Hearing The Voices Of Those Who Are Educating For Shalom

For the past 30 years, philosopher and educator, Nicholas Wolterstorff, has been speaking and writing about the multi-faceted, biblical idea of shalom and the phrase, educating for shalom. This study describes and analyzes the content of more than 100 voices of Christian higher educators who have written about the idea of educating for shalom as it refers to institutional vision, missional goals, and educational models. Within the context of this study, Wolterstorff's ideas about educating for shalom frame these educators' ideas in Chapter 3, as a summary of his ideas from his writings and speeches are presented in Chapter 2, and a follow up via personal email communication is presented in Chapter 4. The organizing framework for this study comes from Joldersma's description of five aspects that summarize Wolterstorff's treatment of shalom: 1) the goal and purpose of education; 2) the analysis of the social context; 3) the idea of Christian learning and scholarship; 4) the curriculum; and 5) the nature of teaching (Wolterstorff, 2004, p. xiv). This study presents three summary findings: 1) there is an array of credible examples of educating for shalom within the context of Christian higher education; 2) there is fertile ground within Christian higher education for embracing the motto, educating for shalom; and, 3) the phrase, educating for shalom, is a unifying motto that Christian higher educators articulate through their overlapping conceptions of a biblical meaning of shalom and their overlapping ideas of what it means to educate for shalom.