Faith,'teaching'and'learning' Mike Simmonds Director & Education Consultant. sxc.hu/lusi+

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1 What%if%Learning% Faith,'teaching'and'learning' Mike Simmonds Director & Education Consultant.org.uk Follow on sxc.hu/lusi+ Conferences' INSET Twilight Training GOMikeS

2 Leadership of Faith Schools school leaders are the interpreters of faith for the school community school leaders are the spiritual leaders for both pupils and staff (Leadership and Faith: working with and learning from school leaders - NCSL)

3 l No Church school can be considered as part of the Church s mission unless it is distinctively Christian. (Dearing) l Church schools are places where a particular vision of humanity is offered. (Dearing) l Faith and spiritual development at the heart of the curriculum and ensuring that a Christian ethos permeates the whole educational experience. (Chadwick) l A Church school curriculum that includes implications for pedagogy, curriculum content and school organization (Chadwick)

4 distinctive means characteristic or authentic. the school aims to serve its community by providing an education of the highest quality within the context of Christian belief and practice. It encourages an understanding of the meaning and significance of faith and promotes Christian values through the experience it offers to all its pupils. Tim Elbourne (2009)

5 Distinctively Christian? Uniqueness by distinguishing Christian schools from every other kind of school Faithfulness to the Christian tradition in the way that schools undertake the tasks of education Faithfully Christian? Prof. Trevor Cooling Canterbury Christ Church University

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7 Improvising in 5th Act Scene 2 The authority of the first four acts would not consist could not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier parts of the play over and over again. It would require of the actors a free and responsible entering into the story as it stood, in order to understand first how the threads could be appropriately drawn together and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both consistency and innovation.

8 Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's famous moustachioed Belgian sleuth, is to return in a new novel backed by the author's family Christie's grandson Mathew Prichard said it was "pure serendipity" that led to Hannah being commissioned Source: BBC

9 Distinctive Anthropology? What vision of who your pupils might become inspires your school?

10 Mujahedeen alphabet Taliban mathematics Communist arithmetic

11 Reinhard Heydrich educated in a church school! "the man with the iron heart" (Adolf Hitler)

12 Growing in and developing Virtues Building Character

13 Dear Teacher I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no men should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers; children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses; women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of your education. My request is: help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human."

14 Not three separate areas of a school.

15 Pedagogy is the heart of the enterprise. It gives life to educational aims and values, lifts the curriculum from the printed page, mediates knowing and learning, engages, inspires and empowers learners or sadly fails to do so Good teaching makes a difference. Excellent teaching can transform lives Robin Alexander

16 Their experiences of what they are doing and their sense of self in doing it are rather different. This difference is a function of imagination. As a result, they may be learning very different things from the same activity. (Etienne Wenger, 1998, p. 176)

17 sxc.hu/linder6580

18 Pedagogy is paying attention to how the curriculum content is experienced through teaching and learning so that it is complementing the ethos, not undermining it. Pedagogy is what allows the content to fly.

19 sxc.hu/ba1969 Shaped by faith Learning within a Christian framework images/image_121_1.jpg

20 The Christian faith that underpins the What if Learning approach

21 A modern foreign languages Modern Foreign Languages example The tourist s world is defined by immediate survival requirements, leisure activities and pragmatic transactions; paying for services, asking directions, securing help in case of an emergency and the like. It is a world that is often bereft of any spiritual experience Foreign languages education should prepare students for two related callings: to be a blessing as strangers in a foreign land and to be hospitable to strangers in their own homeland. B Carvil and D Smith Gift of the Stranger: Faith, Hospitality and Foreign Languages

22 A French example The school s ethos may emphasise being unselfish but all the examples in French may focus on using language for the fulfilment of personal needs. Role-play may be shopping in French and making our needs understood.

23 A maths example The school s ethos may emphasise giving but all the examples in NUMERACY may be about getting: shopping, spending, saving.

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25 Seeing anew: The Approach How could a Christian understanding of God, people and the world provide a different way of seeing a lesson/unit? Choosing engagement: How could the students engage with this new way of seeing? Reshaping practice: What changes to my practice do I need to make as a teacher?

26 Seeing anew Decide on a lesson you would like to teach more Christianly. Think of how you might look at it from a different angle - more in line with Christian belief and ethos.

27 Choosing engagement Now think of ways in which learners could engage with this new way of seeing. What opportunities for participation do they have?

28 Reshaping Practice What changes do you, as the teacher, need to make to your practice? Are there habits of the classroom that you need to change in the light of your new emphasis?

29 Even though maths might be common to all people, the sort of character that emerges from maths lessons will, to a degree, depend on the anthropological vision promoted by the school Prof Trevor Cooling, Distinctively Christian Learning, Grove, 2013, pg 23 Colin s summary last point: Positive experiences in our settings which may help people come to faith sxc,hu/bcracker

30 grovebooks.co.uk

31 Sources l Website ( l Grove book Distinctively Christian Learning by Trevor and Margaret Cooling l Chapter in Anglican Church School Education: Moving Beyond the First Two Hundred Years l David & James Smith Teaching and Christian Practices (Eerdmans 2011) l Forthcoming research report l Re-Imagining Christian Education for 21st Century Ed. by Andrew Morris The content of these conference talks has been complied with much reference to the above sources as well as lectures by Prof. Trevor Cooling and others - with permission

32 The Charis Project Available FREE from johnshortt.org

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34 Letting the grass grow under your feet! Hit the Ground kneeling by S Cottrell pg 21 One who spares words is knowledgeable; one who is cool in spirit has understanding. Proverbs 17.27

35 What%if%Learning% Faith,'teaching'and'learning' Mike Simmonds Director & Education Consultant.org.uk Follow on Follow on GOMikeS GOMikeS sxc.hu/lusi+