researchers found that when students are actively engaged in the learning process, they are more likely to sort out the logic behind mathematical problems.
Of course, the lessons should be learnt by the churches too; Christian faith is more 'personal', owned and understood when it it constructed and not just dogmatically handed on. Teaching the faith is about helping people to engage with it and make it their own. It's about helping people learn and to take responsibility for their own learning in their own context using the raw material of their own lives and questions.
Is this biblical? I can feel evangelical and catholic hackles rise as the biblical ideas of teaching the faith and 'passing on the deposit of faith once delivered' rise from the text. But let's think. 'Teach' doesn't have to mean a lecture-style. In fact, the evidence is that early Christian teaching, including Jesus's was dialogical and conversational. In any case, the application of loving others as we love ourselves surely leads to teaching methods that take seriously how others learn and their a prioris. In fact the whole mission thing of being 'all things to all' is a teaching and learning strategy. So, 'yes'; it is biblical at a deeper level than proof-texting; in being a way of loving our neighbour enough to 'incarnate' in order to lead or grow into new understandings.
The incarnation is constructivism for humanity; entering into our experience in order to facilitate the construction of new understandings of God and our place in God's purposes. Taking our experience seriously as the only possible starting place any of us has to renew our grasp of God.
ScienceDaily: Online Journal Combines Teaching Math And Studying How Students Learn: Filed in: constructivism, education, theory, research
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