Jonathan Sircy

In his 2016 book Small Teaching, James Lang offers research-supported advice on how to tweak class assignments and course structures for maximum impact. Lang reasons that teachers are often paralyzed by the burden that would accompany major pedagogical shifts, no matter how promising they seem. As a result, these teachers never modify their well-worn teaching habits, even if they know about research that indicates their methods are not the most effective. Over nine chapters, Lang provides a host of specific in-class exercises, slight changes to course design, or even once-a-semester interventions that can improve student learning at a magnitude that far outweighs a teacher’s effort. The book is provocative and is paradoxically so filled with good, actionable ideas that, at times, I was paralyzed at the prospect of applying its insights even though the entire premise of the book was to stave off that paralysis.

Lang required certain features from his nine small teaching recommendations: they had to each be backed by the latest cognitive research about we learn, have corresponding research proving their fruitfulness higher education, and pass Lang’s own smell test through his personally applying or observing the principle at work in the classroom. He structures each of the book’s nine chapters in the same way. After beginning with a real-world example of the technique in use, Lang summarizes the research that undergirds the principle, provides models for how the principle would look in practice, supplies simple strategies that emerge from the principle in discussion, and closes by giving a handful of tips so the reader can start using the chapter’s technique right away.

The chapters form a ladder moving from basic knowledge retention through what Lang calls “expanding,” the tipping point at which the aims of results of small teaching shift into big teaching and learning. In between, we learn about the power of such techniques as “interleaving,” the process of periodically reviewing what we’ve already learned, to “self-explaining,” where students consistently articulate how and why they are using certain techniques to get work done.

Perhaps the most shocking argument Lang makes concerns knowledge. His first three chapters are devoted to encouraging students to bolster their memories, a faculty that often comes under fire from educational raconteurs as either unnecessary or downright negative. Why do we need to know who Martin Van Buren is? Can’t we just google him? Do we need to memorize certain musical scales? Won’t such scales always be easily accessible through our phones?

While agreeing that learning activities such as evaluating and creating are educational ideals, Lang demonstrates through convincing research that such higher order goals will never happen without a rich content-base. Lang is essentially providing teachers with explanations for why quizzes, cumulative exams, and other often-dismissed-as-unnecessary techniques are critical to provide the foundation for the kinds of educational results we want. Admittedly, Lang focuses on understanding and inspiration for 66% of the book, so knowledge retention is not an end in itself. It is where teacher should start, however. One practical action item from the book takes five minutes at the beginning or end of class. Ask your students what the main takeaway from our last class was, or have them write down the day’s main takeaway at the conclusion.

For a book that focuses on small teaching, Lang’s work has amazing scope. Though he’s an English professor by trade, Lang tries to make sure that he addresses disciplines across the university. More than that, his tweaks could be utilized in smaller seminars, large lecture classes, or even in online learning environments (Lang’s advice on this last one is particularly good). Lang’s command of the pertinent learning research is so impressive and his approach to teaching so compelling, I left the book wondering where else the book’s principles could be deployed. More specifically, I wondered what the implications were for discipleship.

A disciple is a student, and if we consider our relationship to Christ through this lens, we should be able to see some applications from Lang’s book for how we learn and teach the gospel. This dimension of Lang’s work is waiting to be drawn out. Lang teaches at Assumption College, a school that prides itself on bringing together a focus on the liberal arts with the Catholic intellectual tradition. It’s no coincidence that the “big teaching” move Lang makes at the book’s conclusion is essentially service learning, students taking what they’ve learned in the classroom and using it to help their communities. This goal is in line with the aims of the church where local congregants take what they’ve learned in sermons and small groups and share it with others.

The same problems that afflict teaching plague basic discipleship in our local churches. The methods we use to teach new and developing believers deploy pedagogical methods that would earn immediate red-flags if we saw them used in educational settings. While a real response to the discipleship applications of Lang’s book is worthy of a book of its own, I would like to offer, in the spirit of Lang’s book, three examples of what small discipleship would look like. 

• Encourage knowledge retention, both of scripture and sermon/lesson content.

If Lang is right and acquiring new skills starts with basic knowledge retention, then we should focus more concretely on giving congregants and new believers the opportunity to recall what they were taught in previous weeks. A moment of prayer and meditation at the beginning of service instructing parishioners to call to mind a key scripture or main lesson from last week’s service is a simple way to do this. Another means of encouraging retention is through the return to or adoption of a standard catechism that helps congregants retain short but powerful articulations of orthodox Christian belief.  

• Offer moments for self-explanation of key spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, scripture reading, and service.

Lang argues that giving students the space to articulate how and why they are learning sustains and accelerates their growth. The same should be true of key spiritual disciplines that are often glossed in sermons, private devotionals, or Sunday School classes but never fully spelled out. The simple act of asking someone to describe HOW they pray can go a long way toward helping foster a culture of spiritual discipline as well as the skills necessary to share those disciplines with others.

• Acknowledge the role of emotions in the discipleship process.

In his chapter on inspiration, James Lang notes that often it is the affective environment where learning happens, more than course content, that determines whether or not students succeed. If we are not careful, we can reduce discipleship to a set of information, a bare catechism, that students memorize and compartmentalize. Christians know the source of true inspiration because they believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. Something as simple as beginning your next small groups session with a list of gratitudes as a segue to prayer rather than simply prayer requests would go a long way toward emphasizing the positive work of the spirit in our lives.