dissertation

318
goal of the education of future pastors is to get students not just to know certain things,
but to learn (or to learn how to learn, cf. 8.10), we think that the topic of educational
philosophy deserves more attention. This may help to prevent teachers operating out of
default assumptions that may not be entirely appropriate. 135
Three basic questions 136 that need to be answered in this regard are the following: (1)
How do we define learning, and on what scholarly basis? 137 (2) How can this definition
– and the theory of learning – be theologically thought through, and what are the consequences
of this? 138 (3) What does this entail in practical terms for teaching methods
and for teachers in the predikantenopleiding? 139 Still more challenges can be formulated on
the basis of our research in chapter 9 and the present chapter. This is what awaits us
next.
135
For example, research indicates that immersion in an experience contributes much more to learning than
does verbal instruction or reading texts. This reality is dealt with in the leader development programs within
the Emerging-Missional milieu, but less so in the three institutes that we visited, especially the TUK.
Cf. Larsen, Religious Education and the Brain, 130-133.
136
For some additional questions and issues that should be dealt with, see chap. 9, n294. A question that is
not explicitly listed, but that is presuppositional, is this: what do we want students to learn, and why?
137
Peter Jarvis, “Religious Experience and Experiential Learning,” Religious Education 103, no. 5 (October-
December 2008), 553-567. Jarvis concludes after some decades of studying the subject that learning is “a
very complex process and may be defined as the combination of processes whereby the whole person – body
(genetic, physical, and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs, and senses)
– experiences a social situation, the perceived content of which is then transformed cognitively, emotively,
or practically (or through any combination) and integrated into the person’s individual biography resulting
in a changed (or more experienced) person.” Ibid., 557-558.
138
See for some reflections, Susan Schauffele and Ian Baptiste, “Appealing to the Soul: Towards a Judeo-
Christian Theory of Learning,” International Journal of Lifelong Education 19, no. 5 (2000), 448-458.
139
Larsen, Religious Education and the Brain, provides many helpful suggestions.