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The Contextual Rationale
The title of my research [italics mine], “The efficacy of holistic learning strategies in the development of church leaders in Mozambique: an action research approach” implies the contextual rationale. Most of the learners are members of the Church of the Nazarene in Mozambique, and all of them are enrolled in the educational system of this international denomination which makes the Church of the Nazarene their over-arching theological and educational context, as well as one of their social contexts. The learners in the population are called church leaders in development because they are either in the process of being prepared for positions of leadership or they are already serving in positions for which they have had little or no training.
In the 1980s, the Church of the Nazarene began to face the reality that the dozens of Nazarene educational programmes which were preparing pastors for life-long ministry were inadequate at several points. The first lack was quantitative; there were not enough programmes to train pastors for the explosive growth taking place in some of the more remote and less developed regions of the globe (Walker 2000, RIIE 2003). Other problems in these areas included too few trainers qualified to train pastors and little material developed for pastoral training. At the other extreme, head-knowledge seemed to have taken priority over heartexperience as pastors were succumbing to moral failures; others had excellent academic records but failed in ministerial skills like how to care for their parishioners or how to run a board meeting. Still others seemed to know enough and to know how but lacked an awareness or ability to read their context, so failed at relevance (Vail 2000, Esselstyn 2003). The Church of the Nazarene was not alone in recognizing shortcomings in theological education. Noelliste (1993:5) recognizes “the growing dissatisfaction being voiced in many circles regarding much of what theological education does…[it] is being assailed for a plethora of faults: lack of purpose, the disparateness and inadequacy of its content, disconnectedness with the community of faith, insensitive policies, ineffective teaching methods, and many others. From Germany, another Evangelical educator notes similar problems (Schirrmacher 1999:4).
Systemic changes were needed in the Church of the Nazarene to prepare a greater number of pastors worldwide to staff the hundreds of new churches and to embrace diversity more equitably. Training programmes for trainers and learners needed to be developed which would extend pastoral preparation to populations niversity of Pretoria etd – Scott, M M (2006) which had been deprived of formal education and who did not speak a major world language. Overall, pastoral training programmes needed to facilitate the spiritual formation of the ministerial candidates as well as their knowledge and know-how.
On the global level, Nazarenes voted in 1997 at the twenty-fourth General Assembly to shift the hundreds of its pastoral training programmes in the world to Outcomes Based Education. The exit outcomes of these programmes described what the ideal Nazarene pastor would KNOW, would BE and would DO. In order for Nazarene educators around the world to have a guide to help contextualize the programme outcomes to fit the diverse constituencies, committees created a tool called the International Sourcebook for Ministerial Development (Bowling 1997, Esselstyne 1999).
Chapter 1 Orientation to the Study
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Critical Questions
1.3 Rationale
1.3.1 The Contextual Rationale
1.3.2 The Pragmatic Rationale
1.3.3 The Scholarly Rationale
1.4 Literature Review
1.5 Theoretical Framework
1.6 Research Design
1.7 Data Collection Plan
1.8 Instruments Used in Data Collection
Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework
2.1 Introduction: Holism
2.2 Holistic Models of Brain Organization and Function
2.2.1 Multiple Intelligences Theory
2.2.2 Modular Brain Theory
2.2.3 Duality of Thinking and of the Brain
2.2.4 Triune Brain Model of MacLean
2.2.5 Four Quadrant Model of Herrma
2.2.6 Whole Brain Models and Holistic Education
2.4 Spiritual Learning Environments
2.5 Cooperative Learning Groups among Adults
2.6 Holistic Learning Strategies
2.7 Synthesis of Theoretical Framework
Chapter 3 Participatory Action Research (PAR) Framed as Arboric Research
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Action Research as Social Practice
3.1.2 Action Research as Targeting Improvement
3.1.3 Action Research as a Cyclical Process
3.1.4 Action Research as Systematic Enquiry
3.1.5 Action Research as Reflective Process
3.1.6 Action Research as Participative
3.1.7 Action Research as Determined by Practitioners
3.2 Practical and Ethical Considerations
3.2.1 Language
3.2.2 Other Considerations
3.3 Arboric Research Framework
3.3.1 Introduction
3.3.2 Application of the Framework to the Research in Mozambique
3.4 Summary of Research Instruments and Plan
Chapter 4 Empirical Research Findings
4.1 Introduction
4.1.1 Chronological Narrative Report
4.1.2 Demographics of the Learner and Leader Samples of the Church
of the Nazarene in Mozambique
4.1.3 Refinement of TEE model
4.1.4 Collectivism vs. Individualism and Use of Maternal Language
4.2 Research Questions: What do the empirical findings show?
4.3 Overview of the Detailed Research Findings
Chapter 5 Synthesis and Conclusions
References
