Can Digital Technology Enhance Christian Religious Education? Exploring the Efficacy of Digital Pedagogical Methods at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in FT Lauderdale, Florida
[Thesis]
Díaz, Israel
Schaab, Gloria L.
Barry University
2019
231 p.
D.Min.
Barry University
2019
This thesis-project aims to address the ministerial concern of how the integration of digital technology shapes Christian religious education and its ability to promote evangelization at St. Thomas Aquinas High School (STA) in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Framed by Richard Osmer's four tasks of practical theological interpretation, this project conducted a student survey and a theology faculty focus group to investigate how the integration of digital technology in Christian religious education is inspiring and compelling students to live their pastoral vocation to build the Reign of God. The results from the student survey reported that few students see the importance of using digital technology to make God present to others and that digital technology is having a minimal influence in their religious formation. Similarly, the results of the focus group pointed to how the theology faculty noted four challenges in integrating digital technology into Christian religious education. These challenges were: keeping a balance between the students encountering one another through a digital device and a personal face-to-face encounter which stresses the importance of being present for the other, keeping students engaged on the task at hand now that digital technology is more accessible to students in the classroom, the way digital technology is affecting teacher effectiveness as the expectation to integrate technology is greater than the training teachers are receiving, and to integrate digital technology in such a way that it does not circumvent critical thinking and that it enhances the students' relationship with God. Additionally, the interpretive and normative tasks raised concerns over how an unreflected integration of digital technology inhibits the efforts of Christian religious education to evangelize. Accordingly, this thesis-project proposes a series of workshops to familiarize the theology faculty with reflective practices and pedagogical methods that formally attend to the integration of digital technology into Christian religious education at STA which promote evangelization.