Wednesday, February 08, 2023

Theological Education as “Being With” the Future Church – some AngelWings Ltd applied research

I’m delighted to have an Applied Research Abstract on Theological Education published in Review of Religious Research. Steve Taylor, “Theological Education as “Being With” the Future Church: Applied Research Among Local Leaders in an Australian Baptist Denomination,” Review of Religious Research, DOI: 10.1007/s13644-021-00480-z.

Here is part of the conclusion:

“A changing world presents significant opportunities for theological colleges and seminaries to re-invent themselves. Providers of theological formation have a significant role in resourcing the future church, particularly as they attend to collaborative and relational partnerships … [including] a renewed focus on local contextual theologies, empirical research, and grassroots partnerships. Such participation requires accompanying the local church, not as a problem to be fixed or a base for recruitment, but in a shared human quest to learn in change.”

The Applied Research Abstract draws on research I did in 2021 for Whitley College (working with René Erwich and Darrell Jackson) and the Baptist Union of Victoria, listening to some 47 stakeholders. The complete report belongs to Whitley College Board.

However, the Review of Religious Research is a journal that uniquely facilitates the sharing and comparing of applied studies between denominational and academic researchers. They offer four types of articles – Original Research Articles, Research Notes, Review Articles, and Applied Research Abstracts. The Applied Research Abstract is a type of article that summarises (without any references) an applied research study. So, in dialogue with Whitley, some of the research can now be shared more widely.

The article is online and paywalled, but if folk want a pre-publication copy, just DM me.

Posted by steve at 08:37 AM

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Coding as pattern making

Coding. Definition – assigning a code for the purpose of identifying.

coding

One of the research projects I’m involved in explores faith formation in church schools. I have several rich 7,000-word interviews with school chaplains. To identify learnings, I am coding. Often I code with highlighters.

This time I am coding with Word document highlighters. On the right, the Word highlighter printed out to increase my efficiency. In the centre my codes by colour and in writing. On the left and on screen one of the 7,000-word transcripts (partially obscured to preserve confidentiality) and with various colours visible as I use the Word highlighter to mark bits of the interview. Plus the Word comment function for me to write notes. Cut and pasted these notes are becoming draft results and discussion – identifying the patterns of faith formation present in the lived ministries of school chaplains, as shared through interviews as they reflect on their practice.

Slow work. Rich and listening work. Fascinating patterns emerging.

Posted by steve at 08:10 PM

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

on being an indie educator

“Indie” as a noun involves what is small and independent. “Indie” as an adjective involves not belonging or affiliated to a major record or film company.

Which means I’m an “indie” educator. I’m running independent educational events. These are not connected to any major academic organisations.

Because I’m indie

  • I don’t work in a classroom. Instead, I offer educational experiences in cafes and community centres and online
  • I forge different participation relationships, choosing to work in teams to enhance accountability and interaction and diversity of voice
  • I do my own advertising. I use Zoom and Vimeo to make short videos that introduce and invite
  • I handle my own registrations. I use google docs to handle enrolments and seek to clarify  expectations
  • I don’t have a library. So I look for children’s stories read on Youtube and use Scannable app to add key resources. I use Wakelet and look for links to other public square resources
  • I conduct my own student evaluations, gaining feedback using post-it notes and evaluations

For example, one of my current “indie” educator events is Learn Local. It involves a Saturday immersion experience, followed by 4 online evenings. I worked to form accountable relationships with local ministers and sound artists. Some of the video’s are here and here and the Learn local Wakelet course resources are here.

The evaluations from Saturday asked people to identify learnings and explain Learn Local to a friend and in response, they said things like:

stimulating, informative, thought-provoking;
a way to develop thought processes, develop relationships that enable you to discover your own answers;
a good way of getting ideas for mission in our community;
a curated theological reflection group

I’m an indie educator. I’m not sure how long it will last but I’m enjoying meeting people I’d never meet inside existing academic organisation. Above all, I’m learning as I go.

Posted by steve at 07:20 PM

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Learn local

God is up to something.

My research into how churches are responding to Covid-19 has included analysing interviews with ministers from a range of denominations in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the United States. A recurring theme is the ways in which churches are returning to their neighbourhoods.

In lockdowns, we live and exercise locally. God’s love has been made visible as churches have slowed, localised, walked and (appropriately) blessed. I’ve heard socially distanced stories of laypeople being equipped, commissioned and released as neighbour connectors. I’ve seen and experienced worship in which local parks, suburban crossroads and mailboxes have become invitations to pray.

Amid constrictions, ancient spiritual practices have been expressed in new ways. There has been a creative localising of disciplines of discerning, spiritual direction, serving, and prayer walking (Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, IVP, 2005, 99-103; 115-7; 145-7 and 253-5).

Learn local connects with what God can do locally. Learn local visits local mission initiatives to experience grassroots mission, hear stories of local community engagement and consider different expressions of Christian mission practice. The first Learn Local begins in Dunedin and visits the Seedling and Student Soul on Saturday, October 9 (10 am – 5 pm). This experience (a soundscape will be available for those at distance), is followed by 4 online Thursday evenings. These 75-minute sessions provide theological, practical and relational resources to encourage individuals and churches in local mission.

Supported by the Southern Presbytery and a gift from the Synod of Otago and Southland, Learn local offers hybrid learning – there are face to face and online options – to cope with the complexity of rapid level changes. Numbers for the Saturday experience are limited to 15 and priority will be given to those endorsed by their Church Council.

For queries->Steve Taylor, kiwidrsteve@gmail.com.
To register-> tinyurl.com/learnlocalnz

learn local advertising

Saturday, August 07, 2021

spirituality of wetlands

This week a colleague and I wrapped up another round of interviews for a project on the future of theological education and ministry training. The interactions now number 40, with over 140 people, ranging from 1-1 to large group.

Next week we will read back through the summaries we have made of each interaction, preparing an interim report.

Today is a transition, from gathering data to communicating data, from listening to communicating. It was good on the way to the airport, to pause and reflect on this transition. It was good to stop in the sun and soak in the blessing of a wetlands tidal zone.

It is easy to rush past a tidal zone. I am on my way to the airport. There is a flight to catch. Yet here I am surrounded by transition and change.

In this wetland, there are different plants and birds. There are different paths, a boardwalk when the tide is in, but a dirt path when the tide is out. There are unique plants, adept at coping with distinct and different environments. This applies to wetlands. It applies to myself as an individual, negotiating a new season as a contract researcher. It applies to the interactions I have been privileged to be part in this research project. In all 40, there is transition and change, a deep unease with what is, a deep uncertainty about what the tides of society are doing.

It is tempting to want to rush back, to what was known. Or to rush sideways, to seize something shiny from a neighbour nearby. Or to rush forward to a brighter alternative. Yet there is life in a transitional zone. There are unique adaptations. There are different paths. There are different ways of existing.

Posted by steve at 10:39 AM

Friday, October 09, 2020

Healing amid crisis: an analysis of theologies of healing in public prayer

The Association of Practical Theology in Oceania (APTO) Conference is online in 2020 – December 3 to 5. I couldn’t afford to go normally but virtual is whole other story. The theme is Encountering God: Practical Theology and the Mission to Heal. After a conversation or three with fellow researcher Lynne Taylor, thinking about our praying in trauma research, we’ve submitted the following abstact:

Healing amid crisis: an analysis of theologies of healing in public prayer as local churches respond in gathered worship to tragedy and trauma

Christian practices embody and reflect lived theologies. The gathered worship service is theory- and theology-laden, offering insight into Christian understandings of how God is engaged in human history and what human response could and should be. Investigating how Christians pray corporately is thus a potentially fruitful way to explore underlying theologies.

This paper draws on empirical research to investigate how local churches pray in response to trauma and tragedy. Online surveys were conducted in November 2015 (following coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris) and March 2019 (following the Christchurch mosque shootings).

The paper is part of a larger project, that seeks to examine how in the midst of trauma, churches might pray. Previous analysis has examined the empirical data in dialogue with Storm Swain’s understanding of God as earth-maker (creating/holding); pain-bearer (suffering); and life-giver (transforming) (in Trauma and Transformation at Ground Zero: A Pastoral Theology); and with Samuel Well’s typologies of God’s presence (Incarnational Mission: Being with the World).

This paper analyses the data paying particular attention to healing. What images of healing are evident? Who are envisaged as agents of healing? What is the telos, the imagined shape of a healed world? As one example, a church invited prayer by placing native grasses on the altar. This suggests several theologies of healing, including remembering, with one grass for every victim murdered, and hospitality, recognizing those who died not as “other” but as lives planted in indigenous soil.

The implications for those who pray in trauma and tragedy will be considered, with particular attention to the theological work possible through the practices of Christian public prayer.

It will give us the opportunity/push/invitation to look again at the local church in action and to take in a new direction research shared at ANZATS 2019 and about to have published in Stimulus, the New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice

“Praying for Christchurch: First Impressions of how local churches responded in gathered worship to the mosque shooting,” Stimulus: the New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice (co-authored with Lynne Taylor), (accepted for publication) 2020.

Posted by steve at 10:05 PM

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

crafting of call in the knitted theologies-of-ordination series

Last year, during my sabbatical as part of my research into craftivism and knitted angels, I learnt to knit. It is one thing to research intellectually. It is quite another to research by actually making. It certainly locates me as a dependant learner, feeling helpless and needing instruction.

With the sabbatical ended and the journal article submitted (“When ‘#xmasangels’ tweet: a Reception Study of Craftivism as Christian Witness,” Ecclesial Practices 7 (2) 2020, (co-authored with Shannon Taylor)), I kept knitting. Another scarf, then a babies cardigan, then some fingerless gloves from re-found op shop wool.

With a week of holiday recently, I found myself knitting dishcloths. During the week, I was sitting with the emotions of my resignation as Principal of KCML. The sadness at the ending of my relationship with ordination formation, mixed with the release from a demanding role which was at such odds with the understandings by which I had been called. As I knitted, I found myself thinking back over a decade of teaching and leading in the forming of ministers, beginning in the Uniting Church in Australia, followed by the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa.

In the Uniting Church, when deacons are ordained, they are given a gift of a towel (along with a Bible, water, bread and wine), to indicate the diaconal call to a ministry of service.

A group of people, representing those amongst whom the minister will serve, comes forward. They bring a Bible, and water, bread and wine, along with a bowl and towel. Other symbols related to the field of service may also be brought.

One of them says: We are the people of God. We bring the holy Bible, and water, and bread and wine as signs of the ministry to which you were ordained.

Another says: We are the people of God. We bring the symbols of our common life and service.

The minister takes the Bible, opens it and places it on the lectern or pulpit; takes the jug and pours water into the font; and takes the bread and wine and places them on the communion table. S/he then takes the bowl and towel and any other symbol/s and places them in front of the communion table.

As I knitted, I realised that dishclothes offered a similar symbol. I was “hand-making” a symbol of service, that embodied the call to mission and ministry.

So began the knitted theologies of ordination series! Dishclothes, each of which speak to theologies of call to mission and ministry.

First, co-mission.

dishcloth2

Knitted dishcloths as a symbol of ordination as a service of Christ; the colours an affirmation of the creative humanity upon which the Spirit of Christ falls and by which service to Christ is made/woven into the church in mission. Three colours to demonstrate the three strands of word (teach), sacrament (baptise) and discipling (make disciples) by which the co-mission (with other disciples) of Jesus (Go into all the world) is fulfilled (working with the wonderful work by Paul Avis, A Ministry Shaped by Mission).

Second, formation.

ordination3

A symbol of service. Handmade because every act of service in ministry and mission is handmade – is “truth through personality.” In the making of this dishcloth a blemish was discovered – a strand so thin the wool needed to be broken. Despite this blemish, the knitting continued. Such is the call of God, weaving human brokenness into a tapestry of love. Indeed as I knit, it becomes clear who this gift is for.

Third, ending.

ordination3

Casting off is required for completion. Repetitive stitches, knit two then pull one over. So close, yet more care is required. My stubby little fingers struggling to pull one stitch over another. A theology of ending – repetition, patience, trying not to rush, little human fingers requiring kindness. Ending a ministry of service is unique work.

As I keep knitting, I hope to add to this series …

Posted by steve at 10:28 AM

Wednesday, July 08, 2020

twenty-first-century ministry formation

One of my tasks over the last months has been to lead Faculty and interns in shifting a 9-day face to face intensive into a 10 -day online intensive. This has involved upskilling Faculty who have never before taught online and experimenting with ministry interns in new practices around online spiritual formation.

Today I worked through the intern evaluations, summarising the (de-identified) feedback on 13 areas of specific change made for this online intensive. This was the first step in order to be able to offer a report to the various governance and management bodies. As I finished the feedback, I found myself drafting some thoughts. They are very much draft, shaped as much by my ongoing reflection on the impact of COVID on the church in general (plus my recent work developing Bubble courses and Communities of Practice). As such, the words don’t belong so much in a block course governance report, but rather stand as a more general pondering about the future of ministry formation. Hence I note them here:

All new technology, whether a pen, the index of a book, a library catalogue or a learning management system, requires time to learn how best to utilise. How many of the skills that interns noted they were learning will, in fact, become essential ministry skills in the years ahead? Could it be that online learning needs to become an integral component of ministry formation? If so, then it will be essential that time is set aside for skill development. For example, sharing honestly and connecting socially in digital platforms, accessing online content and engaging in online spiritual disciplines. An education that integrates these dimensions will not only enhance the learning experience for all. It will also ensure a twenty-first-century citizen, in this case, an appropriately formed minister of the Word, able to participate in what God is up to, whether on or offline.

Posted by steve at 06:51 PM

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Unbounding learning communities in Practical Theology

Practical Theology acceptance ..

Unbounding learning communities: Ako-empowered research in life-long ministerial formation

Steve Taylor and Rosemary Dewerse

Abstract: While formation is an essential practice of local church communities, the formation of ministers for ordination, along with continued professional education, is generally located in the context of higher education. ‘Ako’, describing a teaching and learning relationship grounded in reciprocity, and employed as an approach to researching life-long learning needs among ordained ministers in the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, challenged this separation. The results of interviews and workshops with 285 lay and ordained leaders challenged the location of postgraduate provision in the context of higher education. The request was to teach leaders with their people in community in practices for living differently, with a focus on educating educators in relationally embodied ways. Educational experiments clarified ways of unbounding learning for local communities. These praxis-derived discoveries are clarified by conversation with the life of Jesus and Irenaeus’ theological anthropology of recapitulation. This brings clarity regarding the nature of ako as reciprocity in communities of practice and a reimagining of theological colleges as facilitators of unbounded local learning communities.

Keywords: ako, communities of practice, formation, Irenaueus, life-long learning, theological education

More fruit from the Thornton Blair Research project into life-long ministerial formation.

Posted by steve at 09:41 AM

Monday, May 25, 2020

KCML Bubble courses: Lockdown special? Or the sign of a #newnormal?

A short piece I wrote for the Knox Centre for Ministry and leadership website, also cross posting it here.

SM BUBBLE BANNER

‘Stick to your bubble’, the Prime Minister announced on Tuesday 24 March. In response to the first cases of community transmission of COVID-19 in Aotearoa, New Zealand was entering bubble time.

Bubbles can be beautiful, sparkling red, green and blue as sunlight touches their fragile surface. Equally, bubbles can be delicate, a thin film so easily broken.

Entering our bubbles, Aoteroa was forced into new ways of living, working and playing. Worshipping on lounge room sofas, running businesses from a kitchen table, learning from our laptop soon became the new normal.Wanting to resource the Presbyterian church during the lockdown, KCML offering “Bubble courses.” KCML Faculty with expertise in preaching, leadership and Christian formation went online during Level 3 to offer sixty minutes of evening input. How to preach in a pandemic? How to lead in change? How to build a community online?

For six evenings, ministers, session clerks, paid and voluntary church leaders, found themselves learning together online. New connections were made across diverse Presbyteries as lay and ordained were sent to online break rooms to share experiences.

Every Bubble course attracted between 30 to 45 participants. Sessions were recorded, and those unable to attend can access these through the KCML Living library.

While advertised to Presbyterians, the wonder of social media meant that participants were logging in from England and Australia, keen to learn from the calibre of Faculty at KCML.

“Thank you for allowing me to participate from ‘across the ditch’. This has been truly helpful already. The high-quality input and interactive nature are making it accessible and interesting.”

Each session was co-hosted, with social media strategist Tash McGill coming on board to welcome participants, provide technical support and enhance the conversation. Co-hosting was a way of modelling to churches ways to build online participation. Tash commented ”
As a specialist in digital transformation and online community, this was a venture into hope casting. The participation, active reflection and safety created demonstrated ways to build very present and real learning experiences in digital ways.”

This was new terrain for KCML Faculty. For Geoff New “What struck me was the deep level of trust and transparency. Participants engaged immediately, opening up to people they did not know. A college of preachers was created. Wonderful!”

For Steve Taylor, “It was wonderful to scan faces as people returned from online breakout small groups and see the range of people. Overseas ministers, Presbytery and local church leaders, LOM and NOM ministers were all learning and sharing together.”

The feedback from participants has been heartwarming. Words and phrases like “goldmine”, “excellent”, “stimulating” and phrases like “impressively well run”, “great service to the church”, “beautiful and interestingly presented” were used.

Is Bubble learning limited to a lockdown? Could online learning that is timely, thought provoking, conversational, engaging be part of a #newnormal for the Presbyterian church? The feedback certainly included requests for a sequel. One participant wrote

“I hope they can continue in some form – I think we need these to extend our “local church bubbles” to connect, interact and grow.”

KCML is seeking further feedback and working to discern future directions with the Leadership Subcommittee.

Steve Taylor
20 May 2020

Posted by steve at 01:46 PM

Monday, May 27, 2019

last days

I’m into the last days of outside study leave.

IMG_7328

The first 1/3 of the outside study leave followed a daily pattern

  • create – write words on First expressions book project
  • make – do something embodied
  • complete – work on ‘must get around to it’ journal articles and writing pieces
  • deepen – reading or doing data analysis
  • connect – attend external random lecture, write a blog post

This pattern held well for the first month. It gave balance. There was joy and satisfaction. I walked lots. I submitted two written pieces for PCANZ publications, two scholarly articles to international journal articles, completed final edits on another three scholarly pieces. I learnt to knit. I got out the highlighters and colour coded data from the Craftivist project.

The second 1/3 involved some external travel. I presented at a teaching and learning conference in Sydney and took the weekend to catch up with good friends. This was also part of complete – working the Thornton Blair Research data into a 20 minute presentation and a journal article. I went on haerenga (journey) engaging with Maori perspectives on their experience of the New Zealand Wars and re-connecting with the Presbyterian church marae at Ohope. This was part of deepen and of make – to undertake place-based learning and be on the land and among people.

The third 1/3 has been trying to complete the First Expressions book project. For the last month I’ve been working all day, most days. I had 5 major chapters and so many days left. Working on the 80/20 rule I have allocated the days and made a timetable.

IMG_7313

There is some flexibility – last week I got stuck into the Mission moves chapter rather than the apostolic chapter. This is the not fun part. There is only one task and the deadline is hard. I have a book contract in which I promised a book in May 2019. I can’t hold a 90,000 word book project in my head when I return to work. I didn’t get the book finished in my 2013 sabbatical and made little progress when I returned to work in 2014. So this last third is just solid writing. If I do well, I might shout myself a little walk. But basically it is write and edit 8 plus hours a day.

In some ways it is a shame to be ending with this sort of pressure. At the same time, I chose to play (make, deepen, connect) at the start of the outside study leave. And there will be huge relief if I can pull it off. I currently have 8 complete chapters, 2 complete chapters with a few holes to fill and 2 chapters rough full drafts but needing a final edit. On my good days, I think I will get there.

When I get tired, I imagine the feeling of returning the 40 borrowed books to the University library, of filing away the rough notes and of clearing the side desk of piles of draft chapters. The project is currently 90,000 words – that’s a lot of words – and I imagine holding the book.

Each week of the sabbatical, I randomly choose a Maori word from the Ira pack. This week – this last days week – the word is hūmārie – gentleness. May it be so.

Posted by steve at 09:33 AM

Thursday, January 17, 2019

a learning community devotion as the year begins

One of the Gospel readings for this week is Mark 1:14-20 and includes the story of Jesus calling Simon, Andrew, James and John to a learning community, sharing a journey of growing together.

Since this is a text about the beginning of something, it invites us (as KCML Faculty) as we begin the year, to consider our experiences of being called, those moments in life when we sensed that God was looking at us, communicating with us, inviting us.

As we hear the text read aloud, I invite you to reflect on those moments.

  • where (geographically) where you “found”? (In the text, it is by the Sea of Galillee (1:16). Where was it for you?)
  • what was your “work”? (In the text, it was fishing (1:16) and net mending (1:19). What where you doing when you were called?)
  • what were your “fathers and hired hands” thinking? (In the text, they left their father Zebedee and the hired men (1:20). It might be an imaginative exercise, but who was watching you? What were they thinking as you set out to follow your call?)

(Let’s share these together as a team).

These three questions are carefully chosen. They are designed to locate us. First in place, in specific geographic locations. Second in our stories, the specific skills and abilities that we were honing. Third, they are social questions. They locate us in families and in cultures. They invite us to consider our genealogy, the role of ancestors (“they left father Zebedee” 1:20).

I offer this reading and these three questions for a number of reasons.

First, as the year begins, motivation can be hard. If you are like me, you might rather be on holiday, enjoying a beach, a second cup of tea at a slower pace in order to choose whether to look forward to the pleasure of a day with a book in the shade or walk the bush or book that catchup with friends. This text re-calls me, reminds me of the grace and challenge of call.

Second, to remind ourselves of who we are as a team. When we were first called geographically none of us probably imagined that we would be here at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, serving in this way. We bring this past, our specific geographic locations, our past skills and abilities and competencies, our families and cultures. They make us who we are and we work alongside each other as humans, with these shaping experiences. We work with each other, each of us having experienced grace and challenge.

Third, we as KCML are about to welcome a new cohort of interns. Each of them will have a specific past, have been formed by specific geographies, bring prior skills and abilities and competencies, be located in families and cultures. Each of them has experienced, like us, grace of call. Each of them, like us, has said yes to the cost of discipleship. This is our privilege, as Faculty, to be working with these courageous and graced individuals.

As we begin the year, as we consider our blockcourse and the work before us, let’s pray.

Posted by steve at 08:59 AM

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Could you return to your story? “hapkas” theology as personal experience

“Could you return to your story?”

It was a question asked as I finished a research presentation. I was interviewing to be Principal at KCML. The interview process began with me taking a 50 minute “mock” lecture to a group of “mock” students. It had gone well, apart from the jug of water for the lecturer, that developed a crack half way through, resulting in water gently easing under my laptop as I spoke. “As long as it is consistent for all those being interviewed” I quipped. The interview process then moved, after lunch with the interview panel, to a research presentation. Fifty minutes on some aspect of my current work, followed by 50 minutes of question and answer.

It was then that the question was posed. “Could you return to your story?” Puzzled, I asked for elaboration. “Well, you began your lecture this morning with your story, of growing up in PNG. So I’m asking what might happen if you returned in your research to your story?”

I remember being struck by the depth of listening. After nearly 3 hours of talking, here was someone with the ability to connect two quite different parts of my presentations, in ways that offered me new eyes. My story felt held. My experience felt important. Perhaps in this place, I would see myself, including my old self, in new ways. It was a moment, of care, of hope, and potentially of guidance in my research journey.

Fast forward some 13 months later. The interview in January 2015 resulted in my beginning as Principal in October 2015. I brought with me a significant piece of research, a book project on innovation and collaboration. Begun in July, it has absorbed all of my writing time in the period since.

Last week, the manuscript was sent to the editor. It will return, but in the meantime, I have some space to begin again. “What will you write?” asked my family on Sunday evening. (I have a habit of spending the first 45 minutes of every work day writing.) I sifted through a few possibilities. The next most important thing is two papers I have to present in Korea at the International Association of Mission Studies. The deadline for submission is 31 March. I chose one (the second is on how to understand Silence in mission), and got to writing.

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I looked at my desk yesterday. I am writing on Christology in Papua New Guinea. My research involves reading art gallery publications about bark cloth. I laughed. “Could you return to your story?” was the question 13 months ago.

Well, my first new writing project in this role and I have. I have found myself, by a random set of circumstances, writing on my country of birth. I am listening to ABC recordings of PNG women singing. I am exploring theology expressed in visual, rather than written ways. I am bringing my years of study of Christology and post-colonial theology and literature to bear on my own story. I am reading Mark Brett’s Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire (Bible in the Modern World). He also is born in PNG. I am beginning to imagine an academic paper presented in Korea not on powerpoint but on bark cloth.

I sense freedom, grace and integration. Such are some of the benefits when we return to our story, when the personal is woven into the academic, when deep listening enables us to see and hear ourselves in new ways.

Posted by steve at 08:42 AM

Monday, May 18, 2015

growing leaders by growing teachers

Now I know they will be read, I’ll do a better job!

Uniting College exists to grow life-long disciples and develop effective leaders in mission. In order to do that, we must begin by growing ourselves. This includes our skills and abilities as teachers.

Here’s one way this process works for us at Uniting College. Most higher education involves student evaluations. These are completed by students. The results are summarised and provided back to lecturers. Generally this is where the process stops. The feedback is useful. But what happens next? How do you encourage intentional growth as teachers?

First, along with the student evaluations, each lecturer is also provided with a response sheet, which they are invited to fill in. It has four questions.

  • Summarise the positive responses
  • What concerns did students raise about their learning in this unit?
  • What improvements will you make to address these concerns?
  • Any other comments or quality improvements for unit curriculum, teaching and learning?

Four simple questions that invite us as teachers into appreciative inquiry and to think more intentionally about how we can grow as teachers. The four questions that can be answered as simply, or as deeply, as an individual wishes too. The questions invite us as teachers to think about growth. Lecturers are invite to return these to myself as Principal.

Second, I read them. I reply to each one. I affirm the strengths I see, celebrating the commitment to the skill and craft of teaching I see. I provide comment on the concerns raised, sometimes suggesting they are being too hard on themselves, sometimes inviting deeper reflection. I remark on the desired improvements, noting trends I am observing – themes that emerge across the range of topics an individual teaches. 

I am wanting to individualise and contextualise, to let each lecturer know I care about their craft of teaching. Some of these emails replies are over two pages in length, as I engage with their desire for growth.

Third, all these individual email responses that I make to lecturers are de-identified and summarised. This report goes to our Ministry Studies meeting. As an entire teaching team, we consider the report. It is a snapshot of our collective strengths as a teaching team. It is a mirror on potential areas for growth. Together we wonder what we might do as shared and appropriate professional development.

Fourth, this information is fed back to students. They who have taken the time to provide feedback, are informed about actions that are being taken as a result of their feedback. We hope it encourages them by saying something about our commitment to grow as teachers.

It was this process that took up a good deal of my time today. It was this process that generated the comment with which I started this post; “Now I know they will be read, I’ll do a better job!” Because growing leaders begins by growing teachers.

Posted by steve at 09:25 PM