The Practice of Christian Pedagogy: Volume II
Language professor and pedagogue, David I. Smith, joins us again to discuss in more detail how practices in the classroom reinforce or contradict the goals of Christian teaching. The phrase “integration of faith and learning” has stimulated an abundance of scholarship on why faith and reason are compatible. It has also provoked extensive and various accounts of a “Christian worldview,” a phrase that often conveys a set of doctrines which, when applied to the goal of Christian teaching, places an emphasis on Christian belief over Christian practices. In this Conversation, David Smith argues that more attention needs to be given to the meaning conveyed in our methods and assumptions about teaching. Smith considers factors like body language and position; pictures and scenarios in textbooks; time, space, and sound in classroom interaction; and the cultural power of homework.
Smith’s book On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom extends the ideas discussed in MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation 28: The Practice of Christian Pedagogy (Volume I). In this interview, Smith describes his process of pursuing a Christian vocation through teaching as well as the philosophical and biblical motivations for Christian pedagogy that are explored in the book Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning, co-edited by Smith and his colleague James K. A. Smith.
63 minutes.