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Making Sense of Christian Learning

By May 19, 2025No Comments

Introduction

Christian higher education finds itself at a significant crossroads. Cultural upheaval, significant shifts in college enrollment, concerns around the enduring value of a college degree, the impact of artificial intelligence, and many other factors swirl about amidst ongoing financial pressures.1 This current historical moment finds institutions striving to demonstrate the lasting value of their educational models amidst the increasing scrutiny of the public. Christian colleges and universities face the same challenges as our counterparts across the spectrum of the academy and yet must also contend in unique ways with the rigorous process of ensuring integrity with a mission or values focused learning environment.2 Speaking with greater clarity and precision around the specific markers of Christian educational practice may illuminate whether institutions maintain fidelity to their mission amidst these pressures.

Christian institutions often claim aspirations such as cultivating a biblical worldview, or perhaps even positioning students as agents of shalom-­seeking in society within their mission or vision statements.3 These succinct summaries typically relate in some way to the project of forming students, such as when former Wheaton College faculty member Arthur Holmes so aptly stated, “The question to ask about an education is not, ‘What can I do with it?,’ but rather, ‘What is it doing to me—as a person?’ Education has to do with the making of persons, and Christian education with the making of Christian persons.”4 Holmes’s call to view the work of Christian learning in a holistic and multi-­faceted manner received a response from faculty through faithful Christian scholarship across many academic disciplines, reclaiming a theologically rooted vision of that which we invite students to learn. This rich tradition offers discernment for educators navigating various learning opportunities vying for credibility or viability at Christian institutions.

Scholars such as James K. A. Smith and David Smith clarify that our pedagogical practices also matter deeply, held in concert with carefully crafted mission statements and Christian scholarship within one’s academic discipline.5 According to Smith, it is these habits and practices which hold potential to serve as formational liturgies both for ourselves and students. What is at stake for students here is not simply what they know, but what they love—the social imaginary carried about as they navigate their learning.6 One role of Christian learning then is to equip students to faithfully make sense of the world they inhabit. This article seeks to draw attention to faithful pedagogical practice by describing what it might look like in progress. Such descriptions may equip Christian students or teachers to know when they have participated in meaningful Christian sense-­making of their world.

This particular concept of sense-­making caught my attention while teaching my first study abroad course in Oxford England during the summer of 2023. The unique attributes of this experience provided special opportunity to “see anew” my own efforts to teach Christianly.7 Shifts in setting and structure revealed certain kinds of learning and engagement previously unexplored in my traditional classroom. As I began teaching again in the fall semester, I discovered several ways my own teaching practices changed because of the study abroad course. These changes sparked a particular line of inquiry which I believe might reveal something about Christian learning wherever it takes place.

Enactivism

Experiential learning in various forms has long been portrayed as a formational work.8 The novel learning environment provides a special opportunity to see both ourselves and the communities we inhabit in a different light. To make sense of my own experience, I employed a theoretical framework known within qualitative research circles as enactivism.9 Enactivism provides a holistic lens for interpreting human perception.10 The framework emerged as a response to early cognitive science’s reductionist framing of the brain and learning, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of the human experience.11 Enactivist scholars contend that learning always occurs within complex and dynamic interactions between the learner’s physical, cultural, and social environment.12 Although the arc of this paper seeks to engage the theory redemptively, faithful Christian scholarship must also note limitations to frame both philosophical and practical employment of enactivist theory. Enactivism maintains a constructivist epistemology which places truth in the immanent frame of the material world, not necessarily differentiating individuals, communities, and the structures they live within.13 Here, meaning is found in the act of “sense-­making” and bringing forth “value” as humans and their environment interact.14 A Christian view of knowledge derives from the belief that truth transcends human experience, given to humanity via the inerrant Scriptures and Christ Himself to both know God and steward the creation well. Despite the theory’s depiction of humanity as agents capable of change and interaction with an environment, an absence of the rich implications of the imago dei robs the framework of immense opportunity for framing differences between humanity and other creatures as well as providing an orientation for human action.15 These limitations notwithstanding, many components of the theory hold resonance with the Christian vision of faithfully inhabiting the world in ways which reveal their citizenship to a world without end.

This framework has been employed in settings from math education classrooms to exploring perceptions of pain between doctor and patient, providing versatile and robust descriptions of human experience.16 Peter Stilwell and Katherine Harmon recognized this versatility in suggesting enactivism as a flexible resource for making sense of learning and its characteristics across contexts.17 To facilitate adaptability, they propose a five-­part cycle of sense-­making to equip both scholars and practitioners in the work of employing the theory to illuminate human experience. This “5e cycle” identifies sense-­making as embodied, embedded, enactive, emotive, and extended.18

In this article I employ enactivism as a flexible resource to illuminate Christian learning. I will highlight each aspect of the 5e cycle, noting how it might equip fidelity to the Christian vision of education, and identify examples and suggestions for Christian educational settings. Drawing upon this social science framework allows for rich description of learning events, and situating these events theologically guides the orientation and telos of the same efforts.19 In this way, I hope to employ the theory redemptively while noting the limitations of its applications within a Christian worldview. Although each component of this framework will be considered in turn, dynamic interplay exists between each area reflecting the complex and varied nature of human learning.

Embodied

Our current cultural milieu often diminishes the importance of bodies, whether by pursuing escape via virtual worlds, or seeking to outflank the limitations of embodiment through immediate access to information and people around the world via high-­speed internet connections in the palm of our hands.20 Long before the age of prevalent internet access, enactivist scholars formulated and developed the theory as a response to an emerging discipline of cognitive science which often described human learning in terms of computer processing or at least exclusively in the cognitive realm, to the detriment of the affect and other crucial components of human learning.21 Enactivist theorists see the body as the reference point through which we experience the world, the place where cultural context, physical environment, and all other engagements must collide.22 As Varela, Thompson, and Rosch explain, “Knowledge depends on being in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language, and our social history—in short, from our embodiment.”23 Our knowing and making-­sense of the world across the spectrum of pain and pleasure then occurs through this embodiment.24 Stilwell and Harman frame embodiment such that “sense-­making is only possible by having a body and that different modes of sense-­making are shaped by bodily processes and interactions.”25 Enactivism portrays the body as the inescapable reality which both situates learners in a particular time and place, but also participates in and becomes the means through which interpretation and thought occur.26

Just as enactivist scholars describe the nature of embodied perception of the world, Christian doctrine rightly orients our hearts around what it is for. Despite the Church’s struggle with an ambivalence toward the body or even outright embrace of the dualism so prevalent in the broader culture, Scripture contains many affirmations of embodiment.27 From Old Testament law focusing on bodily purity and actions in worship to the Apostle Paul’s dismantling of the Gnostic heresy, Christian theology portrays bodies as deeply good.28

The incarnation of Christ as the embodied God-­man profoundly demonstrates that our own bodies play a central role in faithful Christian presence in the world.29 Jesus’s work on the behalf of humanity could not be complete without experiencing the pleasures and pain of embodied existence. Humanity may rest in knowing their bodies hold worth and value as it is through a body that Christ worked our salvation.30 The incarnation brings value to both enjoyable and painful elements of embodiment.31 Here the Christian worldview extends beyond enactivist framing of embodied suffering as merely a site of sense-­making into a sanctifying sharing in Christ’s suffering.32 Embodied pain or suffering in fact plays a profound formative role in the life of the Christian, as C. S. Lewis explains, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”33 Beyond this, Christian tradition has long spoken of the corporate Body of Christ as living out His presence on earth through the actions of its members.

Moreover, Christian theology reminds us that embodiment is for community. Particularly in Paul’s letters, depictions of the body in Scripture often flow between individual and corporate applications, reminding us that bodies play both roles.34 As Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck indicated, the image of God can only be understood when viewed against the backdrop of the whole of mankind: “The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be. It can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members.”35 Even as our bodies carry the imago dei individually and collectively, they were meant to live among and for others. Embodiedness makes relationship possible and even necessary for human flourishing.36

Through the five senses humans experience meaning and form connection, engage in empathy, and sense what it is to know and be known by others.37 Czech educational reformer John Amos Comenius, drawing deeply on the need to situate learning within the context of the Creation, stated “Following in the footsteps of nature we find that the process of education will be easy . . . if everything be taught through the medium of the senses.”38 A robust consideration of what our senses are for invites many pedagogical implications. Later in The Great Didactic, Comenius points to such a pedagogical posture: “If boys be made to exercise, first their senses (for this is the easiest), then the memory, then the comprehension, and finally the judgment . . . for all knowledge begins by sensuous perception.”39 Far more than simply being vessels for our spirits, God calls bodies themselves “good” as a part of His creation.40 Not only are bodies a good gift to be enjoyed and stewarded, but they are also the vantage point from which we experience good gifts of God’s creation through work, eating, resting, and play.41

Finally, the eschaton itself rightly orients our embodiedness. The future bodily resurrection of all believers has already begun in the resurrection of Christ, and even embodied acts engaged this side of the end of time might be perceived as a pursuit of the shalom we are promised in the Kingdom.42 This future promise of wholeness in our bodies imbues worth and dignity to our bodies this side of Christ’s return and focuses attention toward stewarding our bodies well as we wait for this day.

Embodied Implications for the Classroom

A renewed emphasis on embodied learning might call attention to the ways our learning environments promote or minimize bodies in learning. The pervasive influence of educational technologies and digital learning spaces across the educational landscape has certainly increased access to knowledge, but at the same time played its part in diminishing aspects of embodied learning. One practice that I have recently adopted for my own classroom is the requirement to keep class notes in a physical notebook, where I explicitly direct students to consider the embodied nature of Christian learning on the first day of class. We discuss handwriting as an opportunity to hold others in our hearts and reflect on our own growth in an unhurried manner.43 Simple scaffolding for most reflection writings includes a T-­chart drawn in the notebook for students to summarize ideas from a lecture or reading in one column, and in the other, indicate questions, concepts they need to think about more carefully, or connections to things they already know. Although research comparing learning advantages between typed or handwritten notes indicates a complex picture, I have found that the act of physical notetaking assists both students and myself to move more slowly and purposefully than when most of my students typed their notes on a computer.44 We choose to organize in class activities such as notetaking, freewriting, and quick-­write responses in the same notebook, carefully scaffolded by prompts and examples, as well as collecting out of class reading responses as one coherent record. This emphasis on the tactile (and possibly more effortful) work of handwriting, although not in itself explicitly Christian, draws upon the rich thinking of several Christian scholars who frame writing as a spiritual discipline conducted “in and for community.”45 To reinforce this communal aspect during class time, I often require students to share and listen to one another’s reflections after a quick-­writing session, sometimes following up these paired conversations with a whole-­class discussion. The act of focusing on writing together in a way which draws upon a more tactile experience than typing on a keyboard provides a tangible step toward seeing learning as an embodied act.46

Beyond considering some disadvantages to the digital spaces my students inhabit within my classroom, I have also considered the physical environment. There may be some lessons where the kinds of learning would benefit from a different setting, perhaps holding class outside, or to paying closer and more direct attention to the ways our desks, walls, and windows may be influencing the manner in which we experience life together as a learning community. I frequently employ David Smith’s metaphor of a pedagogical home, a theme which allows me to guide student attention to the influence of the physical learning environment being modeled around them.47 Christian educators here may identify the ways in which arrangement of desks invites collaboration—or stifles it—or promotes certain means of learning over others. Similarly, playing music as students arrive or at key portions of class invites further embodied learning through incorporating a greater variety of senses within the learning space. Whichever way the environment might be modified, consider the unique goals of the class session as a guide. For instance, a conversation about cultivating students’ philosophies of education might best take place outdoors while sharing food together, whereas a session on classroom management likely requires a traditional classroom setting. Similarly, Tyndale University’s Ken Badley recommends modification of seating arrangements into a circle to promote careful listening and reducing power dynamics between professor and students early on in a course.48

Embodied learning occurs through physical movement as well. Beyond requiring students to move across the room for paired or group work, I have also employed regular “chalkboard splash” approaches which require all students to walk to the whiteboard and record a response which then becomes the springboard for discussion. Depending on the classroom space, requiring students to move to a given corner of the room to indicate their level of agreement with a position or make a choice in a scenario has provided a helpful opportunity to engage physical movement. Additionally, Carousel or Gallery Walk activities display quotes, primary sources, or other information around the classroom and invite students to move around to engage with the various perspectives.49 Teachers can also employ their own physical movement to demonstrate concepts. For example, I might begin a lecture on motivational techniques for the beginning of a lesson by sitting down, avoiding eye contact, and simply playing a short video about motivational techniques. Then, I begin the lesson again with an active, enthusiastic modeling of focusing attention to begin a lesson, and we compare the ways the two experiences shaped the learning environment and learning. Comparable efforts have been employed by David Smith, who notes the way the cognitive dissonance between contrasting physical demonstrations highlights the support or breakdown of relationships arising from Christian pedagogy.50

Another less employed arena for embodied learning within higher education is the use of physical manipulatives such as Lego or Playdough in the classroom. Learning strategies of this kind have long held support in the literature on human learning, and frameworks such as Lego Serious Play have been incorporated with great success across adult and professional settings.51 I have required my teacher candidates to craft Lego models in class as metaphorical representations of complex ideas. These efforts seek to draw upon Comenius’s advice to engage students in multi-­sensory learning, particularly during times when the task remains primarily cognitive.52 Such visible and tactile practice of intellectual risk-­taking and collaboration have become a joyful and rich source insight for our learning, opening avenues for discussing together how these techniques engage our embodiedness as learners.

During my opportunity to teach abroad I also rediscovered another meaningful opportunity for embodied learning in the sharing of food. Other Christian educators have written about the breaking of bread as a meaningful act, but I had yet to truly explore what it might look like within a traditional setting.53 While abroad in Oxford, my students and I shared meals together in times of fellowship and extension of class conversation. Perhaps more insightful to me however was the frequent sharing of snacks (and often sweet treats) as an act of hospitality and mutual enjoyment for local culture that occurred as we walked the city together. These moments led me to more carefully consider how I might extend this hospitality to my students on campus in acts of joy and kindness through the offer of cookies or coffee on some days during the semester. When I bring food to share, I seek to clarify this as an act of hospitality and care for the physical needs of each other.54 Calvin University’s Quentin Schultze contends that such acts of sharing food offer Christian hospitality and even attention to particular people or places with careful selection of the type of food offered.55 To my delight, I have found that my students began to prepare food for class of their own volition, reciprocating a sustained attention to the needs of their classmates in a manner which required both their financial and physical resources.

Embedded

An embodied person always resides and acts within a context, maintaining relationships and interactions amidst a broader environment.56 Stilwell and Harman’s framing of “embeddedness” focused primarily on relational and cultural settings, whereas the “extended” component will address context within systems and non-­living entities.57 Our bodies act and are acted upon by a complex web of social and cultural norms both within and outside our classrooms.58 The unique nature of context exerts such influence over learning that entire research paradigms such as Action Research emerged to equip scholars and educators to more carefully adapt learning theory within particular places and times.59 Classrooms inhabit the intersections of local culture, economic pressures, institutional norms, politics, internet and popular culture, and a host of other factors. Typical practice across higher education finds students and educators also embedded within scholarship and academic disciplines, both to learn from and build upon the work of those who have learned before.60

Sense-­making and cognition interplay dynamically within these local factors.61 However, our educational practices may draw or obscure attention to context. American Poet Wendell Berry laments that “a student is educated to leave home and earn money in a provisional future that has nothing to do with place or community.”62 Broader cultural emphasis in the internet age has certainly diminished the importance of “place” in the imaginations of many students and educators alike.63 Even where educators and students seek to notice embeddedness, over simplifications arising from mass-­produced student textbooks or digital information bites may result in a commodified knowing about a context rather than meaningfully attending to the deeper layers of culture in a given place or time. 64

Although enactivism provides superb insight into the nature of our embeddedness in learning, Christian theology provides orientation toward why such attention matters for the Christian. Language for living as exiles in a foreign land, whether describing the historic nation of Israel or believers in the New Testament pervades the Scriptures. Rather than seeking to simply survive and await rescue or restoration, passages such as Jeremiah 29 call God’s people to faithfully seek the flourishing of the particular places they inhabit as a means of revealing their true citizenship. Baker and Bilbro encourage Christian universities to “form students to inhabit their places virtuously and restoratively. . . . Teaching them to see goodness in local places and, when they find that goodness, to imagine how they might tend to its flourishing.”65 Attending to the unique characteristics of place recalls Comenius’s guidance to draw students towards the Creation around them, “the operations of nature,” to understand the way of effective learning.66 Faithful presence as exiles in challenging contexts only becomes possible with an orientation around shalom, or the coming restoration of the entire Creation.67 Philosopher-­theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff’s call to Christian universities to orient students to a particular telos of seeking shalom in the places God calls them deeply contrasts against a culture which primarily sees higher education as merely a source of credentialing for one’s own advancement.68

The Christian vision for shalom also includes seeking the good of the community and relationships with others. Just as Christ moves to the places of brokenness in the lives of His children, so too are Christians called to move toward relational brokenness with hope and care.69 Augustine makes this work practical by encouraging believers that “All people should be loved equally. But you cannot do good to all people equally, so you should take particular thought for those who, as if by lot, happened to be particularly close to you in terms of time, place, or any other circumstances.70 Christians who seek shalom thus pursue opportunities to love their neighbors within the locations God has called them.

Finally, Christians embedded within particular places and time receive the call to cultivate and care for the Creation. Christians have long taken up the Creation Mandate given to Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis and considered its implications for vocation and learning. Comenius wrote the first children’s textbook complete with accurate images of nature so that students would grow in love for the Creation and care for it accordingly.71 In this way, image-­bearers find themselves in a unique position to care for the rest of creation with authority, skill, and love, using their power for the good of all things.

Embedded Implications for the Classroom

This sort of attention to location struck me particularly as I designed lesson plans and learning experiences for my study abroad course. I gave much effort and attention to designing the course in such a way that it could only be taught in Oxford, whether by engaging scholars and authors through the centuries there or unique opportunities within the city itself. Even as I crafted lesson plans I realized that I did not give the same sort of attention to my local community as I designed courses for my undergraduate students. Currently I focus on thoughtful incorporation of local context as appropriate for my instruction in a teacher education program. Engaging case studies and scenarios from local schools where my students experience internships and then regularly encouraging students to share from these local field experiences assist in this task and can be adapted as appropriate to other academic disciplines or vocational settings. Educators might draw attention to specific obstacles or affordances for faithful Christian presence within systems where students will work. Teachers might wish to adopt a scholar from their region or context to operate as a “travel guide” through the curriculum, welcoming those from the past or present into the classroom to share their expertise. Even where particular scholars or authors within an educator’s academic discipline do not hail from the location where a course is taught, specific applications and case studies might reveal the particularities of a local context. In small ways, this modeling of “knowing, naming, and possessing” of local places might draw student’s imaginations toward living as exiles for the flourishing of those around them akin to Comenius’s desire in his Orbis Pictus to employ specificity and detail in instruction to garner a love for the Creation and its caretaking.72

Educators teaching within Christian contexts such as my own might consider incorporating actual practices of worship and spiritual formation. For example, I begin each class with a call and response Sursam Corda prayer as a call to the worship of learning, along with regular use of liturgy and written prayer. The Every Moment Holy series has been immensely helpful for myself and students to see the sacred in the mundane.73 Similarly, James K. A. Smith recommends attention to fixed-­hour prayer and the liturgical calendar to shape the Christian imaginations of his students in a manner reflective of his institution’s commitments.74 Confessional practices such as corporate liturgy or engagement in the liturgical calendar have often been regarded as a means of further embedding Christians into the broader Church transcending time and space.75

Beyond direct connections to locale or region, I desired that my students develop skill in noticing their own contexts and life within them. Ongoing, reflexive journaling and portfolio development (within the same physical notebooks identified previously) focused student learning around personal and peer growth as a community within a particular place and time. Journaling prompts and class discussions scaffolded this process as many of my students found the approach challenging at first. For example, students wrote in a portfolio about the way their chosen learning artifacts demonstrated excellence, growth, risk-­taking, an epiphany, and a challenge. I sought to model this as well, inviting students to participate in the practice of “ungrading,” which centers student learning through narrative feedback and the complete avoidance of letter or number grades.76 Despite my deep convictions that this approach might reduce student anxiety and encourage intellectual risk-­taking and more rigorous work, I was still required to report a letter and number grade to the institution’s registrar.77 Particularly since ungrading was a new practice for most students, many opportunities for discussing during class and required 1-­on-­1 conferences explored what it might be like to live within a broader context which maintains a different philosophy than what I believe is best for my students. Students reported increasing clarity around what it might look like to serve as an educator and move toward places of relational or structural brokenness to use their influence for the flourishing of others.

Finally, Christian educators can shape curricular focus and assign projects which orient students toward pursuing shalom.78 I have pursued such an effort via major course assessments which require students to design curriculum, initiatives, or research proposals which name and move toward brokenness between humans or the Creation employing the tools of our academic discipline. Employing action research language of “problems of practice” evokes a manner of framing particular sites of brokenness and reveals avenues for redress through scholarly inquiry.79 These efforts seek to take up Wolterstorff’s call to not just teach “about justice—though we must; I mean that we must teach for justice. The graduate whom we seek to produce must be one who practices justice.”80 Taking up Milton’s exhortation in framing education as “seeking to repair the ruins of our first parents”, teachers might invite students into a joyful telos of restoration and renewal by calling them to leverage academic disciplines and practice to cultivate and steward the Creation for mutual flourishing.81

Enactive

Embodied and embedded people learn through doing.82 As Stilwell and Harman indicate, “Sense-­making is shaped by possibilities for action and action-­perception cycles. We perceive through bodily action. . . .”83 In other words, embodied learners learn as they interact with the environment in which they are embedded. As active agents embedded within environments, human learners carry capacity for sensing “affordances” or opportunities for engagement.84 Educators familiar with service learning or experiential learning of various kinds will be familiar with the work of David Kolb and others who sought to describe how “learning by doing” happens.85 Although this well-­known theory describes mostly internal processes as the learner engages experience, enactivism portrays the manner in which learners act upon and are acted upon within their embedded context.86 This interaction (or possibilities for interaction) shape how learners make sense of their world.87

Such descriptions of how sense-­making happens through enaction remain deeply helpful, but Christian educators must also consider what they are for. As previously considered in the “embedded” component of Stilwell and Harman’s enactive cycle, Christian learners receive a call to not only notice their context in its fullness, but to interact in ways which seek to repair brokenness in the pursuit of shalom.88 This missional emphasis contains both the command to make disciples of all nations found in the Great Commission, but also to cultivate and care for the creation via the Creation Mandate. In other words, faithfulness for the Christian requires action within our contexts, moving toward both people and places within our sphere of influence.89

This action-­orientation also derives from our status as image-­bearers, according to Comenius.90 As mentioned previously, Comenius’s call for image-­bearers to care for the Creation resulted in his own enactive move within a time and place to create a children’s textbook containing accurate illustrations of nature. Beyond this remarkable work Comenius stood apart from peers of his day to contend that to assist in this work of loving for and caring for the Creation well, every human ought to receive education on the basis that they bear the imago dei, regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, or cognitive capability.91 This Creation-­order argument provides powerful incentive for Christians to consider their learning through action: “In the first place, all who have been born to man’s estate have been born with the same end in view, namely, that they may be men, that is to say, rational creatures, the lords of other creatures, and the images of their Creator.”92 Comenius’s framing of education provides a rich vision of what a Christian education might be for amidst our contemporary climate which finds many Christian schools oriented around what they might be against.93 A missional, stewarding orientation thus provides a defining characteristic of education that we might consider Christian.

Enactive Implications for the Classroom

As Wolterstorff describes, the work of pursuing shalom will require learners to think creatively across academic disciplines to address brokenness in its complexity.94 Curricular choices, assessments, and service-­learning requirements should both call to attention areas worth cultivating and equip for meaningful action within those places. One small but impactful practice entails careful choice of images employed in class. Inspired by Comenius, Calvin University’s David Smith has provided excellent examples for what this looks like within his own language classroom, offering a feasible change in practice by choosing relevant and meaningful images of real people in real places as opposed to clipart or stereotype-­inducing pictures.95 Along with my own usage of realistic pictures in handouts and slide presentations, I also required students to seek the same in the lesson plans and presentations they created for their future students. Sharing my copy of Comenius’s Orbis Pictus as an exemplar to my future teachers situated the concept among our Christian fellowship through history. Rather than cartoonish or clip-­art inspired illustrations, might pictures of real humans and real places plant seeds of pursuing shalom as a vocation?

Other teaching practices, such as offering opportunities for “doing” within the classroom rather than as homework might be modes of enacting. I began setting aside a substantive weekly time slot for collaborative work on projects with my immediate support. Despite losing some traditional instructional time, my students now find new and varied opportunities to take intellectual risks and practice creativity with the support of expert guidance and immediacy of feedback.96 As students worked in pairs to develop a unit plan, I circulated the room to both answer questions and facilitate deeper thinking through devil’s advocate questioning, specific scenarios which might challenge a particular plan, or identifying resources that might be helpful. The goal here was to scaffold both the product students created but also call attention to the process in ways which promoted self-­reflection on my student’s development as pre-­service teachers. This move permitted not only open conversations about how I seek to leverage my role as teacher to facilitate Christian thinking and formation in real-­time but also models the work itself for my future educators.97 Between my own expert guidance and that of peers, students now receive feedback and practice regarding professional practice and Christian thinking as they remain in the act of doing.

Rapid expansion of online programming at many institutions of higher learning opens the possibility for the democratization of education to many places previously lacking access. Christian institutions and faculty might consider how this affords opportunity for the work of equipping meaningful action in particular places without requiring students to leave their communities to live on a traditional campus elsewhere. Creative project-­based learning and guided local field work with missional emphasis invites students to view an online degree as enabling them to act as agents of restoration and renewal in their community rather than simply providing a convenient and affordable learning modality. Opportunities here might include required mentorship by a pastor or similar leader within the student’s setting, activities or assessments which require students to step away from a book or screen to complete fieldwork where applicable, and assignments that require particular attention to equipping and sending students redemptively toward their local communities. As Cox indicates, the imago dei rightly nurtured within a Christian educational setting compels students toward their “human environment,” a vital consideration for the isolating nature of some forms of online learning.98

Emotive

Emotion remains inextricably woven throughout embodied, embedded, and enactive learning.99 This aspect of human experience might be defined as “a complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements, by which an individual attempts to deal with a personally significant matter or event.”100 Enactivist theory initially gathered momentum as a response to early cognitive science proponents who essentially characterized learning as a cognitive-­only affair.101 Although the field of cognitive science has long adapted to properly address the role of emotions in learning, it may be that widespread educational practice minimizes their consideration.102 The complex dynamics between cognition and emotion play a profound role in student learning, particularly relating to academic skills and ways of thinking.103 Joshua Eyler explains that “Cognition, therefore, can often serve to stimulate our emotional responses. Similarly, when our emotions are activated, they play an important role in allocating cognitive resources to the matter at hand.”104 Enactivism maintains that emotions influence human interpretation of events as they act, shaping how sense-­making occurs within the learner.105 This position holds agreement among the literature on emotion and cognition, including the ways this relationship becomes shaped both by biology and cultural dynamics.106 Once again the dynamic interplay of each component in the 5e cycle appears as learners emotively respond to other learners and humans within their embedded context as whole and embodied creatures.107

Christian considerations for emotion vary widely depending on which theological tradition one belongs, but Scripture contains a vast array of experience.108 From King David to the apostle Paul, exhortations to “rejoice,” “be glad,” and “weep with those who weep” abound. Theologians frame emotions both as a good gift of God to be enjoyed and as an indicator for revealing our image-­bearing nature both individually and in community.109 For the Hebrews, mind and emotion were both central to action and being.110 Spanning both hard and soft emotions, these experiences play an integral role in what comprises human experience, an inextricable aspect of our learning and formation..111

According to Williams, a biblical view of emotion entails not only a response, but also that it “prepares the body and mind for action.”112 C. S. Lewis asserted that emotions “give rise . . . to a kind of deep moral and spiritual understanding that is constitutive of wisdom.”113 Even considered from the perspective of learning science, emotions play a formational role in the act of perception. Emotion situates embodied, embedded learners for action.114

Emotive Implications for the Classroom

One implication for practice which may hold intuitive wisdom is that Christian educators should model enthusiastic and emotive engagement for their students.115 Whether by modeling passion for a particular academic discipline, building healthy relationships with students, enabling healthy peer engagement, or sustaining truthful self-­concepts, attention to the cognitive-­emotional dynamic should be cultivated within the Christian classroom..116 As stated previously, specific lessons might benefit from modeling non-­exemplar behavior and contrasting with the appropriate professional dispositions and emotive behavior fitting your academic discipline. Such intentional moves toward emotive learning might also be a manner of addressing the rampant mental health crisis prevalent among Christian learners as well..117 Demonstration of care for students by providing meaningful growth-­mindset oriented narrative feedback on assessments can play a powerful role in addressing this need.118

Prayer represents another common practice Christian educators might employ as an act of hospitality toward students who might be in places of emotional strength or need.119 The simple act of recording prayer requests visibly in class, praying as a community, and following up over time as an act of care for others remains a strategy employed by many Christian educators.120 St. Mary’s College’s Caryolyn Call reports that coupling prayer with acts of hospitality (sharing food, among these) and engaging in personal stories elicited personal and student growth that was as profound as it was challenging as they collectively experienced both hard and soft emotions.121 David Smith supports prayer (particularly praying Scripture) as a move from an individual toward others as well, stating “Someone, somewhere is suffering, someone is rejoicing, someone is experiencing persecution, and I get to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. . . . I get to join in with the prayers of the body of Christ, whether or not they match my feelings.”.”122

Regular reflexive writing both in and outside of the classroom might provide yet another means of equipping students to notice and practice healthy emotive learning. Brief pauses for quick writing or freewriting exercises amidst the flurry of regular activities and instruction may provide a break in pace necessary not only for thoughtful cognitive reflection but also gauging affective responses..123 Calvin University’s Rebecca DeYoung explains the need to couple class practices with opportunities for reflection: “So we need practices, and we need reflection on practices. Practices enhance and expand our reflection, and reflection enriches and sustains our practices.”.”124 She suggests specific opportunities for reflection which both invite contemplation on one’s own growth and draw students toward careful consideration of the experiences of others, an opportunity to practice emotive responses within and for community.125

Total participation techniques which check for affective response to new concepts create opportunities for assessment and development of a classroom culture which embraces emotive learning. These quick, adaptable, and ungraded activities reveal whether students feel comfortable continuing or whether they need remediation. My most common method for enacting these responses involves asking for students to raise their hands and indicate with a thumbs up, thumbs down, or somewhere in between to indicate their level of comfort or resonance with a new or challenging concept. Others have employed a one-­word check-­in where each student explains their current mood or feeling.126

It should be noted that although emotional check-­in’s provide opportunity for students to share their feelings, more importantly they allow the faculty member to identify what sort of guidance or support students might need to rightly orient emotions within a Christian frame, much like formative assessments reveal student’s learning needs.127 Invitations toward participating in authentic emotive learning provide a powerful impetus for Christian learners.

Extended

An embodied person always resides and acts within a context, maintaining relationships and interactions within a broader environment..128

This environment extends to non-­living things.129 The enactivist view of extension includes social and legal structures, systems which constitute academic disciplines, or cultural elements. This extended environment shapes sense-­making for learners as they perceive what possibilities for enaction exist given the barriers or avenues produced by such structures.130 The “extended” component of Stilwell and Harman’s framing of enactivism builds on the “embedded” component described earlier to include non-­living systems and even digital spaces.131 This provides a fascinating layer to consider for those teaching in higher education where use of a learning management system in some capacity even for completely on-­campus courses pervades common practice..132 Christian thinking about faithful living within our multi-­layered communities and systems provides several opportunities for approaching this aspect of enactivism. Economic systems often filter down into the social imaginary of their participants, and the constant drive to produce and consume commodities prevails among Western cultures.

Just as with enactivism, however, the Christian worldview does not place learners as merely at the mercy of these systems. Theologian Walter Brueggemann frames biblical sabbath practice as one means of actively resisting such systems that prize efficiency and commodification at all costs..133 Along similar lines Christians during our current cultural moment find themselves bombarded with economically-­laden language about the inevitability of artificial intelligence to disrupt our lives.134 Once again a faithful anthropology provides a robust response as we consider the uniquely creative capacity of image-­bearers.135 Although previously mentioned, Wolterstorff’s call to teach for shalom bears relevance here as a call to move toward systems which hinder human flourishing across various areas of society.136

Extended Implications for the Classroom

An excellent starting point for welcoming students into considering the extended component is within the spaces of our academic disciplines. My discipline of teacher education does present a relatively overt opportunity to consider the ways structures shape vocation, from systems such as state standards to policies or legislation which actively support or hinder equitable access to education for students of various socioeconomic backgrounds. Case study applications or projects requiring students to both identify characteristics of systems their vocation inhabits as well as how to enact human or creational flourishing from within may make this work more tangible.137

To make this more explicit however, I welcome students into considering how my own ungrading practices by necessity were enacted from within a collegiate system in which I still am required to submit a final letter and number grade to the registrar’s office, and how as a Christian teacher I navigate such a space. Through 1-­on-­1 conferences and ongoing discussion in class, we collaborated on effective ways to operate in such a system, inviting students into the process as well. This specific application was explored in the context of our conversations about recognizing brokenness within our spheres of influence and moving toward it as we pursue an education for shalom.138

As students grappled with the sometimes uncomfortable task of self-­assessment and similar aspects of ungrading, we considered how broader grading structures through their educational career had formed their affections toward individual achievement and pursuing grades more than personal growth or learning.

Christian educators might also consider how other perhaps less overt systems such as digital technologies and artificial intelligence intersect with our sense-­making of the world as teachers. Through direct instruction, simulation activities, and case-­study discussions, I invite students to employ learning technologies in their own classrooms that are built on deep human foundations, rather than simply using technologies since that is what teachers are expected to do. For example, I model a common application of “edu-­tainment” educational technology and then lead a discussion around the kinds of learning students noticed after participating. They often report that although the activity was “fun,” it did not engage the kinds of learning initially sought after. This also provides a platform to explore the ways educational technology may promote or hinder human flourishing by the way it delimits learning and reflection for students via its design.139

In particular, these practices can affirm the embedded and enactive nature of learning for students as they see technologies as either extensions or amputations of our own humanity and that of our learners.140

Conclusion

Amidst a cacophony of voices vying for the attention of our student’s affections, Christian educators enjoy special opportunities to seek the holistic formation of faithful Christ-­followers. Such work encompasses seeing our students as “heart-­soul-­mind-­strength complexes designed for love” capable of meaningful action in their local communities, vocations, and society at large.141

The initial introduction to enactivism presented in this article is offered to my fellow Christian educators as a “flexible resource” which might be applied across teaching settings and academic disciplines to assist in making sense of how Christian learning happens.142 Embodied, embedded, enactive, emotive, and extended learning offers both a lens for examining current successes in the classroom, and also a means for identifying next steps toward increasingly faithful Christian teaching

Cite this article
Justin Harbin, “Making Sense of Christian Learning”, Christian Scholar’s Review, 49:3 , 83-106

Footnotes

  1. Michael Smith, “The Public is Giving Up on Higher Ed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2023, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-­public-­is-­giving-­up-­on-­higher-­ed.
  2. Perry Glanzer, Nathan Alleman, and Todd Ream, Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Higher Education in a Fragmented Age (InterVarsity Press, 2017), 246–256; Shirley Roels, “Educating for Vocation: Weaving Educational Ideas With Institutional Practices,” Christian Higher Education 16, no. 1–2 (2017): 92–106.
  3. Ken Badley, “Clarifying Faith-­Learning Integration: Essentially Contested Concepts and the Concept-­Conception Distinction,” Journal of Education & Christian Belief 13, no. 1 (2009): 7–17; Glanzer, Alleman, and Ream, Restoring the Soul of the University, 246–256; Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education (Eerdmans, 2004), 10–26.
  4. Arthur Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College (Eerdmans, 1987), 25.
  5. James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Baker Academic, 2009), 31–35; David Smith, On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Eerdmans, 2018), 1–13.
  6. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 80–88; James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Brazos, 2016), 137–170.
  7. Smith, On Christian Teaching, 68–80.
  8. David Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Prentice-­Hall, 1984), 18; Carmel Hinchion, “Student English Teachers: Participatory Learning and Developing Identities-­in-­Practice,” English Teaching: Practice & Critique 16, no. 2 (2017): 238–251; Ekta Sinha and Keith D’Souza, “Experiential Learning Through Applied Theatre in Corporate Training: A Qualitative Approach,” Journal of Management Development 41, no. 7–8 (2022): 431–449.
  9. Jacques Merleau-­Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Routledge, 1962); David Reid, “Enactivism as a Methodology,” Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education 4 (1996): 203–210.
  10. Reid, “Enactivism as a Methodology,” 203–210; Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, rev. ed. (MIT Press, 2017), 205.
  11. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 149.
  12. Merleau-­Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception; Reid, 205; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 149.
  13. Reid, “Enactivism as a Methodology,” 206.
  14. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 158.
  15. Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom, 53.
  16. Reid, “Enactivism as a Methodology,” 203–210; Peter Stilwell and Katherine Harman, “An Enactive Approach to Pain: Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 18, no. 4 (2019): 637–665; Peter Stilwell and Katherine Harman, “Phenomenological Research Needs to Be Renewed: Time to Integrate Enactivism as a Flexible Resource,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 20, no. 1 (2021): 1–15.
  17. Stilwell and Harman, “Phenomenological Research Needs to Be Renewed,” 5.
  18. Stilwell and Harman, “Phenomenological Research Needs to Be Renewed,” 5.
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  20. Andy Crouch, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World (Convergent, 2022), 21–39.
  21. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 205; Dave Ward, David Silverman, and Mario Villalobos, “Introduction: The Varieties of Enactivism,” Topoi 36 (2017): 365–375.
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  23. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 149.
  24. Merleau-­Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception; Stilwell and Harman, “An enactive approach to pain,” 9–11; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 245; Ward, Silverman, and Villalobos, “Introduction,” 366.
  25. Stilwell and Harman, “Phenomenological Research Needs to Be Renewed,” 5.
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  32. Philippians 3.
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  37. Fluit, “Being Where Our Bodies Are”; Hall, “What Are Bodies For?”
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  40. Allberry, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies, 19; Fluit, “Being Where Our Bodies Are”; Hall, “What Are Bodies For?”
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  54. Carolyne Call, “The Rough Trail to Authentic Pedagogy,” in Teaching & Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith & Learning, eds. David Smith and James K.A. Smith (Eerdmans, 2011), 64; Walton and Walters, “Eat This Class,” 82.
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  57. Stilwell and Harman, “An Enactive Approach to Pain,” 637–665.
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  91. Comenius, The Great Didactic, IX.
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  131. Reid, “Enactivism as a Methodology,” 6.
  132. Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (Westminster John Knox, 2017), 6–10; Smith, You Are What You Love, 27–56.
  133. Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (Westminster John Knox, 2017), 6–10; Smith, You Are What You Love, 27–56.
  134. Bailey, “The Body in Cyberspace.”
  135. Kilner, Dignity and Destiny, 124–134.
  136. Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom, 22-26.
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  139. Andy Crouch, The Life We’re Looking For, 54.
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  142. Stillwell and Harman, “Phenomenological Research Needs to Be Renewed,” 6.

Justin Harbin

Justin Harbin, Ed.D. is Associate Professor of education and Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning at Lancaster Bible College.

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