If you want the highest activity by each learner, what is your go-to tool? It’s research. Research is the fourth, and final, tool in our educator’s toolbox. Past articles have dealt with Lecture, Question/Answer (Questions, Open Questions, and Bad Answers), and Group Work.)
What do we mean by research?
When we hear the word “research,” my guess is that many of us picture someone poring over books or websites or huddled in a lab for hours and hours. And sure, research can be that.
But in education, while research can be lengthy, it can also be quite short. It may be as simple as saying, “Read these ten verses and find three points which you find particularly helpful,” or “Read this chapter and be ready to report on the key points.” I’m using research any time I have the learners read, listen to, search for, or watch anything in order to discover something.
The research assignment also could be a bit more lengthy: “Read these three pages from this commentary to find at least three ways this segment shows that Jesus is God,” “Use your smart phones and spend the next 15 minutes learning everything you can about weather patterns by the Sea of Galilee,” or “Let’s go to the library and spend 30 minutes finding out everything we can about who people think the Nephilim might have been.” If you have the opportunity to assign homework, you can use research learning a lot! You, the teacher, can supply people with resources to read or study. You also can assign them to look for resources on their own and report on their findings.
What is the value of research learning?
Imagine you’re studying John chapter 10 (“I am the Good Shepherd”). In your own preparation you find an interesting article in which a real shepherd describes what it means to be a good shepherd. You find it really helpful! You now have a several options:
- You could lecture some of the points of the article.
- You could follow up the lecture with some questions (and answers).
- You could follow up the lecture with a group work activity, in which the group explores some of the information you reported.
- Or, and I’d suggest this is your best option, you could give the article, or maybe just a portion of it, to the class to read on their own. You can direct them to discover three “aha’s!” about what it means to be a good shepherd.
If you do the final option, several things happen:
- Everyone reads the article. Re-read that. Everyone reads the article. The more learner activity you have, the more learning takes place.
- Because everyone has read the article, the discussion/application takes place on equal footing.
- Perhaps most important, your learners get to do something really fun—to have the “aha” moments of learning. Pastors, you know how that works. You’re doing your research for a Bible study or sermon. Suddenly something in the text jumps out at you, and you say “Aha!” It’s exciting, isn’t it?! Research learning allows your people to have those sorts of discoveries! When they have those sorts of discoveries, it’s far more likely that the learning will stick with them. They discovered it.
Two other suggestions
Research learning can often be combined with group learning. If you have everyone read a couple pages and ask them to find two important points, you can then put the learners into groups. In their groups, have them decide on three (or four, or even five) important points to report to the larger group. This allows for peer learning and for more in-depth discussion of the subject.
And finally, I found research learning to be an excellent approach to studying with my church leadership. Our congregation was run by a board of elders. Each elder was given one of the People’s Bible Teachings books, or something similar. I’d assign one chapter to read, or maybe a half-chapter. I’d ask the men to identify at least three thoughts that they thought were particularly important for our work as leaders in the congregation. We started the meeting with the study. The reporting was simple; we would go around the table, and each man would report on one of his important thoughts. Some points were merely reported, and we went on. Others led to excellent discussion. We’d go around the table until each man had reported each of his identified thoughts. Our church leaders grew spiritually, and that exercise was a tremendous value to our leaders and our church. And what was it? It was research learning, one of the powerful tools in the adult educator’s toolbox.
This concludes our series on the four tools in the educator’s toolbox. I pray that it’s helped you to rethink how you use each of the tools and how to use them even more wisely. God’s richest blessings to you as you teach people the Word of Life!
Professor Thomas Kock
Next time we begin a new series with Pastor Paul Waldschmidt, who will help us to see how technology enables us to do things in our Bible studies like never before.