Christopher Chelpka

It’s easy to get in a teaching rut and rely too much on what’s comfortable. But those who use a wider variety of teaching strategies and tailor them to their teaching objectives will tend to have more success in making the material stick.

One way to think through the available options is to consider a distinction Mark Strom makes in Lead with Wisdom between conversation and communication. As he uses these terms, conversation involves “creating shared meaning,” whereas communication involves “sharing created meaning”. He says:

I don’t want to be precious about this. At a certain level communication and conversation are synonyms. Yet the distinction is not just playing with words. The bigger picture is our assumptions about knowing and meaning.

In Strom’s distinction, conversation allows knowledge to come about inductively and the process tends to “be a doorway to new meaning and new knowledge” and the formation not only of a single mind, but a community.

Conversation tends to assume that knowledge and meaning take shape through interaction. Conversations highlight how meaning is tied to relationship.

Communication, on the other hand, is about “sharing created meaning”.

[Communication] suggests there already exists some knowledge that others need to know. We need to communicate: clearly, concisely, and relevantly. This is crucial in every kind of enterprise. Sometimes things are straightforward, and the last thing we need is a never-ending process of consultation that’s supposed to deliver consensus. Communication tends to assume that knowledge and meaning are things to be discovered and passed on.

When I apply this distinction to teaching, conversation maps onto a set of techniques and philosophies about learning often called “active-learning”. Simply put, in active-learning students to learn by doing, and conversation is often involved, which requires asking good questions in a way that is formative, and cultivating a classroom culture that is condusive to discusion.

As a heads-up, I’ll tell you that there are various misconceptions about what active-learning means, and it’s something of a buzzword. So be careful. And if you’re a pedagogy nerd, you might find it useful to learn about the constructivist ideas behind this term. For that, Virginia Richardson’s overview and evaluations of the constructivist movement is helpful. But for those who want to get going faster, Cynthia J. Brame’s executive summary on active-learning is a great place to start.

Sometimes, active-learning advocates speak too strongly, which makes people ask questions like “Is it ever OK to Lecture? The answer is, yes. Of course it’s okay to lecture.

In a classroom setting, lecturing is the predominant form of what Strom calls “communication.” Lectures are especially good at passing on information, i.e. sharing meaning with others.

Of course, for this to happen, lectures need to be engaging, and the students need to know how to learn. And I’m not talking about VARK learning styles, a pedagogy idea that “keeps getting debunked”.

Unsurprisingly, mixing these two modes—conversation and conversation—in various proportions is usually best. The precise proportions will depend on your educational objectives. Bloom’s Taxonomies of educational objectives can help you choose your objectives.

To know whether or now you are achieving your objectives or to get suggestions on how you might do it better, you’ll need evaluation tools for both assessing the learning and assessing your teaching. There are many options to choose from. Getting and giving good immediate feedback is one of the best ways to achieve better learning outcomes.

*I updated this article in April 2019 with some new links. And to improve its clarity, I made significant revisions to the whole post. I added some links about learning (from the students perspective) in May 2019 and, in August, a couple links related to asking good questions. In March 2020, I added an excellent guide to cultivating better classroom discussion from The Chronicle of Higher Education. In May 2021, I added a paragraph about getting and giving feedback.

Whenever I read Isaac Watts, I feel like I see in him the kind of pastoral disposition I want.

His heart is always evident, but he’s never effusive. He’s a careful scholar, but for a broad audience. He is creative in the theological connections he makes, but he’s never wild. A good example of this last one is the connection he makes between the Trinity and the office of deacon in his book on the Christian church. He says, in part,

let them remember and rejoice, that they represent the Character of our Lord Jesus, as he is intrusted with all Supplies from the Hands of the Father, and distributing unto the Church invisible.

In case you’re curious, here’s an outline of the rest of his sermon on deacons:

1. the office (the work of deacons, the reason for the office, the duration of the office, the way in which they become installed),
2. how they may perform their duties well,
3. encouragements in the task.

You may be familiar with Samuel Miller’s book on on the ruling elder. As far as I know he didn’t write a parallel work on deacons, but in 1869, such a work appeared, with a nod toward Miller’s work, written by James M. Wilson. It’s called The Deacon: An Inquiry into the Nature, Duties and Exercise of the Office of the Deacon, in the Christian Church. (Miller does address the distinction between elders and deacons in his book.)

I found a hard-copy of Wilson’s work this while perusing the shelves at RTS-Orlando. Yay for physical libraries! His book does as the title promises and includes tons of data from Reformed and Presbyterian history. He uses exegesis and historical examples to prove his points.

Here are a couple of things I noted:

Wilson is decidedly in favor of putting all the temporal needs of the church—both individual and corporate (my distinction, not his)—in the hands of the deacons, who are subject to the session. No trustees! But I wonder, does he really think that everything temporal belongs to the work of the deacons? This seems unscriptural and impractical. I don’t think I’m misreading him, but it’s hard to imagine he’d hold such an extreme position.

On the necessity of the diaconate, he says that ensuring that this ministry is completed well and according to the will of Christ is important and should not be neglected. Why? Because it “concerns, intimately, the activity and efficiency of the Christian church in the promotion of the great ends of her organization: the diffusion of the gospel in its purity; and the accomplishment of those works of charity and benevolence, by which she is to reflect before the world, and upon it, the image of the grace and compassion of her beneficent Redeemer.” (55)