Seven Laws of Teaching

Effective Religious Education

Religious Education – A Passion to Communicate / Teaching to

Change Lives RE teachers are more than professional. It is

intensely personal. RE teachers need to be passionate and committed to their students.

There are 7 strategic concepts (laws, principles, rules) in teaching. The law of the Teacher The law of the Education The law of the Activity The law of the Communication The law of the Heart The law of Encouragement The law of Readiness

These 7 laws essentially call for a passion to communicate.

2RE - 7 Laws of Teaching

The Law of the Teacher

If you stop growing today, you stop teaching tomorrow

Luke 6:40: “Everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.”

If you want to minister to others, ask God first of all to minister to you. He wants to work through you – but He can’t until He works in you.

He will use you as His instrument, but He wants to sharpen and cleanse that instrument to make it a more effective tool in His hands.


The Law of the Teacher – The Search for Teachers

“In the search for good teachers, look for FAT people – those who are Faithful, Available, and Teachable.”

“… effective teaching comes only through a changed person. The more you change, the more you become an instrument of change in the lives of others. If you want to become a change agent, you also must change.”

The two factors that will influence you the most in the years ahead are the books you read and the people you’re around.

“Experience does not necessarily make you better; in fact it tends to make you worse, unless it’s evaluated experience. The good teacher’s greatest threat is satisfaction – the failure to keep asking, ‘How can I improve?”


The Law of Education

How people learn determines how you teach – stimulating and directing the learner’s self-activities.

The teacher must excite and direct the learner’s self-activities, tell the learner nothing – and do nothing for him – that he can learn or do for himself.

What’s important is not what you do as a teacher, but what the learners do as a result of what you do.


The Law of Education –Think, Learn & Work

Basic goals:Teach people how to think – If you

want to change a person permanently, make sure his thinking changes, and not merely his behavior.

Teach people how to learn – Create learners who will perpetuate the learning process for the rest of their lives.

Teach people how to work – never doing anything for a student that he is capable of doing for himself.


The Law of Activity

Maximum learning is always the result of maximum involvement. Students will learn best as they are most active in the process. They need to be guided in their practice, taught to properly evaluate their experience, and learn not by repeating their mistakes but by doing the right things.

Hearing is the most inefficient means of learning – people only retain at the most 10% of what they hear. But they will retain up to 50% of what they see and up to 90% of what they do.


The Law of Activity –Quality Activity

Purposeful activity implies quality activity.Practice makes perfect.Experience is the best teacher.We learn by doing.………


-Well-guided practice makes perfect-Properly evaluated experience is the best teacher-We learn by doing the right things

The Law of Communication

Communication is the reason for our existence as teachers. – It’s also our number one teaching problem.

To truly impart information requires the building of bridges. This means really knowing one’s students, which in itself means spending time with them outside the classroom. Communication will be more effective to the degree that it is something the teacher deeply knows, feels and does.


The Law of Communication –Intellect, Emotion, and Volition

All communication has three essential components: intellect, emotion, and volition – thought, feeling, and action.

Whatever it is I want to communicate to another individual, it involves… something I know,… something I feel,… and something I’m doing.


The Law of the Heart

Teaching that impacts is not head to head, but heart to heart.

Plato’s triumvirate of ethos (character/credibility), pathos (compassion) and logos (content). Ethos, pathos and logos are like a pyramid where each is dependent upon the previous. – Character, Compassion, Content.

Without the foundation of character/credibility, there will not be the confidence in the teacher which is foundational to the implicit contract between teacher and student.

The student needs to know that the teacher cares about him, and third of course, is content.


The Law of Encouragement

Teaching tends to be most effective when the learner is properly motivated. Extrinsic motivation : motivation from without. Intrinsic motivation : motivation from within.

Developing a strong sense of felt need: people will not learn what they have no felt need for, and will invest themselves in learning that for which they do have a felt need.


The Law of Encouragement

The key question is: Are you motivated? – Motivated people become change agent.

If one-tenth of what you believe is true, you ought to be ten times as excited as you are.


The Law of Readiness

The teaching-learning process will be most effective when both student and teacher are adequately prepared.Assignments

○ They precipitate thinking – assignments are mental warm-up.

○ They provide a background, a foundation on which to build.

○ They develop habits of independent study – and this is the most important benefit of good assignments.


Good Assignments

The characteristics of good assignments:They must be creative, not simply busy

work. Need a clear objective for the assignments; designed with a purpose.

They must be thought-provoking. They should question more answers rather than answer more questions. Stretch the learners’ minds.

Assignments must be doable.


Making the Investment The law of the Teacher – stop growing today, and you stop teaching tomorrow. The law of the Education – how people learn determines how you teach. The law of the Activity – maximum learning is always the result of maximum involvement. The law of the Communication – to truly impart information requires the building of bridge. The law of the Heart – teaching that impacts is not head to head, but heart to heart. The law of Encouragement – teaching tends to be most effective when the learner is

properly motivated . The law of Readiness – the teaching-learning process will be most effective when both

student and teacher are adequately prepared.

The key is not what you do for God but what you allow Him to do through you. God wants to use you as his catalyst – and you let him transform and renew your thinking, you’ll be ready for His use. – Are you willing to pay the price for development? Effective teaching isn’t available at any bargain basement sale.


Suggested Readings

Teaching to Change Lives – Howard G. Hendricks Creative Teaching Methods: Be An Effective Christian

Teacher – Marlene D. LeFever Learning Styles: Reaching Everyone God Gave You –

Marlene D. LeFever The Seven Laws of the Learner: How to Teach Almost

Anything to Practically Anyone! – Bruce Wilkinson Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical

Learning – Robert Littlejohn & Charles T. Evans Recovering The Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to

Distinctively Christian Education A Mind At A Time: How Every Child Can Succeed – Mel

Levine, M.D.
