How has my understanding changed?

How has my understanding of spirituality, education and justice changed throughout this unit so far?

It has been several months since I began some of the readings for this subject. There is a big difference between what I knew about these three concepts in December as compared to now. It is not only that I feel that I have learnt a lot about these concepts but also that as I have been reading it has become easier to understand the language and terminology used in the some of the readings.

If I reflect back to my post 'more than definitions', at that point in time I could see what the three words meant but struggled to see actually how they were going to tie in together in this subject and have practical relevance to my teaching. Now, a few months on, I can definitely see that there is so much more to each of these concepts independently and through interrelation than I previously thought.

Spirituality	Justice	Education
The quality that involves deep feelings and beliefs of a religious nature, rather than the physical parts of life ("Spirituality," 2015)	Fairness in the way people are dealt with ("Justice," 2015)	The process of teaching or learning, especially in the school or college, or the knowledge that you get from this.  ("Education," 2015)

I agree that spirituality is something that is not of a physical nature but from what I have learnt in our intensive and through the readings, my view of spirituality being related solely to feelings and beliefs of a religious nature has changed. The way that Tracey explained spirituality is that all people are spiritual beings whether they believe in a god or not. I see spirituality now as something much broader and all inclusive than I ever had before. It is not just related to a specific religion but rather the way that we were created as spiritual beings.

I feel that this definition still rings true based on what I have learnt but it can be explored much deeper than just saying what is fair. I understand what justice is in terms of what is just, fair and right and can see the importance of creating just situations in all areas of life. It was great to read about the impact Paulo Freire has made with his passion for educating those in struggling situations. I had never thought about what impact literacy could have on the power of individuals within in a community but I can now understand this. I believe this can also relate to us in our community. If students don't get a proper education their future and their power to take control of the lives can be impacted as their opportunities to do what they might be gifted in may be restricted.

I agree that education is a process of teaching and learning and that this isn't always restricted to the school or university environment though is the specific role of these institutions. I find this definition to be true, however is lacking many areas that are involved in educating a person. This definition highlights only knowledge as a key to education. I have learnt and feel I believed prior to this course that education is about much more than knowledge. It is about the experience of teaching and learning and helping people develop in many different ways; emotionally, spiritually, socially, academically etc. People can be educated at school, university, in a workplace, a child at home with their mother etc. Education is the concept that I believe I had known the most about prior to beginning this course yet I still feel that I have learnt so much more about by completing this subject. Particularly, Parker Palmer's ideas about teaching who we are is something that was new to me, as well as a range of other topics he discussed about fear, community and the importance of conversations and having time to think about and question who we are and what we believe in. I learnt a lot about some ideas for teaching in a Christian school and how we can create the best environment for transformation for our students. Critical thinking is another area that I have learnt about and would like to try to incorporate in my teaching to help me develop these skills as well as my students.

There is still plenty to learn...

Looking at the rest of this course, including the next intensive, I know I still have plenty to learn and be challenged with. A few areas I would particularly like to explore deeper include; 

• Justice- at our next intensive we are exploring justice further. I look forward to this as I still have a lot of questions to ask about justice and how we as teachers can help implement this concept to improve our teaching and benefit the lives of our students. I would love to know; who decides what is just? In terms of a religion, is it what is written? For those that aren't religious is it the law? Is there conflicts sometimes between what we believe is just and what others might think? What does God say about justice? Is there a difference between being just and doing what is right? We spoke a little about sometimes the just action is not always a positive thing. For example, creating consequences for a child that does the wrong thing. I would also like to explore justice in terms of reinforcement to broaden my understanding of the topic. 
• Spirituality- I now have the understanding that there is a distinct difference between religion and spirituality even though in some circumstances they are very closely connected. I need to critically look at spirituality from different perspectives to gain a better understanding of this concept. I would like to start to explore other's spirituality a bit more to see what experiences people have without religion in their lives. If everyone is a spiritual being, yet there are a large number of people all throughout the world which would claim to not believe in a god, how are they developing their spiritual lives if at all? I want to be able to learn more about this to help better understand my students, where they might be at in terms of their spirituality and to help them explore this area of their lives.
• Education - In terms of my teaching, I want to allow time to start to really look at some of the ideas of Parker Palmer and others that we have learnt about to apply in my teaching. I want to look at and challenge myself about why I am doing what I am and whether or not I am genuine in the classroom. I want my students to witness genuine care and concern for them and I want them to see my relationship with Christ reflected in who I am and how I interact with them. 
  

Where to from here?

I look forward to the rest of the course and particularly the next intensive. I really enjoy listening to discussions about topics I have been reading about and having that feeling of ideas starting to click and it all piecing together in my mind. I believe that face to face contact and the opportunity to ask questions allows for greater understanding as although reading can give us knowledge, it is when we critically think about the information and discuss it with others, that it is really learnt. For me personally, I find this easier to do with others around. 

Justice, Spirituality and Education

We started our intensive weekend looking at the three key concepts of this subject; spirituality, education and justice. We initially looked at what we thought as a group what each concept was. Sitting there and thinking back to my first post looking at definitions of the three, I felt I had more understanding and could add to the discussion but still felt like there was a lot more I had to learn.

Education

We looked at education being the all round growth of an individual- personally, socially, academically and in our school we would hope spiritually. Some suggested it to be the development of knowledge as well as skills and something that involves teachers and learners. Tracey spoke about education being much more than knowledge. She taught us that character development must be central in education and it should be incorporated not separated from teaching. I couldn't agree more with this idea and I think this is actually something that our school does very well.

Daryl Riddle, the founder and now CEO of Christian College, was present for the morning of the intensive. He spoke about his philosophy for our school and central to this philosophy is the aim to develop the whole individual, with a particular focus on the spiritual growth of the students.

"Christian College develops an atmosphere of care and concern for each student’s character growth and well-being, within a value system and set of priorities derived from the Christian faith... Students will be encouraged to adopt for themselves a personal faith in Jesus Christ, and to apply His teaching of love, justice and compassion in their relations with others... The aim of Christian College is to develop the spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional capacity of students as part of their total character, and to develop an appreciation of the wonderful world in which we live, to enhance it, as well as to preserve it." (College Philosophy, 2011)

It is great to hear from the founder of the school and to hear what his vision is. Daryl spoke about the fact that as teachers in this school he would hope that we all have the same vision and philosophy as him or that we might not be in the right place. As a past student who values the school and its vision, I definitely feel that his philosophy, our school philosophy, is also my vision and what I strive for with my students. I plan on sending my own kids, when I have them one day as I believe that Christian College does this very well in most occasions. However, I think that there are staff within our school that don't have the same vision and I feel that students may notice this difference in the way that teachers conduct themselves. I remember that as a student at Christian College there was something noticeably different about some teachers as compared to others. It was evident which staff were being genuine when we had times of prayer, devotions or services in the chapel and who were not.

In the intensive, we learnt that as educators we have an opportunity to open doors for our students to learn about Christ and to create opportunities for them to develop intangible characteristics like love, hope, truth, grace. We can do this through creating relationships, explicit discussions and by demonstrating these characteristics through our interactions with the students. These things can only come through truly knowing ourselves as Palmer (2007) suggests.


I learnt at the intensive that education is about making learning meaningful. We learnt that it is not about saying 'this is how it applies to life' but rather bringing the content of what we are teaching together with developing life skills, critical thinking and discernment, to help our students start to be able to think for themselves. As teachers, we need to have the freedom to think about how to be wise and discerning rather than just having knowledge of good values. We need to actually think about these values. I think this relates to what Tracey was talking about with marriage and whether we think about things and their context or just have an awareness and belief in certain values and apply them with no actual understanding. It was suggested that we can start to do this through dialogue and conversations. This is something I don't think we do well at school and I am guessing not many other schools do either.

Palmer (2007) proposes that 'we teach who we are' (p.1). Tracey suggested that our philosophical view of the world; what we see is of value, who we are, where we think we go once we die (and many more questions I learnt about at the intensive), impact on our students. This can be specific to our subjects or to any other interaction with students, parents or even other staff that we come in contact with.

We read James 3:1-2. It is highlighted that not all are created to be teachers in the bible. As teachers, we have a major role in the lives of our students and although we all make mistakes and will do so, we have some responsibility for what our students do in the end and what choices they make. We spend more time with young people than their parents do during the school term, seeing them for the majority of the day. This thought is exciting yet scary. We have a great opportunity to make a positive difference in their lives but also this comes with fear.

In my post 'Called to be a teacher', I spoke about my belief that it is my vocation to teach. I love the way Tracey spoke about teaching as an act of worship. Worship is defined as 'the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity' ("Worship", 2015). Tracey affirmed this saying that worship is 'recognition of being in awe of who God is'. She suggested that if we teach as an act of worship we have the opportunity to have God work in us and through us. We can be transformed each day and if we are transforming, it allows for greater opportunity for our students to be genuinely and authentically influenced.

Another area of education that we discussed at the intensive that I found very interesting and made me really think was about education as a political act. We spoke about the idea that knowledge and literacy creates power. When there is power for all, there is justice and when there is justice there can be freedom. Paulo Freire had a major influence not only in the academic world on this topic but also practically in certain countries around the world. His work was all about the transforming power of education and he focused on the literacy skills of people in poverty. Once the people had literacy skills they were better able to understand what was happening to them and they were able to then talk about it and create change. Not only did he emphasise the importance of education through basic literacy skills but he highlighted the importance of dialogue and the opportunity to critically think about things as well (Macedo, 2011).

We talked a lot about critical thinking at the intensive and spoke explicitly about this skill. Tracey created opportunities for us to practice this way of thinking through her questioning and by allowing us to thresh out ideas in small groups. Critically thinking is all about the why. I need to develop this skill and make a concerted effort to create opportunities for my kids in the classroom. I like the quote we were given by Alexandra Trenfor 'the best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see'. This is something I need to work on in my own teaching. I often guide students and lead them to the answer when they are struggling. I know that this is not going to help them to develop critical thinking skills. I really need to understand that my job is to teach how to think, not what to think.

I had a look online to help me further explore how I might actually start to try to incorporate activities that promote critical thinking. Snyder (n.d.) suggests that some of the reasons that we and our students don't critically think are that;

• Too many facts, too little conceptualising
• Too much memorizing, too little thinking
• Lecture & rote memorisation does not require critical thinking
• Students are not “trained” to think
• Critical thinking is more than simple engagement (Synder, n.d.)

I went on to explore some of the ideas Snyder (n.d) presents for how to teach and develop critical thinking in our students. From some of the ideas he has presented, I have tried to think of a specific example I could do in my classroom. 

1. 'Let students ask questions and look for answers' - Allow students opportunities to create their own questions to explore topics. Also don't cut students off or give them the answers. 

2. 'Help students apply what they learn to solve problems'- Ask questions like, 'based on the material, how would you...' or 'now that you know this, how do you solve...?'

3. 'Create opportunities for students to listen to each other and debate ideas'- In Health particularly I could allow students to have opportunities to discuss and debate topics to further their thinking and understanding of major issues discussed. 

4- 'Challenge students to know, not memorise'- to do this I may need to ensure assessments aren't just based around memorising content but rather really knowing about a topic or skill and being able to apply it and deeply understand it. 

5- 'Question, examine, create, solve, interpret, debate'- In Health for some of the topics we look at, I may be able to use this structure to create great discussions

6- 'Students think about what they learn'- in PE rather than just practising a skill, students may need to break the skill down and think about the different movements that make up the skill. They could then think about and discuss with others about those different movements and how they might relate to other sports or skills. So rather than just doing the skill, students would actually be thinking about it. 

7- 'Apply material to real situations (e.g., Case Studies)' - In Health there are lots of opportunities to look at case studies or examples of how various issues might be experienced by someone. I could incorporate this more often to help students see relevance and really think about risks, consequences or things that may happen and find people in their lives or other examples to help apply the knowledge better. 

8- 'Apply high-order questions'- when looking at skills in PE or topics in Health there is a lot of opportunity to ask students how or why something happens. This is something I need to do more often. A lot of the time I wait for students to ask the question before we explore as a class, but it needs to be the other way around sometimes. We need to help them apply it to the greater context. 

Snyder (n.d.) provided some practical activities that can be used in classrooms with various subjects to help to promote critical thinking. 

1. 'The value line- provide a yes or no question that opinions can vary on and students need to answer with supportive reasoning to why they believe yes/no. Get two students to stand at either end of the room that are definite no's or yes'. Then students are asked to take their place along an imaginary line between the two extremes and students are asked to discuss with students in the line their responses to the question.' (Snyder, n.d.). I have actually used this activity before and it does work really well to promote deeper thinking.

2. 'What? So what? Now what? Students complete a table. In first column have the word written 'what' up the top (students summarise the most important ideas from the lesson). The next column students write 'so what' up the top (students are asked to determine what is important about the ideas they just listed. Why do they matter? What difference do they make? The third column has 'now what' written up the top (students brainstorm actions, what can they do about the problem or issue?' (Snyder, n.d.).

3. '3, 2, 1 Processor - Students complete three recalls- they need to list three things they recall from the work or activity. Students complete two insights- ideas, connections or main points not directly covered. Students write one question they have about the material. Get students to work with a small group to answer students questions.' (Snyder, n.d.)

Other ways that I could do this in my subject area could be through setting tasks where students are given problems and have to find out how to get to that end point. They would need to look at the task or outcome broadly, then deeper and then reflectively. In PE for instance, students could be shown a complete skill (broad) and be asked to break that skill down and think about the different parts that make it up and what is required to do the skill (deep). They could then be challenged to reflect on how they were able to complete the skill based on their deeper understanding (reflective) and then be required teach it to a classmate, explaining to them why the skill is important to the game/activity. Other ways in which I could implement in my subject area could be in Health. We often talk about real life issues in this subject. The students learn information about certain risks and changes that they may face in the future and we hope to enable them to make the best decisions possible. When sharing the content, I need to focus in on providing the general information in an informative and engaging way (broad), then allow for students to explore in more detail (deep) with one another and through further research and possibly application. To help them better think about the topics at hand they could be asked to think about a certain situation particularly and how they would respond now or possibly in the future if their circumstances changed (reflective).

Spirituality 

At the intensive we defined spirituality to be a belief in a god, which we (as Christians) would identify as a belief in God. Tracey explained that spirituality is about the meaningful things, the intangible as compared to the tangible. I must say that this is a concept that I believe I have always had a very narrow and tunnel vision understanding of. Like Tracey suggested, as Christians, we often think about spirituality just in relation to God. For me, anything ideas about spirituality that weren't about God, I have been brought up to believe are not 'right' and 'not in line with what God wants'. I have never explored the fact that we are spiritual beings and people develop this aspect in their life in different ways. I believe I have been fearful of developing greater knowledge about spirituality. Up until this point why would I question or explore others spirituality and experiences? From the mindset I have developed, I would find it as a way of drawing myself away from God. After hearing a lot about spirituality and learning a bit more about what it actually means my view has shifted slightly. It has made me think about how I need to present this concept in my classes.


The activity we did at the start of the section at the intensive on spirituality was interesting to see how differently we all see spirituality. There were a couple of people that made similar choices in cards to myself and it was interesting that they were people with similar upbringing to me. I had chosen the cross and the tree. I had thought cross instantly as for me personally that is what I relate spirituality to in my life. However, I chose the tree thinking along the lines of, everyone is a spiritual being but whether their seed grows into a strong, flourishing tree or doesn't grow at all depends on the nurturing and influence of those around them. I think there is a lot more I need to learn about spirituality as I think that I still link spirituality in with religion because for me the two are so closely interconnected.

Justice

The final area we briefly discussed was justice and what this meant to us. We spoke about it having a very practical application. Justice, we learnt was all about freedom and equity, what is good and what is right. This concept is often the least understood by people. I would say that I understand the term in relation to the idea of what is just and right, but do believe I have a lot more to learn in how justice ties in with education, spirituality and our worldview.

We were asked to think about which of the three holds greater importance? For me I felt spirituality, my personal belief in God is going to influence what I think is right and just and how I teach. We learnt that all three are important and integral to being human. We looked at three different diagrams and we each had different perceptions of how we viewed the three concepts. The major point that we all noticed was that the three interact. Whether we believe one is more important than another, justice, education and spirituality are all going to impact on the one another.

How the three interact?

Although I am sure there is multiple ways of explaining some of the interactions between the three key concepts in this course, I noticed a few points that showed some interactions which are worth reflecting on.

• Education- Justice: The first is looking at our freedom to be educated and the concept of being educated to allow for freedom. We each have a right to have an education and to know. It is sad to think of how many people around the world don't get this opportunity. Not only should they be able to be educated but having this experience then allows for them to have freedom through knowledge and power. 
• Justice- Spirituality: For those that have chosen to live in relationship with God and that have salvation, there is freedom to live out their lives. The purpose of the cross was freedom. 
• Education- Spirituality: There is an opportunity through education to have a positive influence on the spiritual growth of our students. As teachers we can nurture our students through guiding, structuring, unfolding and enabling lessons that help students explore and think about what they believe and how they live their lives. 

Looking at the above examples, these are only scratching the surface of how the three concepts interact. Each concept is important and they all interact in different ways. I am sure that the more I learn, the deeper my understanding of justice, education and spirituality will be and I will be able to list more and more interactions and how the three concepts are vital for me to think critically about and help my students to do the same.