Discipling scholars and teaching teachers – towards a Biblically-based understanding of faculty development

Abstract

Faculty development is often a life-long process which does not bear fruit in one tenure-track term. Christian colleges and universities need to recognise that more factors contribute to faculty development than only those added to faculty development programmes on university campuses. Challenging university lecturers and academic teachers to change, even to cumulative change over the span of a lifetime, is what faculty development is all about. In order to achieve this goal we need, however, to develop an atmosphere and an ethos on campus that is conducive to such growth and change. Such an ethos should be rooted in an integral Biblical view of the world, but primarily in a world view that sees both professors, lecturers and students as gifted and unique beings called to be followers of Christ – also in an academic environment