This article includes summaries of previous Christian Deeper Learning (CDL) blogs first published by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education (CACE) and then by their website.
In the Spring of 2023, the leaders of the Christian Deeper Learning network approached Christian Schools International about continuing the network of schools interested, and engaged in, deeper learning efforts with students. The mission of CDL is: “To promote teaching practices that invite and equip students to be people of God’s Story, engaged in real work that forms self and shapes the world”, and CDL’s focus on learning, faith, and service aligns very well with CSI’s hope for students and schools. Bringing together Christian educators who desire to engage students deeply in learning, help them discover who they are as image-bearers of God, and help them find their place in God’s story is at the heart of CSI’s mission.
What Is Deeper Learning?
The reimaging of schools has been taking place by innovative educators for several years. As school leaders learned about needed student outcomes for work and life, insights on how students learn, standards reform, personal digital technology, authentic work, etc., educators grappled with how to translate this knowledge into workable teaching and learning models. The Hewlett Packard Foundation brought some of these groups together and first coined the term “Deeper Learning” in 2010. They described “a set of competencies students would need to compete globally and to become engaged citizens at home in the 21st century.” HPF’s first four competencies, often called the 4 C’s, are content, collaboration, critical (and creative) thinking, and communication. For those of us who have been in Christian education for a while, those buzzwords for 21st Century learning seemed incomplete until we added a fifth C—(distinctively) Christian.
Christian educators and CDL network founders Dan Beerens and Steven Levy chose to adopt the term “Deeper Learning” because of its commonly understood meaning across educational models. Their desire was, and CSI’s continues to be, to invite Christian educators to think more deeply about how to consistently connect their core values, their faith, and their teaching practices in the context of Christian schools. The first CDL conference in 2018 drew about 150 people to Gainesville, Florida. Since then, there has been increasing interest of the Christian education community in the vision of Christian Deeper Learning (CDL) and what it looks like to manifest this vision in our schools and classrooms. This effort has connected Christian educators across North America and the world and most recently gathered 500 educators in March 2023 at CDL6. CDL has served as a vehicle for Christ followers to come together to reflect on the relationship between values and habits, renew passion, and consequently reimagine practices.
What Defines CDL (Christian Deeper Learning)?
Over the years, a number of Christian educators and schools have been implementing what we now call Christian Deeper Learning. At the outset of the CDL network, leaders identified that schools were implementing CDL in a variety of ways. In an attempt to identify the key elements across a variety of models, a volunteer group spelled out core beliefs and shared principles in a document called “Deeper Learning in Christian Schools: Playing Our Part in God’s Story.” Through this document Christian school educators demonstrate a united desire to educate children in ways that honor them as image bearers, ground them in The Story, and inspire them to live out Christlikeness in serving neighbors and caring for creation. Two things are at the heart of any CDL model: for students to be deeply engaged in learning and for them to find their place in God’s redemptive story for his world.
Why Deeper Learning?
What does it mean to approach learning as participation in “God’s story?” Learning in God’s story is not primarily about content but about experience. Our participation is not only about what we think but also about our deepest hopes for ourselves and the world in light of God’s story. So then, we have to ask ourselves a question. Does our Christian faith go beyond phrases like the “integration of faith and learning” or “teaching from a Christian worldview” to teaching in a way where our faith informs our pedagogy?
As we reflect on our practices, we may see gaps between our faith and our methods. If we are honest, we may have nagging feelings that we are not moving toward that ultimate mission through fully aligning our faith/beliefs and how we educate:
- Does the way I organize my class (curriculum, instruction, assessment, and culture) honor my students as image bearers of our Creator?
- Are my students really engaged in the work I assign, or are we both going through the motions of what we imagine school is “supposed to be?”
- Have I made compromises in my practices? Am I focusing too much on individual student success and keeping parents/admin happy, doing it “the way it has always been done?” Is there a way I can better model the creativity and innovation of Jesus?
- What can I do to explicitly and implicitly focus my classroom on loving God and our neighbors?
Exciting Future Plans
CSI is very excited about working with the CDL network! We want to continue building a network of schools committed to engaging students deeply in learning, helping students discover who they are as image-bearers of God, and helping them find their place in God’s story.
We are committed to encouraging innovative practices and various design models that provide opportunities for teachers and school leaders to have deep conversations about what it means to teach “Christianly” and to put God’s Word into action. The next CDL conference will be held on February 24, 2025 as a pre-conference of Converge 2025 in Orlando, Florida. This will be an excellent opportunity to explore what Deeper Learning means in a Christian context, provide opportunities to learn from national level professionals, network with others, and mutually encourage each other in their professional work.
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Two things are at the heart of any CDL model: for students to be deeply engaged in learning and for them to find their place in God’s redemptive story for his world.
Deeper Learning in Christian Schools: Playing Our Part in God’s Story
Additional resource on approaching learning as participation in God’s story.