David I. Smith

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.

Guests on Volume 132: David I. Smith, on how metaphors assumed by teachers lead them to imagine the vocation of teaching; Susan Felch, on how the metaphors of gardens, building, and feasting can inform the task of education; D. C. Schindler, on philosopher Robert Spaemann's understanding of a teleological nature; Malcolm Guite, on his seven sonnets based on the ancient “O Antiphons” sung traditionally during Advent; J. A. C. Redford, on setting Malcolm Guite’s “O Antiphon” sonnets to music

In recent years, Christian educators have rediscovered ancient ideas about how the head and heart interact. There is a relationship between the cultivation of affections, dispositions, and virtues, and the acquisition of knowledge. What we believe is inextricably linked to what we love and what we worship. What we love, in turn, is encouraged by practices: by the ways our bodies and imaginations engage the world of the senses. Christian educators are coming to question the idea that teaching is merely the transmission of ideas and are giving more attention to the formative power of classroom practices and the culture of schools. In this Conversation, David I. Smith, director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin College, discusses some new insights on the practice of Christian pedagogy. 56 minutes.