In tenth grade, I fell in love with learning. Until then, I had been an average student. Actually, I spent more time out of class than in, when I did show up, I spent much of my time looking for ways to persuade teachers to give me a passing grade for my mediocre participation. But in tenth grade, I took Mrs. Spradley’s Creative Writing class — and things changed. Mrs. Spradley challenged students to think by giving them challenging problems to consider and write about. She dared her students to take on difficult topics. And she allowed us to debate each other (and her — but we had better be prepared!).

I was intrigued by the way she invited her students to participate in the learning process, but I was hooked when I realized she believed I was capable of writing and thinking well if given the opportunity. She could be a stern disciplinarian, but she deftly balanced her authority with an expectation and trust that students would succeed in her class. And we did.

It has been many years since that class, but the memory of what I learned about teaching from Mrs. Spradley has stayed with me. Now, as I train and mentor other teachers, I seek to pass on that heritage.

The Journey from Teaching to Learning

Much of the recent research on teaching and learning has shown that good teaching and good learning are not the same thing.

Good teaching has many characteristics. Two of are that it clearly communicates the material, and it is well done —  even eloquent.

Effective learning, on the other hand, focuses on how the student assimilates the knowledge she has gained into how she thinks and acts. Effective learning is not only about the acquisition of new knowledge but also an increased understanding that transforms the way a person acts and thinks.

A teacher can be a poor communicator but effectively create experiences where students experience transformative learning. The opposite can be true, as well: Someone may be a skilled orator and have people may go away saying, “Boy, he was a great speaker!” but with little true learning taking place.

Four Problematic Approaches

In my own experience as a youth minister and in my work as a youth ministry professor, I have had numerous opportunities to observe youth workers as they teach. In those observations — and sadly in my own teaching, as well — I have found four approaches to teaching, which are regularly used and focus on teaching rather than learning.

Problematic Approach #1: “Open up and dump it in.”
Many of us adopt this philosophy of teaching out of the acute sense of urgency we feel. We know that we have a limited number of teaching times with students, and we feel a strong sense of responsibility to give them all they need to live as faithful disciples.

That sense of urgency, though, can lead us to adopt a model that, first, views students as passive recipients in the learning process and, secondly, views teaching as simply the task of getting the information out there. The more information we deliver, the better prepared students will be.

With teaching, the reality is that less is more. Less content but more time to critically interact with the material helps ensure that young people will learn at a deeper level and that what they learn will actually have a long-term impact on their thoughts and attitudes.

Problematic Approach #2: “Control the environment.”
In our zeal to ensure students know the truth, we can create an environment where students are afraid to challenge, question, or discuss. In this context, students quickly learn that voicing doubt or asking questions will be met with ridicule or derision — sometimes by youth leaders, often by other students. When students assume that they cannot question or challenge what we say, they mentally tune out and consequently are robbed of the opportunity to learn at a deeper level.

As a young youth pastor, I found students’ questions to be a fearful experience. Not only was I concerned that students might ask questions for which I didn’t have answers, I was also afraid that students with questions might influence other students to have doubts and questions. In my fear, I worked hard to control the environment to keep the wayward student from “disrupting my teaching with questions.”

One young woman helped me to realize that doubting and questioning could be a good thing — for the student and for the youth group, as well. This young woman refused to yield to my control mechanisms and constantly peppered the youth staff with all kinds of questions about God, life, and faith. In our struggles to rein her in and contain her disruptions of the youth group, we failed to realize how her persistence in questioning actually fostered better learning, even if it dramatically altered our teaching time.

Encouraging students to ask questions and allowing them to be honest with their doubts can provide opportunities to invite students to grapple with matters of faith and can deepen the learning experience for everyone.

Problematic Approach #3: “Active kids listen better.”
Frequently I encounter youth leaders who believe that active learning means scheduling an extended period of physical activity just before youth group Bible study. I am continually amazed by youth leaders who think that letting students run crazy for 30 to 40 minutes before Bible study is actually conducive to good teaching. Perhaps it is conducive to good teaching, if good teaching is getting young people to sit still and be quiet while we talk. Unfortunately, a quiet and still student is not necessarily a learning student.

If our goal is to help them to learn, we need to create an environment where they are motivated to engage and encounter our teaching, not to passively and quietly sit through it. Allowing students to work at solving a problem together, engaging them in a creative activity to explain a biblical truth, or rewriting a parable to fit a  contemporary setting encourages students to channel  their energies into deeper learning.

Problematic Approach #4: “I’ve gotta say something. I’m the youth leader!”
Sometimes we believe that as youth leaders we have to be talking in order for students to learn. Whether we are paid staff or volunteer leaders, we often feel that the primary responsibility for learning rests on us and what we say. In my years of teaching, I have found that students’ learning increases when we allow them to engage the material in some way. That means we have to learn to be quiet. Learning best happens when we establish a context for students to actively encounter a problem or struggle with finding the answer to a question. The more we can give the process over to them, the greater (deeper) the learning experience will be.

From Shallow to Deep

All four of the approaches described above reflect a shallow philosophy of teaching that accentuates the transmission of information. The question, then, is: How do we as youth ministry leaders and educators move from this easy-wayout method to one that encourages deep and true learning?

In the transmission model of teaching, the emphasis is on what the speaker is communicating (i.e., transmitting) and encourages shallow learning rather than deep learning. This emphasis on the transmission of facts that are not connected to any real world experience results in a type of learning that does not ask students to consider how their thoughts and attitudes might change as a result of what they have learned.

Conversely, deep learning insists that students examine their mental models — their assumptions about the way life is — and adjust them in light of what they have discovered.

Ken Bain and others have spent years researching how students learn. Their research indicates that a variety of teaching methods foster good learning; no one method is more effective than another. What is important, whatever teaching method is used, is to encourage what Bain calls a “natural critical learning environment.”
 
In this kind of environment, young people learn by “confronting intriguing, beautiful, or important problems, authentic tasks that will challenge them to grapple with ideas, rethink their assumptions, and examine their mental models of reality.”

A variety of teaching methods can be incorporated in creating a natural critical learning environment. The two Positive Principles below are drawn from the research of Bain and others and can be readily incorporated into the youth ministry setting.

Positive Principle #1: Foster intrinsic motivation.
When I was in youth group as a teen (many years ago), Bible drills were a regular part of our youth group Bible studies. Leaders divided our youth group into teams of five to six youth, who then competed against each other to locate and read a Bible verse. These Sword Drill Teams competed for prizes, generally candy or the like.

In educational terms, we were motivated extrinsically — by the competition, the possibility of winning, and the prize itself. Extrinsic motivation can help people to learn. Sword Drills helped me to learn where the books of the Bible are located. However, when external factors and rewards are the incentive for learning, two things happen.

First, the learning tends to be shallow. While participating in the sword drills did help me to learn the books of the Bible, they did not motivate me to read and study the Bible.

Likewise, research on grades as motivation for learning clearly shows that being able to memorize information for an exam does not mean that students have learned the information. Often the material is forgotten in a very short period of time.

But when a young person engages in a task to answer questions or when a group tackles a problem because they enjoy the experience of figuring it out cognitively, they function at a deeper level. Competition often serves to deprive students of these deep, critical learning experiences.

A second problem with extrinsic motivation is that learning often ceases when there are no extrinsic motivators. With the middle school group above, I’m sure there were few students who memorized Bible verses once the drawing was over. Take away the motivation and the learning stops.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is a desire to learn that comes from within. When a young person comes to you with all kinds of questions about God, faith, or some burning issue, his questions are motivated by a deep desire to know the answers; something inside him has triggered those questions. Outside experiences or factors may encourage the desire, but this desire to learn grows out of a person’s own feelings and understandings.

When a young person is motivated internally to grapple with a problem or to discover the answer to a question, she will pursue it without any outside encouragement. Furthermore, the learning that happens, happens at a deeper cognitive level and results in changed behavior, thoughts, and attitudes.

Positive Principle #2: Send your students out with more questions.
Often teachers, and particularly youth ministry leaders, believe that our task is to provide answers to all our students’ questions. In fact, the converse is true. Our task is to foster more questions than answers. I tell my students that I feel like I have successfully accomplished my task as a teacher if they leave with more questions than they came with.

I was recently grading papers and came to a paper that had a long note attached to it. The student shared with me how frustrated she was. She told me that all semester she had sat down to write the papers I assigned weekly, believing that she had everything figured out and knew what she wanted to say. Her frustration had continued to grow, she said, because each time she began to write, she realized that while she had answered some of the questions, her answers only left her with more questions. Unfortunately, I probably increased her frustration when I wrote on her paper that I thought that was a good thing. If she still had questions unanswered, that meant she was still in the process of learning and that was a very good thing.

Think about the last time you prepared to teach. What questions did you ask as you began to prepare? Often we are consumers with practical questions, such as, How much time will I have? What kind of equipment will I need? Who is going to be available to help me set up? What copies or materials will I need? What other supplies will I need? Or, are the questions focused on how to create a critical learning experience for students?

It’s good to be concerned about practical matters like these, but materials and supplies won’t help you create an environment for learning. If that’s your goal, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• What questions do I want students to consider? (as opposed to what I want them to know)
• How can I ask students to make judgments or defend their assumptions?
• How can I ask students to apply what I’m teaching to situations in their own experiences?
• How will I encourage students’ interest?
• What mental models or assumptions might students have that I want them to confront?
• What skills or information do I need to provide them in order for them to do what I want them to do? What is the best way to give them those skills and/or information?

The Teacher’s Journey

If we want to encourage students to a more critical learning experience, it is a journey we must be on ourselves.

As a younger Christian, I used to believe that as I matured the journey would get easier; I would know and understand more, and life would be less complicated. As I matured, however, I began to realize that the more I learned, the more complicated life became.

Only in the last few years, though, have I begun to embrace and enjoy these complications. Yes, there are more questions than answers; but isn’t that the wonder of who we are, the world we live in, and the God we serve?

The greater our understanding, the more we question and the more we want to understand. Let our enthusiasm for learning be an inspiration that fosters a similar love of deep learning in the lives of our students.

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Pamela Erwin teaches at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn., and is the Board Chair for the Association of Youth Ministry Educators.