For Teacher Educators

The Transforming Lives website is primarily designed for student teachers and those who are considering teaching. As a teacher educator you will also find it useful in your work. In particular, it will enable you to support those of your students who have a Christian commitment and need to think through the relationship of their faith to their professional responsibilities.

Why Bother with Religious Faith?

It may be that this emphasis on the religious faith of the student is something that surprises, or even concerns you. A case study will illustrate why understanding a student's faith commitment is important.

The authorities had a problem. An area of outstanding natural beauty off the African island of Misali was being ravaged by the activities of local fishermen who had discovered that dynamite fishing was an efficient way to make their daily catch. The government tried reasoning; surely these men would cease this damaging practice once they understood its catastrophic effects? No result. It tried force; but the fishermen knew the waters better than the gun boats sent to intimidate them. Again, no result. Finally a bureaucrat had a bright idea. Were not these fishermen all Muslims? A delegation was dispatched to the local imam. The result was a result. The imam explained to his congregation that destroying the environment in this way is anti-Islamic. The Qur'an teaches a duty of care and respect for the natural world. The dynamite fishing stopped.

(See http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=170 for the story)

The case study illustrates the powerful contribution that an appeal to religious belief can make towards promoting the common good. A research project[1] led by Mark Chater the RE Subject Officer at the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency on the relationship between teachers personal values and professional responsibilities underlines the point. Chater concludes:

"Teachers' inner lives, including their sense of vocation and their emotional state, are what count in changing the profession; this cannot be done without examination of the teacher's basic beliefs - their creed in educational terms... It would seem that teachers, in order to gain a public voice, need to retain their personal one, and let it be transformed" (p. 256).

The premise of Transforming Lives is that Christian teachers will become better teachers if they can see Christian reasons for what they are being asked to do. (The same, of course, applies to teachers from other religious traditions.) This website and the other resources produced by the Transforming Lives project will support your work with Christian students entering teaching.

"Ten years ago I asked my student RE teachers to write about the developing relationship between their personal lives and beliefs and their professional aims and experiences. Their accounts were not only deeply moving but also provided insights into the spiritual and theological journeys that many were making, or attempting to make, as they developed professionally. A decade of researching these journeys has convinced me that there should not be and in fact, cannot be a separation between teachers' personal and professional lives, beliefs and commitments. It should be the teacher educator's role to enable each beginning teacher to work towards integration so that bridges can be built between faith based and ‘secular' understandings of education and the strengths of personal conviction and experience can be placed at the service of the child. " -- Judith Everington, Associate Professor of Religious Education, Institute of Education, University of Warwick.

1. Pages that deal with issues relating to Christian faith and professionalism are:

Is teaching for me?

The role of the Christian Teacher

Christian Teachers Making a Difference

Controversial issues

2. Pages that provide resources to use with students are:

The Transforming Lives DVD

Quiz to stimulate discussion

Stories from Christian teachers

Library of articles