Showing papers on "Religious education published in 1993"

The effective teaching of religious education

Abstract: The Effective Teaching of Religious Education provides an accessible yet intellectually rigorous resource for all those involved in the teaching of RE in schools today. Written with the needs of specialist and non-specialist teachers in mind, in both the primary and secondary sectors, it successfully integrates theory and practice, encouraging debate and reflection on a broad range of issues in what is often regarded as a complex and often controversial subject area. The second edition has been written with the collaboration of a new co-author, Penny Thompson and has been thoroughly updated, revised and extended to include: A new chapter on the place of Christianity in RE New material on the purpose of RE and on the relationship of RE to other subjects A new Appendix on tackling assessment and syllabus requirements A new companion website at www.pearsoned.co.uk/watson-thompson including an overview of the use of ICT in RE teaching, web links and practical resources for use in the classroom.

Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination, and Christian Nurture

Abstract: Thiessen calls for reconstruction of the Enlightenment ideal of liberal education from which the charge of indoctrination typically arises. He argues that liberal education necessarily builds on nurture and therefore needs to be more sensitive to the traditions into which a child is initiated. The ideals of autonomy, rationality, and critical openness - all closely related to the ideal of liberal education - need to be modified if they are to be both realistic and philosophically defensible. Once this is done it can be seen that confessional religious education without indoctrination is possible. Teaching for Commitment is an interdisciplinary study covering the fields of religion, philosophy, epistemology, ethics, and education. The very practical nature of the problem being examined, and Thiessen's straightforward and non-technical presentation, will be of interest to parochial and public school boards, teachers, and parents, as well as religious institutions, educationalists, and philosophers of education.

Religious Education in the Secondary School: Prospects for Religious Literacy

Abstract: Religious eduction in search of its soul perspectives on contemporary religious education towards a new agenda religious ambiguity and truth making sense of religion religion for citizenship the heart of religious education.

Demythologising the Missionaries: a reassessment of the functions and relationships of Christian missionary education under colonialism

Abstract: (1993). Demythologising the Missionaries: a reassessment of the functions and relationships of Christian missionary education under colonialism. Comparative Education: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 45-66.

Adult education and theological interpretations

Abstract: Opening with a debate about the nature of learning as a religious phenomenon, this book includes a collection of contributions based on the theme of the relationship between faith and knowledge.

Indicators of Commitment to the Church: A Longitudinal Study of Church-Affiliated Youth

Abstract: INTRODUCTION According to Wieting (1975), "A recurrent focus of social philosophy since Plato's Republic has been the threat posed by the possibility that the young might not adopt the essential wisdom and values of that society. . . . If a society is to continue its existence beyond one generation, the members must transmit what they consider to be necessary knowledge and values. The continuity of a social system by definition requires transmission between generations." Applying this to institutional religion, churches and other religious communities must be vitally concerned with retaining the children from member families--in other words, preventing youth dropout is a major consideration for any religious group that desires a future. In a major quantitative, ecumenical study of church disengagement and reentry, based on the 1978 Gallup survey of unchurched Americans, Roozen (1980) estimated that about 46% of Americans drop out of church participation at some time in their lives, with the peak occurring during the teenage years. Probable causes for the increase at this stage were lessening of parental influence as peer pressure and the emancipation process increased, plus the feeling that the church had little to offer that was relevant or interesting. Yet many teenagers remain committed to their childhood religion. In a study of 3,000 evangelical teenagers, Zuck and Getz (1968) found that religious values were of significance to 88% of them. Four out of five attended church every week, two out of three prayed daily, and six out of ten professed belief in key evangelical doctrines. What factors, then, predict retention or dropout? Dudley and Laurent (1989) found that among Wesleyan, United Methodist, and American Baptist young people, alienation from the church was best predicted by unpleasant experiences with the church, lack of involvement, uninteresting sermons, deficient devotional life, and religious restrictions on lifestyle. Among Catholics, Southern Baptists, and Methodists, Hoge and Petrillo (1978) found that church attendance and participation were most influenced by the attendance of parents, peer pressure, type of youth leader, and quality of religious education. In a study of over 33,000 college graduates, Caplovitz and Sherrow (1977) reported that disaffiliation was related to rebellion against the status quo, secularization, and achievement orientation. Dudley (1978) found that alienation from religion among a group of 400 Seventh-day Adventists in parochial schools was highly correlated with perceptions of the quality of their relationships with religious authority figures. The present paper is an attempt to refine our understanding of those factors which influence church retention or dropout by analyzing data from two years of a longitudinal study of Seventh-day Adventist teenagers. METHOD In 1987, the Seventh-day Adventist church in the United States and Canada began a ten-year study of youth retention and dropout. The aim of the project was to select a group of middle adolescents who were already members of the church and to survey them each year for ten years in order to determine the factors that were related to staying or leaving. The first step was to pick 695 churches by a stratified random sampling method so that they were geographically representative of all Adventist churches in North America. The clerks of these churches were then requested to send the names and addresses of all members who were 15 or 16 years of age. Clerks of 659 churches responded (95%), and a six-page questionnaire was mailed to each teenager. Usable instruments were received from 1,523 (64% response rate), and each year follow-up surveys have been mailed. The youth are distributed across the United States and Canada, roughly in the same proportion as the geographic distribution of the adult membership. Detailed findings for the first three years have been reported elsewhere (Dudley & Kangas, 1990; Dudley, 1991). …

Fundamentalist Education and Creation Science

Abstract: It is argued that creation science education, because of its conservatism, has become accepted as a quiet presence in Australian education. The authors demonstrate, via an examination of the social studies and science components of a creation science education program, how these programs are at odds with widely accepted views on education in Australia and do not comply with requirements for registration of non-government schools, as set out by the Australian Education Council. Moreover the wider issue of creation science has been pushed aside as ‘too hard’ by Australian educators. It is argued that there is evidence to question seriously this narrow fundamentalist education operating in some Australian schools.

Religious Pluralism and Religious Education

Abstract: When thinking of alternatives for denominational religious teaching, it always includes answering the question about the relating discipline. In this contribution, the question is which theological horizon justifies the established type of denominational teaching as practised in Germany, and which theological justifications for alternative concepts of teaching are involved. In addition, it is also necessary to investigate the actual importance of distinctions between types of teaching and explanatory contexts in practice, that is, in the minds of teachers.

Beyond liberal education : essays in honour of Paul H. Hirst

Abstract: Introduction 1.Good Teaching 2.Truth and Liberal Education Liberal Education and Vocational Preparation 3.Paul Hirst's Structure, or The Uses and Abuses of an Overworked Concept The Curriculum: The Timeless and the Timebound Curriculum and the Mirror of Knowledge 4.Moral and Religious Education: Hirst's Perception of Their Scope and Relationship 5.Wittgenstein's Speculative Aesthetics in its Ethical Context The Arts, Well-being and Education 6.Education, Knowledge and Practices

The place of religion in public education

Abstract: There is a legitimate place for genuine religious education within publicly supported schools in western pluralist democracies. The idea of the single common school is dead or dying in the densely populated parts of the western, English-speaking democracies. Once choice of school is conceded, then the religious school should be a central offering.

Gender and Religious Tradition: the role‐learning of British Hindu children

Abstract: Much of children's attitude to gender is developed in their home. For children from a Hindu background dharma (right conduct) involves all aspects of life. It includes family and ritual responsibilities and they are largely gender‐specific. This article is based on research among 8‐13 year‐old Hindu children of Punjabi and Gujarati origin in Coventry [2]. I contend that gender is significant in the religious involvement of both boys and girls. This article draws attention to areas of their experience as young British Hindus in which their gender is decisive and examines these in relation to the role expectations enunciated by the children. [1] An earlier version of this paper was prepared for presentation on the Gender Panel of the Sixteenth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religion, Rome, September, 1990. [2] The Hindu Nurture in Coventry Project and the Punjabi Hindu Nurture in Coventry Project, both parts of the Religious Education and Community Project, directed by...

Mishmash and its Effects upon Learning in the Primary School

Abstract: This paper reports and interprets the findings of four small‐scale and exploratory research projects conducted in response to charges that multi‐faith religious education is confusing, that it corrupts, dilutes and trivialises the faiths and that it compromises the inheritance of mainstream culture. Our enquiries were prompted by the Lords debates preceding the 1988 Act and by contemporary discussion in which the multi‐faith approach in religious education was viewed with some disfavour and even rejected as ‘mishmash’. Several speculative criticisms have been made which concern the effects of multi‐faith religious education upon children but little empirical evidence is available. The results of our enquiry are reported within their limits and suggestions are made for further research.

Scripture and Society in Modern Muslim Asia—A Symposium Introduction

Abstract: S ince the late nineteenth century, Muslim movements for religious and social reform have underscored the value of making scripture accessible to a broad public. Scholars and activists alike have urged ordinary Muslim men and women to study and follow the Qur'ān and the hadīth (the reports of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds), and to do so they have rendered these scriptural writings and commentaries on them into the vernaculars of Asia, Africa, and Europe. They have also framed a wide range of appeals—to study the sciences, to modernize society, to stage a revolution—in the language and format of scriptural commentary. Vernacular writings (and, more recently, audio and videocassettes) based on scripture provide the foundations of popular religious education (Shahrani 1991), figure prominently in political movements (Fischer 1980; Kepel 1985), and serve as guides for living for Muslims traveling outside their homelands (Kepel 1987). The modern period has seen an explosion in the range of languages, genres, and contexts in which Muslims have authoritatively deployed scripture.

Gender issues in religious education : a report 1

Abstract: 1. The author gratefully acknowledges information and assistance from the following: Professor Leslie Francis, Professor Ursula King, Ms Asphodel Long, Dr Peggy Morgan, Dr Eleanor Nesbitt, Dr Bernadette O'Keefe, Ms Ianthe Pratt, Dr Jill Robson, Mr Michael Shire and Rabbi Sheila Shulman.

Religion & the arts in education : dimensions of spirituality

Abstract: This volume examines the many aspects of the spiritual dimension of education, and the place of religious education within the arts curriculum. The various contributions offer practical advice for further exploration, and brainstorm the future of creative religious education.

Pedagogy and paradox : teaching interpretation in a religious community

Abstract: A qualitative, discourse analytic study of literate practices in a small religious community in a northern Australian city. The chapter documents how this community constructs religious reading and writing, affiliated ideologies and theologies, and how readers/hearers/learners are positions vis a vis the authority of sacred text.

Priorities In Religious Education

Abstract: A collection of articles which look at the future development of religious education in the light of the 1988 Education Reform Act and at how religious education should now develop in schools. It contains practical guidance for meetings and workshops and questions to stimulate further discussion.

Religious Education in the Primary School: Managing Diversity

Abstract: The companion volume to "Making a World of Difference", takes a classroom teaching approach to the management of difference in religious belief and background. The author questions the adequacy of dealing with plurality simply through the RE curriculum, and proposes a cross-curricular approach.

The religious formation of youth. Catholic youth movements in the Netherlands from 1900 to 1941

Abstract: Youth movements were a popular phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century. Various political parties and religious denominations faced with the question of how best to organize youth took up this model. Why did adults make this very choice? The author tries to answer this question by means of the history of three catholic youth movements for boys aged thirteen to eighteen in the Netherlands: the Catholic Scouts, the Young Guards and the Crusaders. These Catholic youth movements came into being rather late. Until the end of the 1920s, the educational style of youth movements had been considered to be incompatible with a solidly religious and moral education. There were not only objections against the autonomy and the absence of adult supervision, but also against the style and form of the youth movement. The Catholic authorities found it hard to imagine that education could also take place in another way than in the form of schoolish instruction, memorizing the Catechism and preaching the faith f...

Photographing worship: Ethnographic study of children's participation in acts of worship

Abstract: This article reports the uses of photography in the Religious Education and Community Project, Coventry, England. It shows how ethnographic fieldwork and the development of curriculum materials for religious education in Britain are being conducted as phases of an integrated process. The photographic record, it is argued, is intrinsic both to eliciting data from members of the communities under study and in the sensitizing and informing of both pupils and educators. Furthermore not only the photographs themselves but also the differing reactions of specific communities to the prospect of being photographed during worship need analysis and can provide insights of value to religious educators in understanding the relation of cultural norms and theological emphases. As an illustration the responses of Christians to the ethnographer's requests to photograph the rite of Holy Communion are considered.