Clinical Pastoral Education

Curriculum and Theory

Our Curriculum

Education for ministry at Scott & White is grounded on the belief that learning takes place in an action/reflection model as the student engages actual living human documents in his or her practice of ministry. In this setting, the student develops skills as a pastoral caregiver through engaging the human documents of patients, families and staff.

It is believed that pastoral and professional identity, as well as pastoral competency, is increased as students integrate their personal experience with theoretical materials. Thus, process learning undergirds the whole curriculum.

Learning emerges as students reflect upon themselves and their practices with peers and supervisor and as they are introduced to appropriate theoretical materials from theology, psychology and the behavioral sciences.

Included in the curriculum are clinical assignments which allow students to witness the effectiveness of ministry in real life situations. Also included are opportunities to reflect on their ministry through verbatim and didactic presentations, theological integration and/or roleplay seminar, peer group interaction, skills lab and evaluation by the supervisor.

Students bring much experience with them to CPE. We seek to create a learning environment based on respect for the learner, mutuality, clear expectations and a mutual covenant. The student’s own self-determined learning goals are the launching pad for the CPE experience.

Following the objectives of CPE (pastoral reflection, pastoral formation and pastoral competence) these goals provide a unique, individual focus for learning. As units come to an end, final evaluations bring closure but the learning process does not end.

It is our desire for students to gain an awareness of how they learn so as to be able to self-supervise their own process as they move into ministry positions.

Our Theory

The biblical expression of going out and coming in speaks of the personal act of relating. Going out, we face the world, its beauty, problems and anxieties. Coming in, we relate to the inner self and reflect on the self that dreams, fears, imagines and desires. All encounters are grounded as the acting and reflecting person which alternately attempts to preserve and construct more integrated relations on which to stand. Rollo May noted that the term “existence” coming from the root ex-sistere, means literally "to stand out, to emerge." Clinical Pastoral Education assists students to stand out, to emerge, to claim their own centered pastoral self.

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