Welcome!
I hope you will find this website helpful.
I am John Shortt, a teacher-educator and a speaker and writer on education from a Christian perspective.
I have set up this website to provide details of books, articles, websites and other resources (including some of my own writing) that may be of help to classroom teachers and others interested in teaching and learning.
I was born and brought up in a rural part of the Irish Republic. I came to a personal faith in Jesus Christ in my late teens while living in Dublin and working in the motor insurance industry. My aim in life is to be a follower of Him and to serve Him.
After a short period teaching in East Africa, I formally trained as a teacher at Wall Hall College, Watford and Churchill College, University of Cambridge in the early seventies. During that time, I developed a keen interest in Christian perspectives on education. I then worked as a teacher of Mathematics at secondary level in a grammar school in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for seventeen years (1974 - 1991). While doing this, I also studied part-time at the University of London Institute of Education for MA and PhD degrees in the philosophy of education.
In 1991, I became director of the Stapleford House Education Centre, a study centre near Nottingham run by the Association of Christian Teachers. I was the founding Director of the Charis Project, an initiative based there which produced classroom materials for the promotion of spiritual and moral development across a range of curriculum subjects. In 1997, the Stapleford Centre was formed as a charity separate from ACT but still in close relation with it and I worked there for a further three years. At this time also, the mainly UK-oriented journal 'Spectrum' (of which I was the editor) became the international ‘Journal of Education & Christian Belief’ and I have been one of its editors up to recently.
In 2000, I moved to become the Travelling Secretary for EurECA (European Educators' Christian Association) and I have worked among teachers across Europe and beyond since then. I am also Professorial Fellow in Christian Education at Liverpool Hope University and an adjunct professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I am married to Val (and she is still lovely, even after over 40 years of marriage to me!) and we have two grown-up sons (both of them great guys of whom we are very proud), a lovely daughter-in-law and two lovely grandsons. We live in the UK county of Bedfordshire.