Educating Christian Teachers for Responsive Discipleship

Five members of the Calvin College Center for Christian Scholarship 1991-1992 team present some creative and constructive proposals for changes that could occur in the teacher education programs of hundreds of church-related colleges. Theoretically committed to a biblical vision of 'responsive discipleship, ' the authors sketch out 1. a curricular theory that encourages many-sided 'encounters' with created reality, which stimulate varieties of student responses that should arise, ultimately, from a committment of the heart; 2. a collaborative model of teacher education that urges congruent values to be held by the local school, school district, and the teacher education college; and 3. a curriculum that arises, in part, out of the laboratory of the classroom through the interaction of teacher and student in a school organized to develop collegiality among teachers and students, where through the use of evaluative portfolios, student teachers learn to be reflective practitioners of the art and craft of teaching. Co-published with the Institute for Christian Studies