Doug Blomberg
Whose Spirituality? Which Rationality? A Narrational Locus for Learning

SCHOOLS SHOULD LEAD students in learning to fulfil their many vocations in life. To do this, they must ask, what learning is of most value? The criteria employed to select this rather than that educational experience will reflect the answer given. But what is learned is inextricably linked with how it is learned. Though there are many differing forces at work in shaping contemporary schooling, one perennial factor is a primary commitment to autonomous reason focusing on relatively self-contained subject matters. I believe this is no mere "academic" concern but one of deep spiritual significance. After further contextualising this remark, I will examine prominent theories of moral development, a prime site for understanding our culture's conception of values and value acquisition. I will then propose that an alternative, relational rationality ("narrationality") will enable schools better to reflect the interdependence of all creatures that Scripture proclaims and students to realise multidimensional value.

Matthew P. Phelps and Scott Waalkes
Christian Friendship as Faculty Development: A Narrative Account

IN THIS ARTICLE we offer a narrative account of three faculty development groups on one campus: an interdisciplinary summer reading group, a writers group, and a spiritual formation group. Grounded in the literature on Christian friendship, the narrative testifies to the development, characteristics, and impact of these groups. We conclude that communities of Christian friendship are a significant source and locale of faculty development.

Ted Newell
Worldviews in Collision: Jesus as Critical Educator

CONTEMPORARY CONNOTATIONS OF "teacher" don't do justice to Jesus' educating activity. "Worldview" understood as a comprehensive social environment helps us to perceive the scale of Jesus' struggle in his society and also Christian teachers struggle in their settings. Jesus is Israel's teacher in a deeper way than we hear by the term "teacher." Perspectives opened up by New Testament scholarship's Third Quest for the historical Jesus show that Jesus aimed to clarify the true meaning of God's covenant with Israel while subverting the dominant worldview. The argument is illustrated by analogy with another worldview challenger, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who developed strategies to counter what he named "hegemony." I conclude with implications for Christian teachers: teachers should understand themselves to be enacters of Jesus' way with students in Christian school or state school settings.

John E. Hull
Education for Discipleship: A Curriculum Orientation for Christian Educators

THIS ARTICLE INVESTIGATES the long-held assumption that Christian educators need their own curriculum orientation. Seminal documents published by Philip Jackson and Harro Van Brummelen in the nineties are analyzed against the background of a brief history of the field of curriculum theory. The author accepts Jackson’s conclusion that curriculum theorists and classroom teachers are generally confused about the true nature of curriculum orientations and about the way curriculum reform takes place. Jackson's own understanding of curriculum orientations raises the bar of curriculum reform from the mere substitution of one conceptual model for another to the preference of one way of life over all others.
The investigation reveals that Van Brummelen’s presentation of an alternative Christian curriculum orientation both rises above Jackson’s critique and is vulnerable to it. Education for Discipleship is a highly evolved alternative curriculum orientation; nevertheless, its implementation is limited to a learning community actualizing a biblical world and life point of view from a conceptual model to actual practice. This investigation suggests that substantive curriculum reform requires two-way traffic along the conduit of influence that connects faith, theoretic frameworks, curricular practice, and community life experience.

Harro Van Brummelen
Of Curriculum Conceptions, Orientations, and Cultures: A Rejoinder to John E. Hull

John E. Hull
A Surrejoinder to Harro Van Brummelen