Cockle, T. (2022, October 14). “Faith Formation: Head, Hands and Heart.” Baylor Center for School Leadership Blog. https://sites.baylor.edu/bcsl/2022/10/14/head-hands-and-heart/
What do you think of when I say, “faith formation”?
If you’re like most, you think about moving from a place of less faith to a place of more faith. You may even picture a line trending upwards that connects these two points. The question then becomes, how do we help people—in our case students—move from point A (less faith) to point B (more faith)? Using education words, what interventions lead to growth here? If we could just find the right method, we could activate the faith of our students. Finding that method requires us to assess our efforts and select interventions that lead to greater faith in our students.
But how does one actually measure “faith”? On what basis is the strength of our assessments being evaluated? When scholars study “faith development” today they tend to look to a variety of “proxies” that they assume to be indicators as to whether or not a true faith exists in a particular individual. If someone’s faith has been formed or developed, our measures generally assume that he or she will reveal that faith in one of two ways—by believing the right things (head) or by doing the right things (hands). Given this assumption, we ask questions about belief or behavior and then track the progression of knowledge accumulation or improved actions to display the linear development of faith.
But wait a second, is that how faith works?…
Read the whole post on the Baylor Center for School Leadership Website.
Theodore F. Cockle, Ph.D. 