The Challenge of Sustaining Faith and Worldview in Institutional Life

E. Christina Belcher cbelcher@redeemer.ca

ICCTE 10th Biennial Conference Azusa Pacific University

May 23-26, 2012

Narrative and worldview: the creative research imagination in discourse

Creation

Fall

Redemption

Reconciliation

Reiteration, reflexivity

and embodiment

• My research tells an institutional story

• My research story struggles with suffering or disequilibrium

• My research story strives for redemption in its truth telling and quest for wonder

• My research story reconciles its narratives within a biblical perspective of truth, hope and justice

• My story concludes with reiteration and a new embodiment of purpose

Session outline:

1. Research purpose: questions and considerations2. Context: Exploring the problematic understanding3. Worldview: Progression and language 4. Methodology: Ethnography and theoretical contours for understanding 5. Findings surrounding praxis and intent6. Conclusions

Timeliness of the researchHigher Education policy context (national

and international)

• Interest in ‘shared values’ (Canada and Abroad)

• Canadian CHE conversations: CAUT, CARDUS

• Interest in moral agency and institutional design that fosters community

Institutional context and considerations: • Worldview – significance and understanding

over time; institutional ‘particularity’• System and life worlds and narrative voices

within

How does an Institute of Christian Higher Education (ICHE) develop and articulate an identity that is distinctive, one that meets the needs of its particular students and academics?

What role does narrative have in understanding institutional and individual worldview?

How is ‘worldview’ as part of institutional life sustained, discarded or embodied?

The challenge of sustaining faith and worldview in institutional life ...

Research questions

The challenge of aligning a faith and worldview with lived institutional

experience

• Worldview is complex and varies institutionally and communally

• It provides what Dorothy Smith (2002, 2005) calls a ‘problematic’

Ethnography

Language Worldview

Christian Higher Education: Exploring the worldview ‘problematic’

Outsider Perspective?

Insider Perspective?

Smith, D. E. (2006). Institutional ethnography as practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

So how has worldview been understood?Between 1984-1997:

• As a guiding vision of and for life (Walsh & Middleton, 1984)

• As something ‘individually’ left largely unquestioned (Olthius, 1985)

• As a set of held prepositions or assumptions , true or false, conscious or subconscious (Sire, 1997)

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind … (Rom. 12:1,2)

Changes in worldview understanding since 1997:

• As a semiotic system of narrative signs [creating a] symbolic universe …responsible for life-determining human practices. (Naugle, 2002)

• As a formative, embodied liturgical expression of love (Smith, 2009)

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind … (Rom. 12:1,2)

Clearly, the process of seeking to understand the word ‘worldview’ is itself problematic due to the many differing contexts and assumptions which inform the ways this word is used by academics, by individuals and by institutions.

But is worldview more than any of these ...

A Model for Worldview Analysis (Hiebert, 2008)

SYNCHRONIC - WORLD DIACHRONIC - WORLD MYTHS worldview, ethos, cosmology,

metaphors synchronic – looks at the structure

of reality

metanarrative, cosmogony, root myths

diachronic – looks at the cosmic story

1. Cognitive themes and counter themes

1. Stories

2. Affective themes and counter themes

2. Dramatic themes

3. Evaluative themes and counter themesUniversalist vs. particularistAscription vs. achievementEquality vs. hierarchyIndividual vs. group

3. Progression

4. Root metaphors

5. Epistemological foundations

This ‘model’ was rejected for a framework

How can worldview be best understood and sustained within a ‘community’ of Higher Education?

Structure and direction (Wolters, 1985/2005)

Institutional ethnography (Smith, 2005)• Voices from within, voices from outside, and a

reflexive voice from the liminal spaces• Interconnections between institutional and

individual identity• Focus on social experiences and institutional

texts• Shuttling between focus on the particularities of

institutional academic life and grand narratives, and the local system/life world structure and direction

• “Omega College” as a community with an institutional ‘worldview’

Methodology

Ethnographic Setting

This research explores worldview(s), narratives and lived experience in one Christian institution of Higher education across three cohorts of

the institutional community over 35 years.

Institutional Identity, Mission and conversations ‘over time’ ...

Participants: Students & professors of the academic OC community over a total of 35 years, from 1970 – 2005.– Cohort 1:1970-1985; – Cohort 2: 1985-1997; – Cohort 3: 1997-2005.– Christina, herself

Data: from

– email conversations

– demographic data

– focus group interviews

• Disequilibrium (Wolterstorff, 2002) as a meaningful (if ‘messy’) dimension of worldview

• Being curious about and ‘lovingly dissatisfied’ with the existing state of affairs in a way that engages ‘gracious’ conversation that opens up further dialogue to rigorous academic scrutiny

• Under such circumstances, ‘worldview’ presents as a complex ‘problematic’ (Smith, 2005) that deserves close scrutiny – by researchers and by institutions.

Grand conversations, cultural critique and ‘disequilibrium’ ...

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC: two voices from Cohort 1:

Our mission statement suggests spirituality is not a dimension of life but a pervasive life-direction. Though there are practices (of worship and devotions, e.g.) that would be readily recognized as "spiritual", these cultic activities are only one facet of a life which in all its dimensions--economic, intellectual, aesthetic, educational, ethical, etc.—is acknowledged as spiritual, as being in service of the One God revealed in Jesus Christ or of a substitute for God (an idol). (Sydney, Cohort 1)

There is much more emphasis now on entering into dialogue alongside other views (e.g., postmodernism or critical theory), less on stressing the distinctive content of a Christian approach [than there was 20 years ago]. (Alex, Cohort 1)

Engaging ‘mission’ as one iteration of worldview

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC: Two voices from Cohort 2:

This institution breaks down the false dichotomy of separating faith and life; and makes faith significant to life in ways which benefit the world at large. (Karol, Cohort 2)

I can select experiences in [OC] that shaped my worldview which developed as much from ordinary experiences (personal shared stories and narratives) as out of philosophical or theoretical reflection. This showed me the importance of life experiences in shaping my worldview beyond theory.

(Jade, Cohort 2)

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC :Two voices from Cohort 3:

[OC works at preparing a] thoughtful and critical life-long learner who is always looking for fresh ways to seek justice, transform culture, obtain the common good. (Geri, Cohort 3)

I think it is necessary to reflect more about the unique, historically constituted way in which students’ experiences and agency play into the way students themselves appropriate and utilise the variety of things an institute like [OC] has to offer. One impression I recall is how different [OC] was from year to year... During the summer [I was] re-hooking up with students and staff I had been taught by or studied with. 12 years later, the same common bonds of solidarity, intellectual struggle and faith/life integration featured in our conversations and characterised our shared activities. [OC] sharpened my intellectual skills and confirmed that it is legitimate to pursue academic interests that serve the needs of the marginalised and excluded in society. (Lee, Cohort 3)

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC: one voice over three generations

I have experienced the hard reality that commonness of worldview may, nevertheless, lead to diverging practices.

OC accurately reflects and embodies its vision statement even though it is beset with all the foibles and frailties of human institutions. Yes, even as I have done my part in shaping the institutional worldview, experiences at [OC] have shaped me.

(Taylor, Cohorts 1, 2 & 3)

• ‘Disequilibrium’ can be a helpful notion in making meaning from the diverse data. It has helped to reveal tensions in institutional perspectives on its worldview which otherwise may have remained invisible or even corrosive to ongoing institutional life

• Reflection ‘over time’ as well as in the moment provides a lens into the function and nature of worldview in institutional life

• Institutional worldview: common narratives, but also diversity and tensions (not a prescription for life)– “a dynamic lived experience rather than an abstract set

of bounded concepts that govern individuals and the collective of a whole institution over generations” (Belcher & Parr, 2011)

Some insights from interviews and analysis

Final words from the inside over time, within system /life world structure and direction …

I think that OC has made me far more self-conscious about the ways in which my own work is tied to the orienting intuitions, convictions [and] sensibility I bring to that work. It has made me far more self-conscious about looking at the work of others out of the expectation that their work too flows from equally deep impulses. And it has helped me thereby to come to both my own work and the work of others with a critical sympathy, at one and the same time convinced that we tend to see it in partial and [even] in distorted ways.

(MacKenzie, Cohort 3)

Some insights from interviews & analysis

• ‘Disequilibrium’ has been a helpful notion in making meaning from the diverse data. It has helped to reveal tensions in institutional perspectives on its worldview which otherwise may have remained invisible or even corrosive to ongoing institutional life

• Reflection ‘over time’ as well as in the moment provides a lens into the function and reality of worldview in institutional life

• ‘Grand conversations’ in community result in hybrid worldviews which eventually strengthen or alter original worldview states within institutions

Institutional Mission AndWorldview Perceptions

Lifeworld

• Relational•Philosophical

•Epistemological•Metaphorical

•Themes of cultural engagement

Worldview PracticesDisequilibrium over time generates new narratives, perceptions

and practices, promoting transformation or conformation into intentional practices.

Figure 5.6: The Analysis of Intentional Worldview Practices

Systemworld

•Structure•Governance

•Policies•Strategies•Economics

Participant Narratives

Disequilibrium•for engaging conflict

and culture

The Challenge of Sustaining Faith and Worldview in Institutional Life

Conclusions:1.Worldview must be engaged and made

meaningful to endure/become embodied.2.Worldview must be embodied in ways that

provoke wonder, truth, justice and reconciliation in community life beyond the institutional walls to engage faith.

3.Worldview is sustained by narrative expression and intentional practice and presence in institutional contexts

4.Worldviews become hybrid and change as culture changes, becoming ‘a mirror or a compass’ to society.

For future research: 1. Does this resultant framework assist

other institutions in assessing their worldview?

2. Does the life-world and system-world balance/imbalance in an institution inhibit or liberate positive worldview embodiment, in what ways, and to what end?