Practice and Profile: Christian Formation for Vocation

By Johan Hegeman, Margaret Edgell, Henk Jochemsen and David I. Smith

Too many students are disappointed. They want to make a difference in their chosen professions. They are inspired by successful visionaries, but they have little idea how to follow in their oversized footsteps. Their colleges and universities promise more professional development than they can possibly deliver, especially in terms of moral development for the professions.
Experts coming from a range of perspectives in higher education agree that moral formation for the professions must increasingly take place in higher education. Tragically, the recent evolution of teaching has stripped educators of much of the rationale for moral formation. The recent record of moral lapses by managers testifies to this crisis of moral education.
The authors call for a revival of moral formation in higher education for the professions. They supply the needed resources to redesign classic as well as cutting-edge teaching and learning toward practical moral education in the professions.
This book is carefully designed to apply traditional Christian principles appropriately to evolving professional practices. The authors' strategies address the problems surrounding calling, vocation, and the growing need for virtue training in the professions. In particular, the authors provide clear direction for how to meet the need for professional profiles that meet the standards of the marketplace.
Practice and Profile provides the reader with a tested and proven model of faith formation appropriate to the professions. It also goes into specific, useful detail as to how the model mobilizes learning in classroom and professional settings. It aids institutions of higher learning in their struggle with demands for new learning environments and new moral competencies. Foremost, it gives students a grasp of how to become dedicated professionals who make a difference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Feb 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781498271431

Johan Hegeman

Johan Hegeman is Senior Professor of Ethics and Social Sciences in the Academy of Theology at Christelijke Hogeschool Ede in The Netherlands.

Book preview

Practice and Profile

Christian Formation for Vocation

Johan Hegeman, Margaret Edgell, and Henk Jochemsen

Practice and Profile

Christian Formation for Vocation

Copyright © 2011 Johan Hegeman, Margaret Edgell, and Henk Jochemsen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

"The authors present an extensive tour d’horizon surveying relevant issues and recent discussions. This setup greatly enhances the book’s orientational value for teachers in the field, while also making it a helpful introductory text for students specializing in moral philosophy and the philosophy of education. The emphasis on the human person in this book provides a vantage point from where one could develop a moral philosophy pertaining to professional training, which until now had been sorely lacking in Christian higher education. In this important respect, Practice and Profile fills a gap."

—Sander Griffioen Professor Emeritus of Christian Philosophy, VU University, Amsterdam

An important book for faculty who seek to integrate faith and profession in the classroom. PISA—practice-minded, integral, spiritual, and answerable—is a superb template for pursuing such integration.

—Alec Hill President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship,Madison, Wisconsin

This book is highly recommended for its fundamental reflection on Christian higher education. The authors go into depth on the possibilities and opportunities encountered in the training of Christians who find themselves called to work as professionals in our pluralistic culture. The focus on the formation of future Christian leaders is rightfully set on the development of a deeply rooted spirituality and disposition of integrity.

—Jan Hoek Professor of Systematic Theology, Protestant Theological University,Kampen, the Netherlands;Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven, Belgium

"Educators wanting to prepare students for broad service in every square inch of God’s kingdom will appreciate Practice and Profile. The four-part model reflects the original purposes of Christian higher education in contrast to today’s Western context, where professional service often divides our hands from our hearts and minds. An excellent and example-rich encouragement for moving teaching and advising further toward holistic student development."

—Nick Lantinga Executive Director of the International Association for the Promotion of Higher Education, Sioux Center, Iowa

"Hegeman, Edgell, and Jochemsen have carried out a much-needed and well-researched examination of higher education. Highly publicized failings in banking, business, healthcare, and other professions raise questions about the ethics training provided students. This book provides a welcome opportunity to reflect deeply on what third level education is all about. The authors provide a vision for higher education that is exciting and invigorating, yet they present it with humility and grace so that it is challenging, not overwhelming. Reading Practice and Profile left me excited to revisit my role in teaching ethics and reflect more deeply while rereading their significant book."

—Dónal O’Mathúna Senior Lecturer at Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Ireland

Professionals in Christian higher education ought to study this book seriously. It concerns the heart of their work: enabling the formation of (young) Christians for their vocation. Discussion of PISA in institutes for Christian higher education will surely be fruitful for the analysis as well as enrichment of their own training concept.

—Rens Rottier President of DrieStar Educatief University,Gouda, the Netherlands

The PISA model forms a good basis for the analysis of professional performance. It also offers essential elements for the direction of moral formation in learning processes. This work deserves to be studied and to be applied. It certainly will very much benefit the quality of the professional practices and the education leading to performance in practice.

—Jacob Schaap President of Gereformeerde Hogeschool University of Applied Science, Zwolle, the Netherlands

Rarely have I read a monograph that so thoroughly and soundly covers the nature and the scope of moral formation in higher education. While reading the book, it becomes apparent that the authors aim for an actual renewal of moral formation, involving educational policy as well as curricula and the basic practice of mentoring. Neither instructor nor trainer, modern or Christian professional, or institute for vocational schooling can do without this study!

—Jan Lucas van der Wolf Pastoral counselor and diaconal supervisor, theologian, ethicist, former university student pastor, Amsterdam

Foreword

Preparing Students for Practice

Fo r the past several decades, scholars involved in Christian higher education have engaged in a lively and at times intricate discussion concerning the relationship between faith and learning. If one surveys the voluminous literature that has emerged from this conversation, it quickly becomes apparent that much of available energy has been applied in particular directions, with comparative weak spots in other areas. Despite the fact that the majority of Christian institutions of higher education have a central emphasis on teaching—and commonly claim to offer a type of education designed to form students spiritually and morally as well as intellectually—the attention paid to how formation actually takes place has been relatively slight compared to the central focus on the relationship between Christian beliefs and various ideas, concepts, and theories in the academic disciplines. We have spent more time debating the contents of the Christian mind than examining how the Christian self is formed during our educational programs. Perhaps for related reasons, it has been easier to find substantial accounts of the nature of Christian learning in disciplines such as philosophy, theology, history, and literary studies than in professional programs, despite the significant role that professional programs play at many Christian colleges and universities. Key questions about how Christian higher education can prepare students for a life of Christian practice remain underexplored.

This book, then, sets out to fill a significant need. Its authors have done educators a considerable service in providing not only a precise and detailed account of how moral and spiritual formation takes place in the context of preprofessional study but also a systematic program that can guide the efforts of those who educate future professionals. While Practice and Profile addresses underexplored questions, it does more than provide an initial foray. The book balances careful, informed consideration of necessary theoretical questions with the provision of concrete examples and practical models that both reveal the authors’ own experience in this area and suggest concrete ways forward for educators in professional programs. Critical questions surrounding moral formation in higher education are examined—how, for instance, is moral formation compatible with student self-determination and critical thinking?—and relevant ethical theories receive their due. Key related ideas are thoughtfully explored—one of the book’s merits, for instance, is that it offers an account of spirituality in education that does not reduce it to a vague cluster of inner feelings and aspirations but grounds it in a more holistic and integral sense of how belief, experience, and practice tie together. And all of this background reflection is brought together in descriptions of specific moral and spiritual profiles that could shape the vocational trajectories of students and deeply enhance their professional service.

If Christian higher education is to live up to its own aspirations regarding the formation of students not just as Christian minds but as Christian practitioners within their various callings, then accounts such as this one are sorely needed. Johan Hegeman, Margaret Edgell, and Henk Jochemsen are to be thanked for the labors represented here; the rest of us are invited to think and act along with them in the interests of making our own professional practice as educators more intentional, integrated, and Christian.

David I. Smith

Director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning

Professor of German, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Editor, Journal of Education and Christian Belief

Preface

In European societies, more and more people are adopting a strong pluralism with regard to the worldviews of others, and this pluralism challenges all professionals to be able to deal with opposing worldviews, as well as a plurality of faiths. Christian students who want to enter the professional world will face this potent pluralism. One of the strongest challenges facing Christian students is to be spiritually authentic, not only in their school setting, but also in their profession. After graduation, they must maintain their integrity as Christians in an increasingly pluralistic and postmodern working environment. These young professionals will enter a world where they are urged to sell themselves on sight, meaning they are enticed to choose a profile of a type of person who is all flashy portfolio and slick résumé. What prevents their adopting a profile commonly referred to as the empty suit or the designer personality? Even in highly professional vocations, young people may feel compelled to engage in impression management in order to survive. How do Christian educators prepare students to face these onslaughts on the integrity of their character, once they are employed as professionals?

In this book, the authors look beyond getting a diploma to the qualities required in the professional practice for which students are preparing. Our reason for doing this is that almost all vocations have a strong tradition—and as we point out later—an ethical basis. Over against the modern emphasis on the individual as an autonomous individual, we place the young professional as an individual within the normative confines of practices. Our basic philosophy is that their command of such norms is crucial for the success of their choice of direction in professional life. We argue that their choice of a profile in a profession must therefore reflect more than just their worldviews. Their choice must also reflect the normative basis of the profession. In short, we urge them to seek a proper spiritual and moral formation in the vocational context.

Where do students entering professional fields gain the required moral formation if not in the place that trains them? Surely, moral formation is not merely something left to the devices of students. We believe that educators must be involved to the point where they have a significant role in coaching young professionals. They must stimulate the student to make a committed choice as a Christian to adopt a calling and aim for a livelihood in a certain professional practice. We advocate instructors becoming engaged with the deep reflection done by students on that choice. In this book, we consider such a choice of a moral profile neither as a random occurrence nor as an event that takes place on only one occasion in the learning career of the individual student. The students’ choices are based on the trust each student gives to a Christian college or university to prepare them adequately for their calling in life as a Christian, which goes beyond just getting a diploma. This trust is the most important asset stewarded by educators during these times.

Traditionally, Christian colleges and universities have emphasized understanding a Christian worldview as an important instrument for moral formation. The Christian faith has a trusted message that applies to the whole of life. Teaching and studying Christian worldviews help many faithful students understand how their spirituality plays a role in the workplace. We realize that such knowledge is quite experiential. It must be understood personally in a practical situation. Fortunately, new educational developments create openings for recognizing how personal spirituality and morality play their roles in practice. Because of this, we see strong possibilities for moral formation that goes beyond learning Christian worldviews to reflect on spirituality in practice. This does not replace their worldviews, but it meets the challenges posed by new educational developments that require students to engage in moral formation.

The steep rise of new educational developments, such as competency-based learning, constructivist learning practices, student mentoring and supervision involving extensive reflection, portfolio learning, and digital learning, creates new demands for moral formation. Many institutions of higher learning struggle with these demands because they require new learning environments and new moral competencies.

This leads to the current concern: Are educators (particularly Christian educators) equipped sufficiently to guide the new style of moral formation? Our response is that if there is not a distinct moral formation strategy involved, we are not so sure. The strategy must capitalize on a renewal of what has been traditionally called Bildung in the European context. At the same time, it must take into account that curricula were redesigned to meet both a strong emphasis on the workplace and a strong focus on competency learning found in professional studies. This strategy requires a regeneration of existing moral formation strategies in higher education. It means answering questions about the nature of professional practices and the requirements for being integral, spiritual, and accountable in higher education as well as in vocational practices. In particular, the strategy must allow us to provide clear direction for the phenomenal rise of reflection activity in professional studies, where already much effort is undertaken to form students for their entry into the marketplace.

What does all this mean for Christian higher education? How can we help students to bridge the gap between their Christian worldviews and their commitments to be good professional practitioners? In terms of educational practice, the question becomes, which special competencies would Christian students need to perform well as Christian professionals?

In this book, we respond to these challenges by offering a renewed moral formation strategy. We studied explicit knowledge as found in literature and documents of educational institutions. We also studied the empirical phenomenon of moral formation as found at several Christian professional universities in the Netherlands. We also engaged in empirical analyses of various faith formation models in CCCU colleges in the United States. Finally, we studied the tacit knowledge that many practitioners of good practices of moral formation have imparted to us. Our strategy for moral formation approaches the heart of the actual performance of practitioners in moral formation practices in Christian higher education.

Our scope is broad, as it covers many aspects of Christian higher education. Yet, it is also modest, in that our moral formation strategy does not presume to define that practice as such. Our aim is to point out the standards of excellence we have found to be conditional for moral formation and how they are used. At the same time, we have discovered that moral formation lies at the core of all new modern developments of education. In this respect, we hit upon the fundamentals of the nature of higher education, Christian practices in particular.

This book is to our knowledge the first modern attempt at disclosing the explicit and implicit knowledge of moral formation at Christian universities of professional education. At the same time, our own experiences in teaching at research universities at undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels in the Netherlands and North America tell us that the issues of moral formation in general higher education do not significantly differ from moral formation at professional schools as such. Neither the theories and models we have studied, nor our empirical evidence proves us wrong on this. For these reasons, our strategy can be applied in all realms of higher education, including liberal arts education.

Application of our model by Dutch colleagues training practitioners in the field prompts us to see its utility in more than just tertiary schooling. Also, its usefulness in training new faculty members at Christian colleges in the Netherlands has proven its worth. Therefore, we see good application of most elements of this model in actual professional training programs on the job.

This book has as its audience all professionals involved in higher education. Aside from teachers and mentors involved in student formation practices, it also includes managers of institutions, trustees, and professionals involved part-time in service to students. We also consider this book a required read for students in the stage of their schooling career when they have reached the point of needing to choose a distinct moral profile for their career. Finally, we emphasize that politicians, government and para-government officials, education journalists, and special-interest groups in higher education can use this book to come to better appreciate the intricacy of the faith-bound learning system. In a society that presumes the separation of faith from public performance, this book demonstrates that for education and many professions, this belief does not hold. We hope to convince skeptics that the moral formation flowing from our strategy of Christian spirituality is at the core of the legitimacy of Christian higher education—and, moreover, that it therefore needs protection and development.

In many respects, this book demonstrates the great vulnerability of Christian higher education in the pluralistic societies of the twenty-first century. Its environment is one of vast disintegration of shared values and norms in civil society, along with a strong rise of government-induced change. Without a clear and coherent strategy that arises from the very nature of Christian thought and Christian practices of education, irreversible moral fragmentation could come to beset Christian higher education. The deep moral crisis that became evident during the year 2008 in the financial world has already reached the educational realm. We discuss in this book the many instances of alarm at the failure of venerable institutions of higher learning to inculcate the required morality for responsible professional performance in students. Without an explicit effort at moral formation, which is the most valuable asset of Christian higher education, those individual men and women who entrust their professional formation to Christian institutions of higher learning may be failed simply because moral formation is a very complex, difficult task. We hope and pray this will never become our liability.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book about the practice of higher education involves practitioners and professionals of all stripes. We are grateful for the distinct privilege of having profited from significant interaction with many highly dedicated persons in the course of researching and writing this book. Their inspirational practices of moral formation, often remarkably good and sometimes even excellent, as well as their openness to discussing weaknesses, contributed to our conviction that a book on this theme would be possible.

The initial research for this book began in the research group (Dutch: lectoraat) of the Ethics of Care as instituted by the three Christian universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands: the Christelijke Hogeschool Ede, the Gereformeerde Hogeschool Zwolle, and the Driestar Educatief Christian University for Teacher Education at Gouda. From 2002 to 2006, Henk Jochemsen served as lector and Johan Hegeman as associate lector in this project. Johan then served in the Research Group on Education and Identity of the Driestar Educatief. We recognize the support of our colleagues from Gouda: Bram de Muynck, Issac Kole, and Evert Roeleveld; from Zwolle: Jan Hoogland, Roel Kuiper, and Pieter Vos; and from Ede: Hans Borst, Bart Cusveller, Gert Hunink, Wim van Ieperen, Nicolien de Jong, Tirza van Laar, Rene van Leeuwen, Anne Pals, Anke Penning, and Jan Carel Vierbergen. We thank the president of Christelijke Hogeschool Ede, Kees Boele, for his support over the years.

Margaret Edgell thanks the Business Department of Calvin College for time to crunch her data. Shirley Roels, director of the Lilly Vocation Project at Calvin College, provided unstinting inspiration, as well as funding, for her research on student faith formation. And she gives special thanks to the many students who participated in her research.

This book is unique in being a collaboration between practitioners working in Christian higher education in the Netherlands and in the United States. Through the International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education (IAPCHE) the authors became acquainted with each other’s work, which led eventually to partnership on this manuscript. Although the bulk of the research originated in the Netherlands, Margaret’s research proved amenable to the basic model of moral formation. We are quite pleased our respective work fits together so well.

Nick Lantinga, director of IAPCHE, and Joel Carpenter of Calvin College introduced our work to David I. Smith, director of the Kuyers Institute of Calvin College. We are grateful for the support of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning for making the publication of this book possible. We thank David for kindly and thoroughly commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript and stimulating the further development of the book.

The Board of the Stichting Steunfonds of the Christelijke Hogeschool Ede we gratefully thank for their financial support in the last stages of publishing this book .

The committed involvement of the Wipf and Stock editors, copy editors, marketing personnel, designers, managers, secretaries, and many others involved in making this book a reality is highly appreciated—a fine Christian practice!

List of Abbreviations

BaLaMa Bachelor Labor Market

CBL competence-based learning

CCCU Council of Christian Colleges and Universities

CHE Christelijke Hogeschool Ede

CoP communities of practice

IAPCHE International Association for the Promotion

of Christian Higher Education

LSI Learning Style Inventory

NKJV New King James Version

NRP normative reflective practitioner

NRPM normative reflective practitioner model

PISA practice minded, integral, spiritual, answerable

SCM student career mentoring

1

The Quest for a Moral Profile in Vocation

1. The Quest

What does a Christian student need to do to become moral in a vocation? After writing this book, we would answer: follow your dream; reflect deeply; be virtuous.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the incredibly complicated and confusing question of what students should do in order to be morally formed. The long answer is even more than what this book can contain. It is living to the glory of God in the comfort of faith. In between, there are many quests that educators, together with students, embark on to arrive at these answers. In this book, we deal with one venture, which we call a quest for a moral profile. The quest for a moral profile leads to further choices for virtues, dreams, and personal reflection on a life coram Deo (before the face of God) in professional studies.

What are the typical requirements of the Christian quest to become moral? What is so special about this spiritual quest? We assume that, as Christians, we want to serve God by following our calling in life (traditionally speaking). For students, this calling may at first consist of no more than their choosing a college and a course of study. Eventually, through trial and error, and hopefully through career mentoring, they may come to choose an occupation. Typically, when starting a career, they must have a vocation, or a strong belief in their suitability to work in a particular career or occupation. This belief in their efficacy must become part of their dream to be someone in life. How do they gain this belief? There are many paths, the learning of worldviews being the most trusted and traditional one, often accompanied by training in spirituality and ethics. In this book, we assume that colleges already lead students on these paths. We go on to point to a specific quest that we call moral formation with the use of deep reflection.

To begin our discussion of moral formation, we define terms. Moral formation is the process of gaining the morality required by one’s spirituality and ethics. In this book, we treat as development that which activates ethical knowledge, skills, and attitudes to become moral in practice, based on personal spirituality. Such development may involve explicit cultural and social formation. We assume that this development takes place in education, as we explain in detail in this chapter.

We define deep reflection as reflection or contemplation on the core of one’s identity, core beliefs, spirituality, and narratives. This mode of reflection goes beyond simply learning worldviews in class and applying them in student mentoring. It assumes the adoption of worldviews and spirituality to focus on just how one applies these in certain practices, most importantly in professional vocations.

Deep reflection is a learning strategy for moral formation. Moral formation and deep reflection complement each other quite well. Moral formation tells students why and what they are to become and do. Deep reflection forms a learning strategy for achieving that purpose by actually manifesting their moral profile in the new practice they hope to enter. Deep reflection builds on existing moral formation to increase awareness of the image of themselves in a profession. We term this image a vocational profile.

What do we mean by a profile? The New Oxford Dictionary tells us it is an outline of something, especially a person’s face, as seen from the side. A profile is how we appear in a certain way—we could say, how we wish to be seen from one side—in this case, our moral side. We can speak similarly of having a professional profile, or a spiritual profile, or a psychological profile, and so forth.

We are interested how we choose a profile, because a moral profile is needed in the professions, especially in competence-based learning. Professional vocational training requires having a certain successful appearance or profile before entering a licensed practice, such as medicine. More often, students are asked whether their identity fits a certain competency profile, or a certain vocational profile, or a given practice profile. They are put under pressure to shape themselves to a certain professional mold. That shape is their profile. Will any profile do? No, professional practices require of their practitioners quite specific knowledge of norms, values, and virtues for performing well. Professional training requires knowledge of one’s self and what it is like for that self to perform according to standards of excellence. Performing as a good practitioner entails knowing whether the virtues belonging to the proficiencies of being professional in that practice fit one’s view of self. That is, there must be a match between what professional practice requires in terms of a profile and one’s own image of doing so. In order to integrate their moral profile in competence-based learning, students must first become aware of what being moral is in practice.

To develop a professional moral profile, deep reflection on personal spirituality is needed. This is a matter of personal identity and thereby of spirituality. Without guided deep reflection on how personal spirituality functions in the achievement of the right identity for professional practice, many a career dream may be sadly lost because of students’ mediocre attempts at being good practitioners—their work will be good, but not good enough to keep the job, or even worse, not good at all.

To develop moral profiles, students rely on educators. Here we define educators broadly beyond higher education to include practitioners in the professions: supervisors, mentors, coaches, and trainers. We reason thusly: do students rely only on teachers for gaining a moral profile? No. Hence, we broaden the category of educators to include coaches, mentors, professional supervisors, and others in private practices involved in training and guiding learners seeking spiritual and moral formation. In this book, we explain from the context of higher education what moral formation is, but we do so realizing that this model can be applied beyond the strict borders of academia.

To meet this need, a revitalization of mentoring for moral formation is necessary. We therefore believe that all educators must become involved in the way students arrive at their beliefs about their suitability to a particular career and at their understanding of its required virtues. At the same time, current expectations demand that students be the sole agents of their own moral development. We are far from optimistic that students make a proper choice of a moral profile by themselves before entering a profession. Although the involvement of schools of higher education in moral formation is historically and sociologically warranted, modern social liberal views deny this. At any rate, given current evidence of many failures in moral formation, the need to reinvigorate moral formation is serious.

The quest for a moral profile must be infused across the curriculum. The great challenge of moral formation requires mentoring to the extent that deep reflection must not be limited to supervision during internships. Nor is a widespread use of reflection tools enough. Moral formation must be an integral part of the whole curriculum in higher education. Long past are the days that we believed that a solid ethics course, or simply an improvement on already excellent worldview training, could do the trick. We contend that all educators in all courses have a responsibility to aid students in deep learning. This is of necessity a broad view of the role of moral formation in professional training. This book is essentially a study of the conditions for moral formation in a curriculum involving the responsibility of educators as well as students. Such a curriculum has at its core the students’ personal quests for a moral profile in their desired profession.

The quest must be a shared responsibility. In this first chapter, we introduce the reasons for this shared responsibility to engage in moral formation with deep reflection. We also introduce the main conditions for the ethics of shared responsibility. Our central argument is this: educators need to rediscover moral formation and adopt it as their moral responsibility to students. Students for their part need to engage in moral formation and to be initiated in deep reflection leading to moral proficiencies.

The quest is fulfilled by students who meet five major conditions. These five major conditions hold moral formation with deep reflection as premises for our argument in this book:

Students wanting to become professionals must choose their moral profile within their professional practice. That choice is guided by educators in a strategy followed by both student and educator (see below in chapter 1).

The professional practice requires knowledge of the basic values, norms, and virtues that form an identity in that profession (see chapter 2).

Students need to discover what it is to be integral in head, heart, and hands before entering the professional practice (see chapter 3).

When they choose a moral profile, students need to call on their personal spirituality and accept coaching on this (see chapter 4).

Students must be able to account for their choices through deep reflection (see chapter 5).

These conditions are reintroduced and described at the end of this chapter as part of a strategy of moral formation.

Now we discuss the shared responsibility between educators and students. In the remainder of this chapter, we deal with the basic contours of the role of educators and thereby the roles of institutions of higher learning in relation to the role of students in their moral development.

1.1. Moral Formation, Worldviews, and Deep Reflection

Moral formation using deep reflection does not replace other forms of development. There are many ways to discover which direction one must take in life. In this book, we assume worldview learning and moral formation are excellent ways to find direction. This includes learning which beliefs, values, and norms drawn from one’s worldview should come into play in order to practice the right way. Below, we explain why this is the case in education. We go on to examine how the educational tool of deep reflection improves on this learning. We can explain this best by reviewing how most educators do this.

1.1.1. Worldviews

We explain in chapter 2 that beliefs regulate actual performance in practice. An example of this would be that a teacher at a medical school chooses a regulative belief when dealing with the issue of integrity in a professional practice, say regarding medical malpractice. Traditionally, dealing with this issue has been understood in an ethical sense. At times, worldviews were called upon to guide ethical choices. Dilemma analysis has also been applied in training students to make rational choices. But what next? What happens in actual practice after the ethical choice is made? In our approach to moral formation, we do not stop by urging students to be confident about their choice. We go farther, to try to understand what actually happens at the performance level within a real practice field such as nursing, church work, or business.

Not just any belief counts as professional competence. What counts is having the beliefs proper to the profession. For Christians, how we see ourselves as Christians flows together with our beliefs that determine our performance. For example, Christian nurses may choose to decline becoming involved in certain practices that violate their conscience. Thanks to their faith and moral formation, their beliefs provide direction, but the manner in which they put these into practice count very heavily. It has everything to do who they are and how they image themselves as performing properly. Their image of themselves as nurses and their beliefs must be congruent. We believe that they learn to be competent nurses by what we call deep reflection.

Beliefs regulate how we perform in practice. Because we are interested in how practitioners apply their beliefs in practice, we focus on the regulative beliefs that guide practitioners when performing in that practice. We expect practitioners to be able to reflect on their performance in terms of their beliefs. For teachers and students engaged in nursing education, the teacher must explain how his or her beliefs regarding malpractice figure in the ethics of that practice and in its performance. The teacher’s beliefs regulate the teacher’s nursing practice. To learn how to do this judiciously and wisely requires a competent understanding of moral formation. Professionals who bring elements of their worldview to the work floor in appropriate ways display such competence. In such a case, we would say that the sharing of a worldview-related belief functioned successfully.

Here we hark back to a basic understanding of how the choices and beliefs of people function as control beliefs, as found in the worldview approach to learning.¹ Control beliefs are evident when a practitioner becomes reflective. We consider discerning direction to be a product of reflection. Discerning direction depends on exercising personal spirituality. For Christians, direction refers to the manner and extent to which a person deviates from normativity—understood as God’s creational law—and renewed conformity to it in Christ.² By attempting to conform to norms, we come close to the metaphor of traveling the road of faith, or walking it in practice. At the same time, the concept of direction as applied to Christian life implies being aware that one’s basic commitments in the walk of life relate to the context of the culture and its influence on one’s discernment during that walk.³ Related is the call for direction discernment by seeking shalom, or public justice,⁴ a basic approach to moral formation followed at many colleges that entails a strong program of formation.

Discernment also depends on our social imaginaries, or what we share with others regarding what makes our world intelligible and meaningful. In a recent, well-publicized work, James K. A. Smith puts forward a remarkable argument to step away from the worldview approach and prioritize the