Teaching Psychological Theories: Integration Tasks and Teaching Strategies

Teaching students to integrate Christian faith with psychological theories is a multifaceted responsibility. In this article, we encourage educators to utilize a three-fold integration approach to foster the development of students' knowledge, skills, and values in counseling and psychology by teaching students to think Christianly, intervene competently, and advocate effectively. Using examples from the integration literature, professional standards, research on effective teaching strategies, and our own experience, we offer resources for course content and provide specific teaching strategies. Psychological theories are sets of ideas or principles that provide a framework for understanding the complex systems producing human behavior. Theory provides the lens for interpreting and predicting mental processes and behaviors. From psychological theories, we develop interventions to improve human welfare. Theories are also laden with values and world-view assumptions about the nature of personhood, social relationships, and society. Christian educators in psychology and counseling have the opportunity to teach students about psychological theories and at the same time provide critical thinking skills to evaluate these philosophical assumptions. Additionally, we strive to help our students apply psychological theory in the service of Christ's Kingdom for the healing of a hurting world. This requires not only an evaluation of theories from a Christian perspective, but also recognition of the cultural limitations of our psychological assumptions. The job of the Christian educator is multifaceted, and involves the development of students' knowledge, skills, and values in the integrative endeavor. In this article, we suggest a three-fold integration approach to teaching undergraduate and graduate students psychological theories. First, students need to learn the critical thinking skills necessary for thoughtful appraisal of psychological theories from a Christian worldview. Often referred to as theoretical or faith and science integration (Stevenson, Eck, & Hill, 2007), this important area of integration provides a necessary intellectual foundation for the relationship between the science of psychology and Christian faith. A second integration task involves teaching students the competent application of theory to address individual and systemic problems, and to incorporate Christian beliefs and practices with psychological interventions. Applied integration (Stevenson et al., 2007) includes attention to clinical and counseling techniques, ethics, person of the therapist, and spiritual formation. A third integration task fosters the development of service-oriented values and convictions and nurtures a passion for compassionate justice that results in advocacy for underserved and marginalized populations. Also termed faith-praxis integration (Bouma-Prediger, 1990) and integration as service (Canning, Pozzi, McNeil, & McMinn, 2000), students develop a vision for how psychological theory and Christian faith can be faithfully integrated into their larger calling to serve the church and build Christ's kingdom through addressing the real needs in the world today. We propose that the intended outcome of this three part integrative task is to produce students who are able to think Christianly (knowledge), intervene competently (skills), and advocate effectively (values). In this article, we will provide recommendations for content and teaching strategies in each of these three proposed tasks. Drawing from the integration literature, professional standards, research on effective teaching strategies, and our own teaching experiences, we hope to provide an array of practical suggestions that can improve our effectiveness in engaging and inspiring students to invest themselves in the important work of integration in our discipline (see Appendix A for a summary of teaching resources). APPENDIX A Resources for Teaching the Integration of Psychological Theory and Faith Appraisal Rooks and Jones and Butman (2010) articles Johnson(2010) Stevenson, Eek, & Hill (2007) Videos Professional Society for the Exploration Of organizations psychotherapy integration and web (septweb. …