CBTE Must Prove Learning Without Policing Text

A learner can now submit a fluent sermon, theological reflection, counselling plan, policy, lesson or ministry proposal that reveals very little about what the learner actually understands or can do. Generative artificial intelligence can improve language, organise ideas and support learning. It can also produce convincing work without the learner possessing the judgement represented on the page.

The wrong response is to turn theological education into a police operation centred on suspicious prose, hidden surveillance and probabilistic detector scores. Those methods may produce signals for inquiry, but they do not establish who owns the reasoning, whether a competency has been demonstrated or whether a learner intentionally misrepresented assistance.

Competency-Based Theological Education has a better starting point: certify what learners can demonstrate. CBTE means Competency-Based Theological Education and remains distinct from Kenya's occupational Competency-Based Education and Training, or CBET. The focus here is contextual, mentored formation in Bible colleges and church communities. CBTE also operates in higher education, as the ICETE standards make clear.

The challenge is therefore not to make every assessment AI-free. It is to design evidence that shows whether a learner can interpret, judge, act, explain, receive correction and remain responsible—with or without appropriate technological assistance.

On 28 September 2026, UNESCO's Institute for Information Technologies in Education released an analytical report examining 36 national, institutional and academic frameworks for teachers' AI competence. The…