Contemporary learning theorists: their approaches and limitations with regard to Religious Education

The relationship between faith and reason

Reason depends upon sense perception and experience which advances by the light of the intellect alone...

Faith is enlightened and guided by the spirit, to recognise God's message of salvation

Both faith and reason are needed for human beings- neither can stand alone

Faith is an adherence to God and a free acceptance of what God has revealed. Because we entrust ourselves fully to God, it is different from the faith we place in a human person

Faith is a free gift from God, which makes it easy to accept and believe the truth

Faith is a human act not contrary to human dignity. We trust the word of others. We can also trust God, with whom he shares an interior communion

Criteria for evaluating learning theories:

  1. What are they trying to do?
  1. Are they capable of accounting for the spiritual dimensions of religious eduction?
  1. What aspects of them may be useful in a religious education classroom?
  1. Are there aspects that undermine religious faith by subjecting it to false criteria?

Piaget

The idea of developmental stages

Criticism:

Underestimated the complexity of children's cognitive achievements at a particular age

Formal operation abilities: Only a small percentage of the general population appears to have these abilities as Piaget defined them

Piaget missed the crucial role of context in people's judgements

Piaget's training studies, once thought to demonstrate that children could not be taught certain kinds of things before certain ages have been refuted

Links to Religious Education:

Taught that children are incapable of abstraction- they are if a concrete referent is provided

Linked "spiritual" with "abstract" and claimed that children under ten were incapable of abstraction

Piaget's theories of moral development which stated that knowing is doing, is contrary to the understanding of the catholic church and most lived experience

Ausubel

Advance organiser

Valuable for cognitive aspect of religious education

Not capable of dealing with the spiritual dimension

Taught that children are incapable of abstraction- they are if a concrete referent is provided

Links to Religious Education:

Helpful if material is of a cognitive nature

If deeper reflection on content is required, this kind of learning will be inadequate

Gagne

Method can be adapted for use in RE

Evaluative method used to understand the religious content more deeply

Information Processing Theorists

Valuable concepts like "short term memory" and "chunking new information" can be useful in the cognitive aspects of RE

Not capable of dealing with the spiritual dimensions

Linking information together

Links to Religious Education:

Useful concepts to be used in good teaching- especially the terminology above e.g. cognitive load

Does not take into account the spiritual capacity of the human soul and can reduce students to data processing autamatons

Multiple Intelligence Theories

A good balance of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic is as valuable in religious education as it is in other areas of the curriculum

Links to Religious Education:

Can be helpful: should ensure a variety of styles is used for everyone

Contrasts St Thomas: Intelligence in St Thomas describes understanding that comes from using all data available- mental and physical.

Gardener: "intelligence" describes processes involved in data gathering

Neuroscience Research:

Brain development happens in stages in response to an engagement with the environment

Links to Religious Education:

Neuro-science research supports the notion of "sensitive periods" for various activities

The descriptions tie in very well with the underlying Montessori principles and the Cavalletti approaches already referred to

Montessori practices have been demonstrated to work very well in Hattie's effect sizes

Even effect sizes cannot account for spiritual growth, much of which is not measurable in empirical terms

Limitations:

Not able to contribute to the development of the personal relationship with Christ