Dr. Bill Davis spoke to some of our Lower, Middle, and Upper School faculty members during Whitefield’s in-service meeting on Friday, February 14. Dr. Davis is professor of philosophy and coordinator of faculty development at Covenant College and adjunct professor of philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary. He holds advanced degrees from University of Notre Dame and Westminster Seminary in California.
In his session entitled "Exploring Biblical Worldview," Davis spoke on effective teaching and learning as well as the role of worldview. Instead of the term worldview, Davis prefers moral imaginations. By using the term moral imaginations, he wants to reframe our understanding of the traditional rigid categories and structure often associated with worldviews. There is no one who fits perfectly within these categories and, as such, our approach to worldviews should account for this. Davis emphasized the importance of modeling a worldview in action, rather than simply teaching it as a concept.
“Dr. Davis’s presentation was a strong reminder of the importance of modeling a worldview. While I can tell my students that some aspect of the Christian life is important, they are far more likely to incorporate it into their own lives if I show them how I live it out in my own life” said Christopher McDonald, Upper School science teacher.
“It was fascinating to learn that the way that we as teachers are most influential to our students is by modeling what we care about” said Carter Fawcett, fifth-grade teacher. “What we spend our time talking about in class shows the students what is important. They want to imitate and find the same things important.”
Davis identified three aspects to how we learn and order our understanding: affections, vocabulary, and presuppositions. He continued that, from this model of understanding, teachers can learn about effective pedagogy.
“I really appreciated his blackbox diagram about how students perceive and learn. It really helped
confirm some of my assumptions about the role of emotions in student learning” said Jesse Briete, Upper School English teacher.
‘Dr. Davis shared that we are helping children grow and come to a place of knowledge, but also leading them to care about the biblical perspective; Scriptures as early as the book of Deuteronomy extol the need for children to be trained in matters of the heart” said Jamie Heiskell.