Is Your School Checking Student Worldview?
September 5, 2023
Katherine Schultz
If you are a leader in a Christian school, you may sometimes wonder if there is a good resource to help you know if you are meeting your school’s mission to develop students with a biblical worldview. Middle School Principal Dr. Billy Fisher tells the story of using the 3-D Worldview Survey at First Baptist Academy in Naples, Florida, for the 8th grade and 12th grade students.
Using the 3D Worldview Survey at a Christian School Like Yours
We chose the 3DWS to use with our students because of the holistic picture it gives of a student’s worldview. In my research, many of the worldview surveys on the market focus on the propositional aspect of worldview. However, the 3DWS seeks to understand one’s beliefs, values, and actions. Gathering data on these three areas helped us as school administrators to know where to target our areas of Bible and biblical worldview instruction.
We had our 8th and 12th grade students complete the 3DWS. For 8th grade, this gave us a baseline to see where our students are prior to going into high school. With 12th grade, it gave us a picture of our soon to be graduates and their worldview development. Having this data allowed us as an administration to have conversations around our programming and ways that we could make tweaks to help students grow in their biblical worldview. I think moving forward, it would be helpful to use the 3DWS as a pretest/posttest to assess each year our programming as we seek to develop students with Christian character and a biblical worldview, preparing them for life, learning, and leadership.
Billy Fisher
Middle School Principal
First Baptist Academy, Naples, FL
What Using the 3DWS Can Do at Your School
Using the 3DWS gives school leaders a way to identify strengths, both in individuals as well as in a group, or a program over time. It’s a way to help you communicate with parents, students, teachers, and even donors about the worldview development your school helps provide.
And it gives you a way to target program development and instruction so that your school is centered around the good news of Jesus Christ because you are focusing on the things that help students become more mature believers in their beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes. You can use the results for targeted discipleship opportunities, as well as curricular evaluation.
Curious How the 3DWS Would Work at Your School?
You can read more about the 3-D Worldview Survey, or even Take the 3-D Worldview for yourself.
And if you want to do a little test drive with some of the questions from the 3-D Worldview Survey with your class, check out the pdf below to get you started.
#3dws #biblicalworldview
