Teaching Skills

Michael Kinch said:

Can you recommend search criteria to help me find this type of resource in my Logos library.

Found 806 articles about teaching plus topic options:

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Michael Kinch said:

What books in Logos or otherwise do you recommend regarding teaching methods and skills?  I am looking to brush up on my teaching skills to become more effective in my teaching ministry.  Can you recommend search criteria to help me find this type of resource in my Logos library.  Thanks!

You've already gotten a lot of help here. I just thought I'd share something I learned a long time ago that has proved true too many times not to notice. It's a bit of a generalization, but still helpful: people remember about 20% of what they're told, but 80% of what they discover.

So, when we teach, if our goal is retention, we want to use methods that increase curiosity, or in some other way actually have the participants (students) discover the answers. A sem prof. I had used to refer to something called 'creative tension.' This happens when the teacher creates dissonance that requires some sort of resolution. For example, "Jesus told the disciples to 'heal the sick.' How could they do that? How could they heal the sick? Can you heal the sick? Was Jesus asking the impossible?" The dissonance created by these series of questions will require that most thoughtful people will go to the text, poke around and try to find an answer. They're more likely to retain the answer they find, if they go looking, than if you just say, "Jesus gave his disciples authority to heal the sick and then sent them out to do it, and look what happened: people got healed."

Anyway, the use of creative tension, and the technique of letting the 'students' find the answer, or at least try to find it (leaving the tension unresolved as long as it takes for folks to be uncomfortable), is one of the most helpful things I've learned to do as a teacher.

The other little piece of advice I learned was this: You can't really teach people anything, you can only help them learn. This is helpful because it turns the tables around: the focus is the learners not the teacher.

Michael Kinch said:

Can you recommend search criteria to help me find this type of resource in my Logos library.  Thanks!

When I first tried the comprehensive searches like KJ4J did, I found that the results were not really satisfying to answer your question: too many false positives. I thus went back to a simple library filtering for subject:(education, teacher) which brought a couple of resources (still chaff and wheat), among them   

logosres:chrtedteach  | The Christian Educator’s Handbook on Teaching which is part of a topical bundle and co-edited with Howard Hendricks of "Living by the book" fame. I would suggest you take a look at it.

Btw, together with (different) other authors, Hendricks has Mastering Teaching in Logos, which seems to be to the point, too - I just put it on my wishlist...

Hope this helps a bit

Mick

It's not a full spectrum resource, The Bible Study Handbook: A Resource for Teaching 175 Stories from the Bible by John H. Walton, Kim E. Walton. It's advice especially the "Mistakes to Avoid" makes it a good resource for learning to teach.