Over the past several weeks, we have looked at what it might mean to envision Kairos as a platform on which a wide array of educational journeys could be constructed. Using such an approach requires us to reconsider how quality, excellence, and mastery are understood. David Williams, President of Taylor Seminary, walked us through several helpful ideas to consider in that process. You can review them here.
Kairos is a pioneering approach to theological education that encourages students, partners, resource providers, faculty, authors, and more to build new experiences for students, mentors and all participants. For example, Kairos encourages students to engage in learning experiences and resources that exist outside the “walls” of a school. One student may participate in a spiritual direction program offered by another institution. Another student might take courses from another seminary. Still others may participate in a leadership program offered by their churches. Our faculty, in collaboration with vocational and personal mentors, guide, encourage, and evaluate students while they progress through their respective programs. The goal is for the Kairos to be the connector between multiple points within the network of theological education.
In order to be effective in this process, we believe institutions need to embrace the following principles: collaborative mission, contextual discipleship, integrated outcomes, customized mastery, mentored teamwork, and holistic assessment. If you’d like a quick definition of each of those, check out this post on the principles of CBTE. Next week, I am going to look more closely at collaborative mission. From there, I will address contextual discipleship and customized mastery. To round out our review of these principles, I will share a bit more about integrated outcomes and holistic assessment.
See you next week as we take a deeper dive into collaborative mission!
This post originally appeared on the Kairos University blog.
