The Integration Of Faith And Learning

Written by a veteran Christian educator, this readable book describes the relationship between the Christian faith and the world of learning by looking at the five modern worldviews competing with Christian theism.

The Integration of Faith and Learning: A Worldview Approach'provides students with the philosophical context and practical tools necessary for making the connections between Christian knowledge and the knowledge they will acquire during their undergraduate and graduate years in higher education. This book focuses on helping students understand how worldviews influence the interpretation of data and even what is judged to be knowledge itself. The worldviews of philosophical naturalism, postmodernism, and Christianity are compared and analyzed. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on helping students develop the practical skills needed to evaluate knowledge claims and to integrate all knowledge into a unified whole through the touchstone of Christian truth.

In Teaching and Christian Practices several university professors describe and reflect on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape and redirect their pedagogical strategies. Whether allowing spiritually formative reading to enhance a literature course, employing table fellowship and shared meals to reinforce concepts in a pre-nursing nutrition course, or using Christian hermeneutical practices to interpret data in an economics course, these teacher-authors envision ways of teaching and learning that are rooted in the rich tradition of Christian practices, as together they reconceive classrooms and laboratories as vital arenas for faith and spiritual growth.

Building on foundational studies on the relationship of faith and learning, this book presents concrete examples of ways in which a Christian perspective can be brought to bear on scholarship in various academic disciplines. The editors present a typology of various strategies for faith-discipline integration, which are then exemplified by two essays in each of seven disciplines - political science, sociology, psychology, biology, mathematics, the arts, and philosophy. In each discipline a principal essayist addresses a significant issue from a Christian perspective; a respondent then analyzes that essay, suggesting at least one alternative approach.

In this holistic study of the integration of faith and learning, Dr. Sarinah Lo challenges the Western tendency to privilege knowing over being and doing. In the context of Indonesian higher education, Dr. Lo addresses the cognitive, affective, spiritual, relational, and vocational aspects of human nature. She demonstrates that effective integration of faith and learning must reach beyond the academic disciplines to address the formation of a Christian perspective in all areas of life, thought, and practice. Utilizing in-depth interviews and qualitative analysis, Dr. Lo’s field research explores the specific challenges facing Christian faculty in Indonesia, where the rise of radical Islam and the pressure to conform to state ideology raise unique questions about the nature of faith-learning integration. The first study of its kind, this is an excellent resource for educators wanting to think more broadly about what it means to follow Christ in the classroom, pushing beyond Western models of integration to embrace the more holistic approach of faith-integrated being, knowing, and doing.

The phrase "integration of faith and learning" has come to describe the way many Christian colleges and universities understand how all learning falls under the lordship of Jesus Christ. With its origins in the philosophical and theological insights of the Reformed tradition, this phrase has expanded its influence to institutions nurtured by numerous Christian traditions. This volume draws together prominent scholars who reflect on Christian higher education as it may exist beyond the integration model.

Christian colleges expect faculty to clearly articulate an understanding of the impacts that Christian faith has on their teaching, research, and service. Many faculty find this dimension of their work-often labeled the integration of faith and learning-confusing and difficult to realize in practice, to assess, and to describe. This volume begins by clarifying two things. It summarizes the faith/learning discussion and offers a working conception of faith/integration specifically for Christian college faculty. It then outlines what deans, provosts, and tenure-promotion committees typically expect faculty in Christian colleges to know and do. Allen and Badley introduce the highly regarded framework of Ernest Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation (Scholarship Reconsidered, 1990). They then present both a framework for assessing faith/learning integration in the three dimensions of teaching, research, and service and step-by-step instructions for reporting and describing the individual faculty member's approach and success. The book closes by calling both the Christian college and the individual professor to the vocation of teaching, shaping, and sending.