This article presents partial results from a self-report questionnaire of volunteer adult Bible class (Sunday school) teachers from Protestant churches across the United States. The survey questions sought to reveal the current teaching practices and methods of volunteer teachers as well as to identify the training needs of these teachers. Respondents (n = 121) were from 11 denominations in 15 states and were predominantly male. This article describes the results found about the number of years respondents have been teaching, frequency of teaching each year, hours they spend preparing to teach each week, size of classes they teach, type of curriculum they use, frequency of particular teaching methods, and types of training they have previously had and would welcome in the future. There was a mild relationship (r = .302, p < 0.001) between the total number of teaching methods used and the total number of training experiences teachers had experienced. Implications for equipping volunteer teachers are discussed.
Assessing the degree to which students engage and learn from their online courses will be important as online courses are becoming more ubiquitous. This study sought to capture student perceptions of their independence as learners, their level of engagement, their effort exerted, and the amount of information they learned in online courses. The study was conducted over three years with 455 students who completed a self-assessment at the end of an intensive summer online course. Results showed an equal number of students agreeing and disagreeing that online courses help students learn the same amount of information encountered in a face-to-face course. The majority of students reported they were more independent (84.4%), were more engaged (54.5%) and exerted more effort (57.4%), in their online course than a typical face-to-face class. Recommendations are made for faculty creating online courses who have the opportunity to coach students on how to succeed in the online learning environment.
This article considers how the work of youth ministry flows from an understanding of the minister's identity. Ten roles for professional and volunteer youth workers are offered as a theological framework through which to view ministry. These roles reflect the identity of Jesus and represent the multiple tasks of youth ministry. Implications are briefly discussed as they relate to individual giftedness, recruiting volunteers, and hiring youth ministers.
This article analyzes the ways in which Jesus’ questions in Matthew’s gospel align with the categories of Bloom’s taxonomy, and how Jesus’ audience influenced the questions he asked. Results indicate Jesus asked the religious leaders higher-level questions more often than the disciples, who received a greater number of lower-level questions. These differences inform how teachers construct questions that help students learn. Recommendations are made for educators who construct questions that account for students’ preparation, students’ motivation, the value of silence, and the difficulty of questions.
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