Educating the Will

Doug Blomberg. "Educating the Will". 2014

Read: paper in the ICS Institutional Repository

Listen and View: audio file and slides

Doug Blomberg presented this paper to the Biennial Conference of the International Christian Community for Teacher Education (ICCTE) held at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada from May 28 to May 31, 2014. His presentation began with an exploration of a concept central to a Christian view of the person, that of the will. This was introduced into Western thought through Augustine’s appropriation of the biblical tradition, particularly Paul’s reflections in Romans 7. Whereas cognition and more recently affect have featured most prominently in approaches to education, the will has been largely overlooked. Blomberg seeks to redress this omission, and goes on to illustrate the implications for a pedagogy in which the role of the will is accorded significance. He describes strategies such as “Project-Based Learning” in the context of the curricular rhythm of “Play, Problem-posing, Purposeful Response”, first proposed in A Vision with a Task (Stronks and Blomberg, 1993).