Episodes
The elusive teachable moment is not endangered. In this episode we talk about how to orchestrate and leverage teachable moments to catalyze deep and durable learning
Published 05/04/24
Published 05/04/24
Young learners are motivated by curiosity and wonder. This generates "why" questions that are answered by looking for patterns in the particulars  they encounter. Would this were true for adult learning!
Published 04/20/24
Many people feel stuck in their careers. At the root this is because they lack clarity about who they are and what they were made to do. Clarity emerges on the heels of questioning your erroneous assumptions about vocation.
Published 04/06/24
Vocation should not be chosen pragmatically based merely on opportunity. Vocation is literally a calling to use your unique giftedness for the glory of God. Dr. Scott Whitmore, a researcher in retinal diseases, shares his wrestling to discern God's call.
Published 03/23/24
Ideals are commendable but how we implement ideals can corrupt our true identity. Susanna Hindman shares her story of life in a disadvantaged community in West Baltimore, Maryland.
Published 03/09/24
Healthcare is better at treating disease than at creating and maintaining health. Dr. Daniel Hindman of the Johns Hopkins hospital system argues that medical professionals fail to grapple with the real determinants of patient health. Healthcare presumptuously treats even foreseeable physical dysfunction or limitation within a human lifespan as a problem it is working to solve.
Published 02/24/24
Dr. Valerie Coffman shares her personal struggles with infertility and loss and reflects on the opportunities for growth through profound disppointment.
Published 02/10/24
Cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Nathan Smith, as a college sophomore experienced the liberation that comes with transformational learning. In this podcast he explains how a focus on understanding and deep learning informs his Christian faith as well as his life as a surgeon.
Published 01/27/24
Pediatrician & internal medicine practioner, teacher of medical residents, and homeschool mom, Dr. Joy Smith reflects on an early experience of transformative learning and distills from it timeless principles of lasting learning.
Published 01/13/24
Lifelong learning is not necessarily deep. Here we chronicle such a learner as she allows herself to be challenged to go deeper personally and eventually in her pedagogy with senior high students.
Published 12/02/23
Success in business comes through embracing "a way of thinking" that seeks to answer compelling questions using a complex interdisciplinary set of concepts. Students can be taught this mindset in the classroom through a query-focused approach.
Published 11/18/23
Sam Saldivar grew up in a migrant farm worker's large family but went on an educational journey leading to a PhD in Old Testament. Now an professor, his Bible classes aim for deep and durable understanding and not mere memorization.
Published 11/04/23
Harmonizing personal freedom and the biblical law of love through the discipline of public health.
Published 10/21/23
Public health has extended life spans in the U.S. by 30 years over the past 125 years through things like clean water and childhood vaccines. We'll explore the transformative effects of this little known discipline.
Published 10/07/23
History is misunderstood and often maligned by outsiders as trivia collection. Learn what motivates historians and how the questions they seek to answer lead to cause-effect explanations that satisfy our curiosity. Yes, really!
Published 09/23/23
History seems to be something you either love or hate with almost no middle ground.  Names, dates, events—trivial pursuit. Is that your view of history? What if history is really the assembly of facts into a compelling narrative? Our minds love stories! Join historian Brenda Schoolfield as she narrates her journey to a pedagogy that engages students in thinking like a historian.
Published 09/09/23
Pedagogy is often viewed as a personal choice and untouchable—a kind of third rail. The SITS model aims to transform faculty into clear incisive thinkers who embrace transformed pedagogy in order to optimize deep learning in their students. This episode is an interview with the Track 2 faculty cohort in the Summer Institute in Teaching Science 2023.
Published 07/29/23
The 3-legged stool is the compact embodiment of a comprehensive model of teaching and learning. In this episode we explore the development of clear thinking teachers through an interview with Dr. Timothy Tittiris, a participant in Track 1 of the Summer Institute in Teaching Science 2023.
Published 07/15/23
The 3-legged stool view of teaching and learning has become three intensive summers of faculty development in the Summer Institute in Teaching Science (SITS) at Bob Jones University.
Published 07/01/23
Three university faculty began a quest to reform teaching and learning at their institution. The result was a three-legged stool which has proven to be a powerful tool in faculty and curriculum development at all educational levels.
Published 06/17/23
Answering a question isn’t complete until there is a thorough questioning of the near-term implications and the long-term consequences. Deep understanding requires cognitive harmony between explanations, answers, implications, and consequences.
Published 05/06/23
The most powerful strategy for answering questions is asking questions. This query approach especially probes assumptions, ideas, and the relevant fact base. It sharpens thinking considerably and moves us toward deep understanding because we’ve come to know what our answer is based on.
Published 04/22/23
Nothing is more fundamental to deep and durable learning than compelling questions. In this episode I’ll show you how to use point of view and a recognition of your motive—what you are trying to accomplish with your thinking—to craft big questions. The best questions are a quest for principles which unlock our understanding and give us the power to act and to predict the consequences of our actions.
Published 04/08/23
 Questions are the engines that drive thinking. The better the question the deeper the resultant learning because you really care about unearthing the answer. Exploration through questioning is native learning mode—just remember your 4-year-old self—and you can go back!   
Published 03/25/23