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Five Resources on Teaching Methods

Over the past several decades academic and professional perspectives on methods of Religious Education have made a radical shift. No longer do religious educators focus on the weekly schooling model or how to begin a Sunday school assembly. Instead, educators wrestle with how the whole faith community educates and forms persons, and how faith communities embody their beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes. Still, religious teachers teach, and learners come seeking enrichment, challenge, and transformation. Children, youth and young adults, and adults of all ages encounter teachers of the faith in congregations large and small. How can these well-intentioned practitioners teach most effectively, and how can these well-deserving learners be engaged with the faith in all its fullness? Methods matter. Even after all these years, observation suggests that many teachers of faith continue to teach the way they were taught, depending heavily on lecture or discussion oft-dominated by a vocal few. Many of our teaching settings continue to practice the “banking model,” made famous by Paulo Freire to characterize education that “opens the vault” of the learner’s head and “deposits” knowledge within the (empty) cavity inside. One-sided, one-way, the banking model assumes the teacher has everything (knowledge, God’s power/presence) and the learner does not: the teacher pours in and— at worst—the learner “pours out” in regurgitation of the lesson, rote memorization, or—at best—putting the new learning into practice. In this is good news for teachers: instead of the teacher’s ability to teach being most important in the teaching–learning process, “the truth . . . is that it is the learner’s participation in the learning experience that is the key to effective learning” (Galindo 1998, 156). Karen Tye (2000) stresses that the most effective learning processes are those that are experiential, reflective, and relational. We have yet to incorporate all we have learned about teaching processes that more faithfully embody our faith convictions, and that enable learners of all ages to engage and be engaged by the Holy so they may learn, grow, and be transformed.