Faith-Praxis Integration in Research Design and Statistics

Doing integration in research and statistics oriented courses presents unique challenges to faculty. The content of these courses seems far removed from the integration of faith and learning as generally understood in the literature. Faith-praxis integration provides an overarching vision that rises above the content of a given course and impacts many aspects of the educational process for both the faculty member and the student. Developing expertise in research skills becomes a spiritual exercise that has import for the student's motivations, goals and character. For faculty, faith-praxis integration carries implications for how their faith can be lived out in their courses. It will affect interactions with students outside of class as well. ********** Students enrolled in many degree programs often find the technical courses like research design and statistics more difficult, and less relevant to their personal lives than other courses in their curriculum. For example, most psychology majors are much more interested in the clinically related courses than the experimental ones. They question how these the experimental ones. They question how these courses will be valuable to a career in clinical psychology. In the Christian college setting, there is the additional challenge of connecting the course material with one's life of faith. For instance, how does the effect of a restricted range on a correlation coefficient relate to the Christian life? Students are looking for relevance of course material to their questions about life and faith. I've pondered these issues over the past 36 years of my career teaching statistics, experimental psychology, and related courses. The perspective presented in this article is the culmination of this effort. FAITH-PRAXIS INTEGRATION The discussion of integration in the literature has almost exclusively focuses on the scholarly and theoretical aspects, but has failed to reflect what my students referenced as integration in my courses. When students give high marks to faculty for integration, they do not seem to be thinking of interdisciplinary integration (Bouma-Prediger, 1990). In experimental psychology, interdisciplinary integration would include a critique of the scientific method as it is expressed in psychology in light of a Christian worldview. This is an important discussion for psychology students as they formulate their own understanding of epistemology, psychology and the meaning of personhood (Van Leeuwen, 1982, 1985). However, when students talk about their professors doing integration, they seem to be referencing a different form of integration. In a recent publication celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, the top 50 articles related to integration were presented (Stevenson, Eck, & Hill, 2007). Of the 50 articles, one article was included that investigated "how students learn integration" (Sorenson, Derflinger, Bufford and McMinn, 2004). From this study, it appears that students define integration differently from the way most of the literature addresses the subject. Their primary focus is not on theoretical models, but on relational elements involving faculty who impacted their spiritual lives. Sorensen, et al. (2004) reported that learning integration was associated with the vitality of the professor's personal relationship with God, whether it was estranged and confused or intimates and close. The most important factor for the students was access to the faculty member's ongoing spiritual process. Hall, Ripley, Garzon and Mangis (2009, current issue) also found that the professor's transparency about his/her spirituality was a significant element in the depth of impact on the students. They reported that students were looking for authenticity in the spiritual life of the faculty member. Perfunctory " devotions" that seemed disconnected from the faculty member's life or course content did not connect with them. …