Pedagogy and Education for Life: A Christian Reframing of Teaching, Learning, and Formation

Abstract

A good title is a potential bait to hook a reader! Such is the case in Trevor Cairney’s use of significant terms in his title to entice and engage his audience – Pedagogy and Education for Life: A Christian Reframing of Teaching, Learning, and Formation. Over time, terms like pedagogy may have lost their essential meaning through casual overuse. And formation in some circles appears to have become a popular buzzword without the deep understandings associated with its conceptual, seminal origins in such a context. Cairney’s book serves as a powerful corrective to this possibility as it seeks to challenge, clarify, reframe and reform many existing conceptions of what it means to teach Christianly. Thus, it is not just ‘another book’ on Christian education. It is also significant that the author’s apparent focus is on pedagogy, and not curriculum. This sends a subtle signal of the essence of his thesis.