What are our students like?

It would be misleading to try to draw a single identikit picture of the typical STETS student. As we shall see, although they have many important features in common, there is plenty of individual variety. STETS students share many similar characteristics, not least because they are adult learners training for Christian ministry. They also tend to reflect the particular region STETS serves.

Demography

Most students are middle-aged, middle-class, and married. But not all! There are only few ethnic minority students, although some STETS students will have had experience of living and working in other cultures and in multi-racial areas of Britain; students are drawn from an area stretching from East Somerset to East Sussex and from the M4 Corridor to the English Channel, also including the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands and parts of London; few live in big cities; most live in suburbia, small towns or rural contexts; most are in full-time work, juggling the demands of their employer with those of the STETS course, their family, their church and their leisure needs; some are in highly skilled and demanding professional jobs, in some cases near the top of their professions; some are in manual, blue collar jobs; some are retired or unwaged.

Previous educational experience

Some students have higher education qualifications, including doctorates; others may be later developers, with minimal experience of formal education. Some will have had experience of distance learning; others will only be familiar with more traditional modes of learning. Some will already be proficient at essay writing; others, including science graduates, may have had little previous experience of essay writing or that experience may have gone a little rusty. Some will already have a substantial theological base, for instance by virtue of lay reader or local preacher training; others may simply have undertaken a Bishop's Certificate Course (rated at A level or below). Students enter at a level appropriate to their previous educational experience.

Previous church experience

Almost by definition, students will tend to have been fairly active in one or more spheres of Christian life and witness. Some, but not all, will already be lay preachers or readers. Some will be recent converts to Christianity; others will have longer-term experience of faith and church. Some will have experience of only one denomination or local church; others will have more extensive experience, both ecumenically and within their own denomination. The STETS course attracts students from a broad range of Christian traditions, from high church to low church, conservative to liberal, and, increasingly in post-modern society, all kinds of admixtures; most students are Anglican, but there are also Methodist students and occasionally students from other churches.

Motivation

STETS students are training for authorised ministries within their churches and must pass the course to proceed into these ministries. Each student will have been through a selection process; some may feel confident and affirmed after their selection; others may feel unsure of themselves and be somewhat relieved, and even surprised, that they have survived the selection process. Some may feel that they already have much of the knowledge and most of the skills necessary for effective ministry; others will be very conscious of their relative lack of skills and knowledge; most arrive at a more balanced sense of their own prior skills and knowledge as the course progresses.

Learning Style

All STETS students are adult learners. Research suggests that adult learners expect adult education programmes to:

• help them to become effective adult learners, especially if they are haunted by less benign memories of their school days
• take the richness of their prior experience into account
• treat them as responsible adults and not patronise them
• pay attention to their perspectives and views
• allow them freedom to pursue some of their own agenda and lines of thought
• help them see the relevance of what they are doing
• allow them to make mistakes, and to learn from them, in a safe environment.

Caveat

At first sight you might assume that the STETS student body is composed of married, prosperous, middle-class, middle-aged, fairly self-assured professionals, well-used to the world of education, with backgrounds of extensive Christian experience and church involvement, predominately of a low-middle church, evangelical and/or charismatic kind. On closer inspection, there turns out to be significant numbers of students who do not fit this picture: we also have single people, single-parents, widows and widowers, manual workers, inner-urban dwellers, educational late developers, recent converts, liberals, anglo-catholics, Forward in Faith members… We ask you to try to take account of some of this diversity in your tutoring.

 

 

STETS is an Associated Institution of the University of Surrey

The Southern Theological Education and Training Scheme - www.stets.ac.uk