicholi’s research in The Question of God.
When we observe Freud’s life and the life of Lewis before and after his conversion, we can’t help but observe how one’s worldview has a profound impact on one’s capacity to experience happiness. Lewis stated clearly that his pessimism and gloom were closely related to his atheism. His conversion experience changed his pessimism, gloom, and despair to joy, freedom from the burden of driving ambition, and many satisfying relationships. (2002)
Nicholi was curious to find out whether religious conversions “reflected pathology and a futile attempt to resolve severe inner conflict or escape reality” or something more. He writes that the students expressed a sense of joy and that a “newfound intense introspection made them more acutely aware—not less—of how far short they fell from the ideal of perfection their faith demanded.”
One might think that this new knowledge would make them less happy and despair all the more, but it had the opposite effect: “[Converted students] spoke of spiritual resources that give strength and renewed hope and that foster a more open, more tolerant, and more loving spirit toward others. They referred frequently to the theological concepts of redemption and forgiveness as being instrumental in reducing their self-hatred.” Other researchers have also found that those who suffer from depression but possess a
Eleven
A Pedagogical Model for Worldview Integration
Having looked at the nature of worldview thinking and some of the alternative systems of thought, we now address how to teach worldview thinking in a Christian educational setting. I have found over the years that presenting a model or approach to guide the actual design of the curriculum for integration of a biblical worldview has been helpful to teachers who have never tried anything other than prayer and occasional devotionals for their “biblical integration.”
The teaching model addressed in this book was developed over several decades. After obtaining my master’s degree, I returned with my family to Philadelphia, where my husband had accepted a faculty position at Philadelphia College of Bible (now Cairn University). I scheduled an interview at the local public school. However, the day of the interview I received a call from my pastor, who had started a Christian school several years earlier in response to the court cases that removed prayer and Bible reading from public schools.
The administrator of the Christian school had contracted a serious illness and the school board wanted an assistant principal/part-time teacher to be available in case someone was needed during the school year.
I took the job and found myself in a Christian school setting instead of a public school. All of my basic education had been in public schools, so I was at a disadvantage in trying to distinguish what a Christian school should really look like. After about three weeks, I asked myself, “What should I be doing differently here than I would be doing if I had taken the job at the public school?” I knew that parents wanted prayer and Bible reading in class, but there had to be something more. That question led to the development of the model for biblical integration shared in this book.
I considered myself an integrated person. At Wheaton College, I had been required to read everything Francis Schaeffer had written up to that time. I used that experience as well as my Bible knowledge (acquired formally at Cairn University, and informally in individual and group study) to develop my own biblically informed worldview. I knew how important it was to be whole in thought and actions, in scholarship, and in community. I wanted to live an undivided life, wholeheartedly committed to Christ, but I did not know how to help my students do the same. I wanted to affect a kind of learning that would lead to a coherent, biblical view of life and learning. I wanted to teach in such a way that students would consciously connect math with science, science with the language arts, literature with the social sciences—and all of learning to the integrating core of biblical truth. I found that student processing activities opened up opportunities for worldview integration, so I was on my way.
The more I interrelated subject matter, the more opportunities I had for worldview integration. While teaching a sixth grade class, I found a suggestion in the teacher’s edition of the textbook to have students research the similarities between the Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant. I sent my students to the library to read the “Piltdown Man” entries in the archived 1950 Columbia Encyclopedia and the current World Book Encyclopedia. In the old encyclopedia, the Piltdown Man was reported as the missing link science had been looking for since Darwin’s day. The new World Book declared the Piltdown finding to be a hoax like the Cardiff Giant. The Piltdown hoax had been believed by the scientific community for more than 40 years.
In comparing and contrasting the two stories, students learned about scientific hoaxes and began to understand that ongoing investigation and advances in technology make science open to change. We compared the concept of “change” in science knowledge to the unchangeableness in the Word of God. Students listed some of the major scientific questions addressed in the Bible, as well as the natural phenomena that are not. This led to a wonderful discussion of whether the answers to all questions can be found in the Bible.
This experience propelled me into a lifelong project. I looked at every enrichment and expansion activity in the curriculum guide, seeking opportunities to integrate the lesson with a biblical worldview. It took the next five or six years to begin to develop the model shared here.
Models for Integration in Christian Schools
Before developing a worldview model or approach to biblical integration, several other approaches that are practiced today must be addressed. I have observed three models in Christian academic settings: the Interpersonal/Spontaneous Model, the Parallel Model, and the Integrating Core Model.
The Interpersonal/Spontaneous Model
“Oh yes, I biblically integrate. Anytime a student has a question that relates to both the subject and the Bible, I answer it using a little sermon or devotional. You really don’t need to plan for integration if you are an integrated person. Opportunities just pop up!”
This model assumes that the teacher is an integrated person who will consciously look for the teachable moments and spontaneously integrate as content promotes questions and connections. There are no curricular activities planned in the lesson.
This approach is indeed necessary, but not sufficient for the Christian school or for any school wishing to have an integrated
Twelve
Engaging Cognitive Interactive Lessons
Marsha:
“I try to use best practices in my classroom and for me those come from cognitive learning approaches.”
Alex:
“I tried some of those methods after graduating from university, but they just don’t work in my subject areas. I teach Bible and history and these two subjects just lend themselves to a more telling model.”
Marsha:
“I am not talking about methods we use. I’m talking about using an approach to teaching that fits with an understanding of how humans learn.”
Alex:
“But what about Bible, Marsha? Don’t those cognitive approaches just lead to students pooling their ignorance without biblical knowledge? Is that real learning?”
This chapter addresses some of the fallacies and misunderstandings related to human learning, including the learning of various subject areas. It is true that some teachers excuse their subjects from an approach derived from learning theory because they think that the subject they teach is outside the bounds of the theory. However, the innate nature of human learning remains the same, at every level and in every subject area. I mention this misconception because some view biblical integration as primarily Bible teaching. Where the Bible is concerned, teachers sometimes abandon their well-developed theory of learning and revert to “preaching” or “sharing.” With the above in mind, the next two chapters address how all humans learn, regardless of age level or subject.
How Do Humans Learn?
Cognitive interactive learning theories attempt to explain how humans learn. Just as behaviorism claimed to be the first true scientific theory of learning because it uses observable behaviors as data, cognitive interactive theory also claims to be scientific because it, too, uses observable behaviors as evidence for cognition and learning.
Answers to the age-old question of how humans learn are offered by learning theorists of various persuasions. Their research and conclusions are promoted in educational psychology books studied in schools of education. Some teachers, however, have not examined the major questions about the nature of human learning, nor have they been encouraged to inform their understandings using a biblical perspective. Therefore, they may be easily swept away by every new “theoretical panacea” that comes along, or they may become cynical and close-minded to new research and new ideas altogether. Neither option is very productive.
What follows is designed to stimulate serious thinking about the question of how humans learn in order to promote effective teaching. “What is a human being?” and “How do humans learn?” are themselves worldview questions that should be integrated with one’s Christian beliefs as an educator. It is a part of one’s instructional philosophy.
Teachers who have read and studied in the current field of learning theory might have conversations in the teacher’s lounge that sound like this.
Marge:
“What do you think about the article on integrative teaching and constructive learning? I don’t think I can buy into this approach. New fads like constructivism and integrative learning really champion the processes of knowing and ignore the content.”
Jason:
“Really? I thought the focus in the article was on something being ‘constructed’ by the mind as it interacts with incoming information. Materials or content are needed for construction of meaning. Aren’t they?”
Marge:
“I guess so, but the theory is all about what students do in coming up with their own personal knowledge and not about the material to be learned. There are no standards other than the personal constructions of the learner. I thought that the theory was totally anti-Christian anyway. And anyway, our subject matter curriculum committee will be out of work.”
Tamara:
“That may not be so bad. I’m on that committee! Look, anyone can use constructivist, behaviorists, humanist, or whatever, methods. You don’t have to buy into the theory behind it. Theories are schemes of understanding, not methods.”
Jason:
“You may be right, Tamara. The article is addressing theory and just adds some methods for illustrations. Anyway, I thought that constructivism was a theory of learning rather than a theory of teaching.”
Tamara:
“I am a teacher; I just use what works! This fad will blow over just like the last ten! Remember when the principal made us all try the flipped classroom?”
The issue under review in the teacher’s lounge reflects some confusion related to the nature of cognitive interactive learning. Broadly speaking, constructive theories stand in stark contrast to reactive theories such as behaviorism. Constructivism, on the other hand, is a constructive theory that holds to an underlying set of beliefs that address the nature of the human learner and the nature and source of knowledge. Constructivism’s theory of knowledge and implications for learning are the problem for many Christians today. Constructivism weds psychology and philosophy, and as such must be examined by Christian educators.
In Psychology and the Human Dilemma, psychologist Rolo May comments that, “The critical battles between approaches to psychology … will be on the battleground of the image of man—that is to say, on the conceptions of man, which underlie the empirical research.” May was a humanistic existentialist who, at the time of his writing, argued that
Thirteen
A Cognitive Interactive Model for Teaching
Those of us who are educators can thank (or blame) German philosopher and educator, Johann Friedrich Herbart, for the existence of lesson plans. He was the first to formalize the process. In some ways, he was ahead of his time in thinking about human learning. In his view, the mind uses the known to learn the unknown, similar to the popular concept of using prior knowledge to make sense of new knowledge. Herbart’s view of human nature and learning, however, viewed the student as a passive recipient of information poured in by the teacher. To him, ideas were dynamic and active, not the mind of the student. He did not focus on the cognitive capacity of the student, but on the organization of information by the teacher.
Herbart’s elements of a lesson plan were: Clearness, Association, System, and Method. These four steps became five when students brought Herbart’s theory to America in the 1880s. Teacher thinking followed this line of preparation:
• Prepare the students to be ready for the new lesson.
• Present the new lesson.
• Associate the new lesson with ideas studied earlier.
• Use examples to illustrate the lesson’s major points.
• Test students to ensure that they had learned the new lesson (Dunkel 1969).
In the model above, who does the thinking for the new lesson? The teacher! While the labels of this teaching/learning model could be used as labels for the Cognitive Interactive model described in the previous chapter, the learning theory behind the model would be very different and yield different results. Herbart’s lesson plan was very content-centered rather than learning-centered.
A Learning Model Leads to a Teaching Model
Labels for a model, on their own, do not promote effective student learning. This is true of any human learning theory. Underlying beliefs about the nature of the student and knowing must be considered first. Too often teachers are given a template to use in preparing lessons without an understanding of the theory behind it.
A learning model conceptualizes how we think humans learn. A teaching model addresses what we think is the best way to promote learning; it is rooted in how we think humans learn. The development moves from human learning theory to a teaching model (based on the learning theory) to lesson plans (based on the teaching model).
Methods, in contrast to models, are the tools we use to work through the plan to promote learning. Methods are simply activities used in the learning event to carry out the elements of the lesson. (The term “activities” here refers to methodology rather than to learning theory or a teaching model.) Methods are usually described in terms of the language arts: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Under these four categories are numerous specific methods from which to choose.
An understanding of the teaching event as equally utilizing inside and outside factors is vitally important in interactive human learning: what the student is thinking and processing is just as important as what the teacher is thinking and delivering! Thus, “student processing activities” (designed by the teacher, the curriculum writers, or both) are an important element of learning. The focus is on what the student is doing with the new material. To carry out this element of a good lesson, the teacher must include activities that require the student to manipulate new information. The activities help the student fit the new knowledge with their own meaning schemes, as well as clarify, comprehend, store, and retrieve it later. These activities also promote the joy of learning.
Lesson Objectives
Objectives should be written in terms of the student and what the student will be able to do to show understanding of, and potential action related to the big idea of the lesson and related facts. Because cognitive interactive theory uses student behaviors as evidence for learning, the objective for the big idea of a lesson is very important.
Lesson objectives become very important as teachers write worldview objectives for lessons that address worldview questions. Cognitive theorists focus on big ideas around which related facts are organized. Facts are important, but they are organized around concepts and categories. The lesson and unit always move from the whole (the big idea) to the parts (supporting facts) and back to the whole. (This is very much unlike behaviorism, which moves from part to part to part to part, assuming the student will consequently understand the big idea of the lesson.) Studying the whole and then the parts before returning to the larger whole enables more students to grasp the main idea and develop the concept or skill. A biblical worldview objective may be integrated into the big idea objective or written as a separate objective, but it must be articulated somehow. Writing objectives for a lesson keeps the teacher moving toward the targeted focus.
The Delivery Elements of a Good Cognitive Interactive Lesson
Elements (not necessarily steps) of a good cognitive interactive lesson include:
Motivation: Engaging the Mind of the Student
The teacher develops an activity to activate the student’s mind toward the lesson at hand, engaging prior knowledge or prior experiences and creating questions or problems to be addressed. (Suitable activities are sometimes provided in the curriculum lesson materials.) A motivation
Fourteen
Student Processing Activities and Critical Thinking
Although this book is about worldview integration and not learning theory per se, it must be stated that true integration cannot be accomplished in a classroom in which students are spoon-fed material rather than encouraged to process new knowledge. Learning is more than giving back notes in rote form for a test. This is why several chapters of this book are specifically designed to address the topic of human learning theory and applications. The last chapter offered a lesson template using the elements of a cognitive interactive approach to learning and teaching. This chapter continues to connect human learning to worldview integration.
Developing a Disposition Toward Biblical Worldview Integration
Teachers who utilize a teaching model such as the one presented in the last chapter are well on their way to the development of this approach to biblical integration. However, they must have a disposition toward adapting the curriculum for the purpose of worldview thinking. Teachers must understand the importance of having one’s worldview informed by and conformed to God’s view. As educators, we must understand that this is a curricular issue.
I often hear teachers comment that doing biblical integration will take too much time out of the curriculum and away from things that must be covered. This is a misunderstanding. The approach developed in this book does not take time from the curriculum; it makes the curriculum more robust and learning more coherent. Worldview integration is not an addition to the curriculum but an integral part of it. It promotes one of the current goals of the curriculum: the development of critical thinking. If we are serious about Christian education, we cannot afford to ignore biblical integration. But to further promote a disposition and to demonstrate that this approach is not outside the regular curriculum, this chapter will address worldview integration as the process of critical thinking, a common goal in education today.
The Process of Critical Thinking
In “The Thought-Filled Curriculum,” Arthur Costa wrote, “Humans are born with the capacity and inclination to think. Nobody has to ‘teach us how to think’ just as no one teaches us how to move or walk” (2008).
Thinking is a natural internal mental process that uses information, new or prior, as input and integrates it into meaning schemes and previously learned information and experiences. Thinking is at the heart of human learning. A Christian view will note that thinking is related to our nature as image-bearers: we think because God thinks.
A classical definition of critical thinking, which has been commonly accepted for nearly 100 years, is “the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not” (Sumner 1940).
There is a standard for the critiquing process. Does the thinking about a proposition, a statement that can be judged true or false, correspond to what is the actual case? Correspondence to reality is the standard.
The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking uses the following definition:
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. (Scriven and Paul 1987; emphasis added)
Postmodernism and Critical Thinking
In our postmodern pop culture, critical thinking is understood as thinking that involves using your own knowledge or point of view to decide whether or not someone else’s ideas are right or wrong. For example, Thomas and Thorne write:
Another way to form ideas is to use critical thinking. This involves a person using his own knowledge or point of view to decide what is right or wrong about someone else’s ideas. This is sometimes called “having a mind of your own.” It means that a person doesn’t have to believe or accept everything that someone else says or writes. (2009)
The last statement is certainly true about critical thinking. However, the standard is, “my own knowledge or point of view.” No wonder there is little civil debate of ideas on TV talk shows. To express their own point of view, guests and hosts have to talk over one another rather than debating the idea with substance.
It is no wonder that those who hold to Sumner’s classical definition are suspicious of the attempts to develop critical thinking in schools today. Many decry the blatant rejection of an external standard for knowledge. For example, one educational activist is strongly suspicious of school attempts at developing critical thinking in this postmodern culture and believes that “critical thinking is typically used to tell students that they should not trust conventional wisdom, tradition, religion, parents, and all that irrelevant, old-fashioned stuff. Critical thinking, somewhat surprisingly, also turns out to be highly contemptuous of facts and knowledge” (Deitrick Price 2015).
The word “critical” is closely related to two Greek words: kriticos, meaning discerning judgment, and kriterion, meaning standards. Critical thinking, therefore, involves the process of judging—a “critique”—and a criterion, or standard, by which to judge. These are two components of the methodology for a worldview approach to biblical integration, as well. Integrating is the process, and the standard for truth-judging is the set of biblical answers
Fifteen
A Planning Cycle for Worldview Integration
“Where do I begin?”
I love to hear this question because it indicates that standing before me is one who really wants to teach worldview thinking in the school curriculum. Sometimes, however, an administrator will follow my presentation with the mandate for teachers to make sure that biblical integration is done in every lesson. I know that the administrator means well and really wants a school that promotes worldview integration, but I also know that the approach in this book is limited to the places in the curriculum where worldview questions are identified in the lesson and where activities to process the lesson information can be done naturally rather than tacked on. This chapter is dedicated to the task of helping teachers get started with the task of worldview integration.
After understanding worldview thinking and a worldview approach to biblical integration in the curriculum, one might use the following planning cycle.
At number four in the cycle, individual teachers are planning individual lessons or units. Below is a way to think about lesson planning that helps a teacher avoid just tacking on something biblical to the lesson rather than embedding it naturally into the lesson. Start with a lesson plan template. I have used the cognitive interactive plan described in Chapter 13.
Developing a Regular Cognitive Interactive Lesson Plan
Study and Preparation
1. Study the materials and determine the big idea of the lesson. Highlight the relevant events, concepts, facts, ideas, or skill development sequence to expand and reinforce the big idea.
2. Formulate a target understanding and response and convert these targets into instructional objective(s). (“The student will be able to …”)
3. Ask: “How will I know whether or not the student understands and can use the new learning?” Refer to the big idea. Write a tentative assessment activity in the plan: a scenario, performance, or question.
4. Ask: “What worldview questions are addressed and answered in this lesson?” If one is identified, write it, answer it, and be ready to develop an objective, a possible assessment, and an activity.
Recall the four elements of a cognitive interactive lesson plan:
• Motivation
• Student processing activities
• New information/concept or skill development
• Assessment
Delivery
5. Design a motivation activity to engage the mind. When possible, use the prior knowledge and experiences of the student or arouse curiosity or set up a question or problem. Make sure this activity fits with the big idea of the lesson in some way and is not designed just to get attention. The motivation activity may also be an introduction to the worldview processing activity in the lesson.
6. Provide a way for the student to receive the new information: labs, hands-on activities, guided inductive study, writing and sharing, discovery of a rule, research activity, storytelling, lecture, DVD or video, Internet search, paraphrased reading/writing response to content, etc.
7. Design student processing activities to help promote understanding and/or envision action. Ask: “How can the students fit in the new information with previous knowledge and their own life experience and developing biblical worldview?” This part of the lesson is essential for worldview integration.
8. Revise or add the tentative assessment. Worldview learning should be assessed as part of the lesson, just as any other school learning. For the summative assessment for a mini-unit, the worldview integration assessment should be assessed alongside the unit; it should not be assessed separately.
Expanding Worldview Integrative Planning
1. Take a lesson you have studied and laid out on the plan above or some other plan you use. Develop the lesson with a big idea, important related facts, and student processing activities. I recommend using the cognitive interactive model if you have no other preference.
2. If you identified any worldview questions in the lesson material, do the following:
a) Write and answer the worldview question(s). This is important for keeping focused.
b) State the general worldview question and write it specifically for the lesson at hand. If, for example, you are studying seeds in plants and the cycle of growth, the broad worldview question is, “What is the nature of the external world?” A sub-question specific to this lesson is, “How did God design the world of plant life in order to sustain living things?” A lesson on seeded plants and the food cycle provides an opportunity to connect clearly to the worldview issue of God’s sustaining work through the processes of nature, specifically seed-bearing plants (Genesis 1:29–30).
c) Write a biblical worldview objective that fits the question(s) addressed and a tentative assessment. For the lesson on seeded plants, an example objective would be, “The student will be able to describe the cycle of growth for seeded plants and write a psalm of thanks to God for His design for food.”
As an assessment, teachers can use the pattern of a psalm, such as Psalm 136a: “Give thanks to the Lord, for …” Have the students finish the sentence using as much as they remember about their lesson on plants. The class can make a booklet of completed “psalms.” (Use a rubric to help the students remember elements of the science unit or lesson).
3. In the lesson plan,
Sixteen
Example of a Worldview Approach to Biblical Integration
Examples can be helpful in seeing how to flesh out a model. A sample of teaching a Bible lesson using a cognitive interactive approach is provided in Appendix Three. Additional examples are found in previous chapters. This chapter provides a more extensive example on a single, widely taught topic.
A schoolwide worldview approach to biblical integration can help combat the inability to articulate one’s worldview, a problem experienced by many Christians. This approach can also help prevent the absorption of the prevailing views in the culture. However, if a school does not practice biblical worldview integration, individual teachers can still determine to do the best they can with the students God has given them.
A Non-Example of Biblical Integration
Sometimes it is helpful to envision what biblical integration is not in order to solidify what it is. In a workshop for school administrators on the topic of biblical integration, delegates were asked to share some of the ways their teachers were carrying out the mandate for biblical integration in their schools.
One administrator said, “For a lesson on photosynthesis, a sixth grade teacher had the students compare the elements plants need to make food to what we need in our spiritual lives to grow.” The teacher’s PowerPoint looked something like this:
Sun — Son (the Son of God)
Water — Word (the Word of God)
Air — Spirit (the Holy Spirit)
There is nothing wrong with using analogies to describe spiritual concepts. Jesus compared Himself to bread, light, a good shepherd, and so on. Clearly, however, this is not a worldview approach to biblical integration. It takes the mind of the student away from the lesson at hand and moves it to spiritual growth; it becomes a devotional substitute for the connecting or distinguishing biblical answers to the worldview issue of the nature of the external world; and it substitutes Bible teaching for integrated science teaching and thus further develops a dichotomy of thinking. It may even contribute to the practice of separating the “secular” from the “sacred.”
True Biblical Integration
The example below uses the integrating core model developed in this book to integrate photosynthesis with a biblical worldview. Activities are first developed for lower elementary and then for middle school or early high school.
Concept: Photosynthesis
Preparing the Lesson
1) The teacher will thoroughly prepare the individual science lessons or unit. I recommend the use of the cognitive interactive model/template described in this book. It fits very well with a directed inquiry approach to science. Having a disposition toward a worldview approach to biblical integration, the teacher will study the unit and proposed lessons looking for worldview questions addressed. Since this is a science unit, it will at least address the nature of the external world.
2) In understanding the structure of science and the worldview issues usually addressed, the teacher might list the broadly stated worldview issues in science: God exists; God designed and created; God sustains His creation using laws He has built into nature and using humans He created with the capacity to discover and use those laws (part of the cultural mandate); His creatures owe Him thanks. (Romans 11:36 and Acts 17 are good passages to remind us of the last one).
3) Worldview questions addressed in the lesson or mini-unit are numerous. The teacher writes these and answers them. For example:
What is the nature of the external world? (Designed, created.) The teacher determines whether or not this concept is evident, tacitly omitted, or challenged in the lesson.
What kind of God is the Creator? (Loving sustainer.) Is the concept of sustaining life as a result of the process of photosynthesis evident in the lesson?
What is a human being? (One who is created to discover and learn about God’s laws of nature, to use them for good, and to be thankful for what God has created and His ongoing provisions for life.) How are humans portrayed in the lesson, especially in the relationships among plants, animals, and humans?
4) A teacher might think, “My desire as a science teacher is to teach the subject with excellence. Biblical integration does not substitute a Bible lesson for the science lesson. It teaches good science, brings the new knowledge together with issues, and answers worldview questions from a biblical perspective that give meaning to the Christian life. The science knowledge is vital, a part of God’s revelation to humans.”
In addition, a teacher who is thinking biblically with a disposition toward worldview integration might think, “My desire as a Christian teacher is to consciously connect the new science learning to the God who provides our food and oxygen through that process and thus sustains our lives. We owe Him thanks for our continued existence—for life itself!”
5) Once the worldview questions have been specified and written in terms specific to the lesson or unit, an objective will be written that includes a worldview issue or a worldview objective will be written separately. Below are several worldview objectives that might we used when photosynthesis is taught in the early elementary and middle school levels.
EARLY ELEMENTARY UNIT
Big idea objective of the mini-unit: Photosynthesis is one
Seventeen
Walking the Talk!
Worldview integration is more than a school mission or vision statement. It is more than a scurry of worldview activity before an accreditation team visit. It is more than a one-time professional development workshop. It is an ongoing intentional process that is carried out in the strategic design of the curriculum in a Christian academic institution.
Living a Biblical Worldview
A few years ago, I read The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs, an agnostic Jew. It is a wonderful, hilarious, and provocative book recording a year-long project of living by the values and rules of the Bible as literally as possible. At the end of the year, Jacobs was still agnostic, but a more “reverent agnostic.” He admitted that the process had made him more religious (though it was his own cafeteria religion) and a more thankful person. He wrote, “I’m not sure whom I’m thanking, but I have become addicted to the act of thanking.”
A one-year long project! Some of us in Christian education will have our students for just one year; others will have many more. Biblical Christianity is more than trying to live the dos and don’ts of the Bible as external add-ons to life; it is more than Bible class or chapel (although these serve very important purposes in a Christian school). This book has offered an approach to the ongoing “project” of biblical worldview integration.
Recently in church, I sang along to “How Great is Our God.” The song brought to mind a contrast to Christopher Hitchens’ book, God Is Not Great, mentioned earlier in this book. It struck me that the world needs more than our singing—more than the call to “sing with me how great is our God.” Our world needs to see Christians live wholly for God with undivided hearts and minds, viewing all of life from God’s perspective—walking the talk.
Christianity is more than small group or Sunday morning worship. It is more than singing of the greatness of God, although music is such a natural way to praise the Lord and I love it! It is more than memorizing verses and praying. Rather, it is a change in thinking and acting in accordance with a biblically informed mind and it should penetrate all of life. It should lead to knowing the One we thank, and it should last beyond the years we may have the students. Our scholarship and academic activities should soundly manifest a distinctively Christian worldview. It takes not only a disposition and know-how, but also dedicated work. But it is eternally worth it!
We live at a time in history when sociologists have identified popular “Christianity” among our youth as something other than orthodox biblical Christianity. This popular version is not understood to be a particular worldview, but rather a new “religion” heavily influenced by the ideology of individualism. Researchers from the University of North Carolina have concluded that youth today have a set of beliefs that have been self-chosen (Smith and Lundquist Denton). This echoes the self-chosen beliefs shown in Life of Pi.
Some of the beliefs of this generation of youth include a belief in God. For example: There is a God who created the world and is available when we have a problem. The primary goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. God wants people to be nice and fair with each other as taught by most world religions. These beliefs have been categorized under the label “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” “The radical transformation of Christian theology and Christian beliefs replaces the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of self” (Mohler 2015).
If he were alive today, what would Abraham Kuyper say about the supreme sovereignty vying for the minds of youth in our generation? That sovereignty has moved from the church, to the state, to science, and now to the self! The human self has become the starting point of several very popular worldviews. This “Selfie” generation is the cultural context in which God has called us to teach the young.
Conclusion
Developing biblical worldview integration in the strategic design of the curriculum will take every bit as much work for classroom teachers as the most important lesson or unit. It will take preparation and planning, study and commitment. It takes a pedagogical model and practice. But it will be very worthwhile.
I hope that one day, one of the students whom I taught will receive a Nobel prize and declare his work to the glory of God—unlike the scientific naturalist who, when he won the Nobel prize for his work in the discovery of DNA, declared that the human is just a piece of junk.
I want my students to look at the mountains and the hills and declare something entirely different than the prayer of the religious humanist (“The world of stars, atoms, hill, trees [is] the source and final repository of my being”). I want my students to have a lifetime of worship directed toward God, the Creator, rather than toward the hills, His creation. Worldview beliefs matter!
I want my students to be good stewards of the earth. I want them to have a solid biblical view of care for the environment and an understanding of the relationships between living
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