Nature of roles
Faculty are designated experts by ecclesiastical authories |
BT/MH: Faculty are primarily lecturers, their expertise judged by guild criteria |
Faculty use expertise of their research area to inquire into the learning of their students |
BT: Faculty are primarily designers of learning methods and environments based on desire to share key elements of their area of study |
The distinction between “teacher” and “learner” drops away, and institutional funding goes to support those who are engaged in specific learning projects around identified learning goals for the common good, entrepreneurial funding for new research, foundations and churches participate as well in “pushing the envelope” |
Faculty are everything, students are perceived as an encumbrance |
BT: Faculty and students act independently and in isolation |
Faculty and students collaborate informally, with faculty taking the lead |
BT: Faculty and students work in teams with each other and other staff |
Structural roles blur as the same person can inhabit different roles in different learning projects |
The church determines who can be a student and who can be a teacher |
BT: Teachers classify and sort students |
Some external assessment rubrics exist, but teachers continue to hold primary power to determine student achievements |
BT: Teachers develop every student’s competencies and talents |
Learners pursue specific learning outcomes based on rubrics collaboratively determined, everyone can be a learner, everyone can take on the role of teacher in some context |
Staff exist to support clerical cultural perogatives, to enhance clerical status |
BT: Staff serve/support faculty and the process of instruction |
Staff are valued colleagues in supporting learning processes, and providing information for assessment |
BT: All staff are educators who produce student learning and success |
Distinctions between staff and faculty dissipate as the key criteria become how far down a particular learning path one has travelled and what one has to share that is helpful to others (long tail becomes a useful funding mechanism here) |
The church determines who is an expert and licenses them to teach |
BT: Any expert can teach |
Content experts invited to participate in faculty development programs on teaching and learning, incentives exist to support good teaching |
BT/MH: Shared governance; teamwork, research expertise a necessary but not sufficient criteria for standing as a teacher; equally important is ability to support student learning |
Expertise is determined in multiple and dynamic ways, and shifts depending on specific contexs and needs of communities and institutions |
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