Using Brunner’s Steps of Learning as an Integral Approach to Religious Education

Abstract

After 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines, even though our faith remains strong and enduring, one basic description we have is that many if not most Filipinos are sacramentalised not evangelised. The overall objective of the New Evangelization, is for our renewal to be an encounter with Christ, a faith rooted in Scriptures well understood and deepened, and to be shared for others. The Church, in coming up with the Directory of Catechesis (2020) and the New National Catechetical Directory for the Philippines (2007) have set certain principles to help the Catechist discern the best methods of communicating the faith to the people in this context. Can the educational theory of Jerome Bruner’s Steps of Learning and Spiral Curriculum be a good method for teaching Religious Education, faithful to the principles of Catholic Pedagogy enumerated by Church authority? By reviewing and applying the Learning steps of Bruner which begin with experience, followed by image, and then language, I hope to illustrate how it fulfils the new evangelization, in encountering or experiencing God first in a personal level, realising His values and actions, then finding meaning in the expressions of liturgy and the laws of the Church. The Religious Educator is aided in explaining complex truths, for like wisdom, the Spiral Curriculum emphasises understanding first what are the essential truths, and then applying these truths in a more complicated or practical level.