Teaching styles

I’m in a number of weekly Bible studies when I’m home. I enjoy them.  They make me study and think and wonder and have questions, After a year of observation, I’ve concluded that there are various kinds of questions I can bring to the studies and various ways that leaders can field these questions. The two main kinds of questions I’ve observed are questions of clarification (what did you mean by that? What does that mean/?) and questions of challenge (How did you get that from the reading? Couldn’t there be another interpretation for that passage?) I’ve found that some leaders are quite comfortable with the first kind of question because it allows them to teach further what they had already intended for us to understand. Clarification questions help them do their job. It takes more gifted teachers, however, to field the second kind of question because these questions don’t follow the teacher’s line of reasoning. They might take time away from her well thought out lesson plan. They might confuse the rest of the group. Or they might even go beyond what she can answer. To field these questions is risky.

And there are different kinds of study leaders. Some of them view their class as an opportunity to impart their wisdom, to transfer a certain body of knowledge from teacher to student.  The questions they use are intended to draw the student toward the answers that they have already formed before class began. The study is an opportunity for students to check their answers against what the teacher has already filled out in her notes. This kind of teacher sees truth as a closed set of answers that she, for the most part, has, already, painstakingly, assimilated, and the students’ job is to “fill in the blanks.” There is a place for this kind of efficiency, though perhaps not in a Bible study. Recently I saw a teacher illustrate this style of teaching with a set of boxes, carrying questions, overlaying a cross.  “Once you answer the questions correctly (with these answers), the cross will become clear to your listeners,” this teacher assured us (the boxes disappearing from the screen, leaving the cross in the center). Someone asked this teacher if there was any question that he couldn’t answer on this topic. Can you guess the teacher’s answer? 

Another kind of study leader sees the “class” as an opportunity to reach truth together. Sure, the teacher may have more knowledge about this particular passage because she has studied it more thoroughly, but who knows what knowledge and experience the rest of the group brings to the table? Perhaps they’ve seen the truth of this scripture applied in another culture. Perhaps they have discovered some fresh insight about life. Perhaps they have discovered that a certain pat answer to a particular standard question just isn’t right. Such things happen. Perhaps the group needs to arrive at truth through a process of interacting, thinking, and checking the evidence, like the noble Bereans—not through just being told. But anyone leading this type of group must risk the group ending up in some unexpected spot.

All the scientists in the world come to realize one thing: they will never reach the end of their research. Truth just keeps opening up more and more the longer they go.  I imagine we scientists of faith should experience the same thing: how can we exhaust the truth about God? It’s never all sewn up; it never fits comfortably in a set of boxes. There is so much more to know. After researching teaching styles this year, I’ve confirmed the kind of teacher I want to be when I grow up.  I want, like a favorite teacher of mine, to be the one beckoning, “Come further up! Come further in!”