Seven Challenges to Dialogue Education in a Theological College

by Johanna Selles, EdD
Assistant Professor ~ Emmanuel College, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario

During our summer camping vacations with my parents, we would spend long hours on the beach at various provincial parks. Because the Great Lakes water seemed to take the whole summer to warm up, my father would enter very gradually, tentatively splashing water left and right over his arms, trying to get used to the chill. My mother, by contrast, would dive into the first wave with fearlessness that could take your breath away. My attempt to use DE in the university classroom has more in common with the gradual entry method than the brave plunge, but the results at times still take my breath away.

I have applied Dialogue Education in two courses, an introductory course in Christian Education that is required for all Master’s of Divinity students, and an elective called Educating for Justice. In both courses, students read all or part of Jane Vella’s Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach along with literature relevant to the subject field of the course.

The challenge is to teach in a way that is quite different from the bulk of one’s education, particularly higher education, where the emphasis on good teaching generally stood second to scholarly achievement. There are a variety of challenges that accompany the implementation of this method. The first challenge is that the instructor is trying to apply a method without a great deal of confidence. After attending two workshops, one is left with a sense of wonder at the accomplished instructors and their ease with the material (Peter Noteboom and Jeanette Romkema). The challenge is to teach in a way that is quite different from the bulk of one’s education, particularly higher education, where the emphasis on good teaching generally stood second to scholarly achievement. Trusting the process requires a willingness to experiment and to model the method however imperfectly.

My adult students, who have often had one or more previous careers, arrive at the college with a variety of interests and backgrounds. Some are in preparation for careers in ministry, some for pastoral care, and some for graduate academic programs. Because my Christian Education (CE) course is a required course, it is often burdened with association of childhood Sunday school programs.  Some students arrive with resentment and reluctance. The course challenges these expectations at the beginning and encourages students to envision CE as a way of being in the world. Linking CE to all age groups and with methods such as storytelling or justice-making challenges negative expectations.

It is essential that the experience and expectations of mature students help shape the class content. It is essential that the experience and expectations of mature students help shape the class content. Therein lies the second challenge. My syllabi are usually prepared in the summer long before classes begin, since these need to be posted online. Until students are registered, I do not have any contact information to send an LNRA prior to the first class. Despite this limitation, students fill out the LNRA in the first class and I read the results between the first and second class meetings. Then I attempt to customize the content as much as possible to the needs of the group. In addition, students can choose an area that interests them to work on for their final project. Even in a required course, students can be encouraged to take responsibility for their learning by developing learning goals, assessing these during and after the course, and choosing subject areas that interest them for individual projects. Developing workshops for application in their own faith context makes the project more relevant and thus engages their interest.

The third challenge is to think critically about the role of the content in the overall course design. Required and supplementary readings traditionally provide the substance to higher education courses particularly in the arts/humanities. My challenge is to link the readings to the assignments in a way that develops a sequence of learning tasks and moves towards greater complexity. My challenge is to link the readings to the assignments in a way that develops a sequence of learning tasks and moves towards greater complexity. In addition, in both courses, students begin with a theoretical framework, relate this to their own experience, and then move out to experience, observe, and analyze a field situation. In the justice course, that will have a focus on homelessness this year, students begin with a photo essay assignment on the meaning of home to them, read intensively on poverty, the nature of homelessness, and faith based responses to these issues. With this background they make site visits to community development centers and volunteer in shelters. The higher synthesis is not only an understanding of the complexity of homelessness, but also a personal reflection on the spiritual issues that frame marginality and homelessness. Students are encouraged to do a critical analysis of how faith based organizations can work towards effective advocacy. Justice education thus has the particular challenge that one hopes for personal transformation as well as critical reflection on both the literature and the lived realities of an issue. To bring all this together in the twelve week semester requires facilitation that combines adult education, political advocacy, and spiritual direction.

Here are the fourth and fifth challenges. The content informs the course but must integrate the theory and action and allow for the provision of a safe environment that is spiritually grounded. Both students and facilitator(s) need to make a commitment to the spiritual grounding of the learning because it can be unsafe, disruptive, challenging, and devastating for individuals to encounter the brokenness of the world. There is a difference between old- fashioned notions of teacherly control and a well prepared educational event, but the later makes room for the learning moments-- for the complexity and chaos that accompany transformational learning. My personal challenge is to balance the preparation with the space for creative chaos while learning to trust the process, to stay out of the way when needed, and to model the necessary humility from which learning derives. ...balance the preparation with the space for creative chaos while learning to trust the process, to stay out of the way when needed, and to model the necessary humility from which learning derives.

The course work requirements to provide the sixth challenge. Although the research essay is the unquestioned final product in higher education, are there other ways to demonstrate learning? I recently listed all the proposed content pieces in a course (skills, knowledge, and attitudes) and then tried to describe the achievement based objectives tied to them. Finally I designed assignments throughout the course that would allow for synthesis and that would feed into the final portfolio. This exercise in design will hopefully provide the chance to model the method in weekly sessions rather than just in special examples. In addition, all the student’s work in the semester feeds into a portfolio. The portfolio allows the student to edit previous submissions, to integrate theory and practice, and to work creatively with the content. Because the portfolio assignment was so different from the usual final paper, students needed a great deal of reassurance that they were on the right track. Some, in fact, compensated for the assignment by submitting a binder full of content, fearing that the work required was not substantial enough. Students submitted not only the final design but the steps they took to reach that design including the LNRA. In the final reflective paper, students were challenged to make transparent the process of integration of the reading, the design, the feedback from peers during the course.  

The seventh challenge is related to the clash in learning cultures that students experience in traditional classes and Dialogue Education ones. One student arrived in class and put her books down with a thud on the antique and dysfunctional desks that are standard issue at the college. “Well,” she pronounced, “I have just been taught the complete opposite of what you are teaching in the class I just finished.” Reconciling contradictory elements in methods can be a learning experience in itself, as students learn that context shapes appropriate teaching methods.

Student expectations of a learning culture that they generally master are sometimes derailed by the imposition of Dialogue Education. in a class. Yet that derailment is a necessary corrective to the implicit assumption of expertise that is unaccountable to the learner and lacks the mutuality of learning that is a necessary element of ministry.
Yet that derailment is a necessary corrective to the implicit assumption of expertise that is unaccountable to the learner and lacks the mutuality of learning that is a necessary element of ministry.

Maybe as I think of it, I do use my Mother’s method too - that immediate dive into the deep waves can take your breath away, and sometimes, we need to breathe differently to see and learn differently.

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