Religious education

About: Religious education is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9554 publications have been published within this topic receiving 65331 citations. The topic is also known as: faith-based education & RE.

Religion, politics and gender in the context of nation-state formation: the case of Serbia.

Abstract: This article argues that nationalism has connected religion with secular politics in Serbia but that their rapprochement has been a gradual process. In order to demonstrate the transition from a limited influence of religion on politics to a much tighter relationship between the two, this article discusses the abortion legislation reform and the introduction of religious education in public schools, respectively. It argues that, while illustrative of different types of connection between religion and politics, these two issues had similar implications for gender equality-they produced discourses that recreated and justified patriarchal social norms. After religion gained access to public institutions, its (patriarchal) discourses on gender were considerably empowered. The article points to some tangible evidence of a re-traditionalisation and re-patriarchalisation of gender roles within the domestic realm in Serbia.

Catechesis and Religious Education in Canadian Catholic Schools

Abstract: A key concept in contemporary Catholic educational discourse makes a distinction between religious education and catechesis. This distinction is based on the assumptions of faith commitment on the part of catechesis and the focus on cognitive outcomes on the part of religious education. Many official documents on Canadian Catholic school education, however, reflect an understanding that closely associated catechesis with religious education or fail to sufficiently distinguish between the two. The article argues that changes in contemporary culture make catechetical models of religious education problematic and that Catholic schools in Canada would be well served by an approach that emphasizes the educational goals of religious education. This is not to say that catechesis has no place in religious education but this is best achieved by making use of cognitive and effective outcomes in lesson planning and realizing that the school as a whole has many opportunities to foster catechesis.

The problem with faith schools: A reply to my critics

Abstract: Geoffrey Short, Harvey Siegel and Douglas Groothuis have, in previous issues, advanced a number of objections to my recent paper (Vol. 1(1)) arguing for the abolition of faith schools. Here I attem...

From safe spaces to communities of disagreement

Abstract: The idea of the classroom as a ‘safe space’ has been popular in education for at least two decades. More recently, the term has also been used by religious education scholars not least in the wake ...

Piaget's Semi-Clinical Interview and the Study of Spontaneous Religion

Abstract: FOR research purposes it is convenient to distinguish between the spontaneous and the acquired religion of the child. The child's spontaneous religion consists of all those ideas and beliefs that he has constructed in his attempts to interpret religious terms and practices that are beyond his level of comprehension. For example, upon hearing that God was everywhere, a boy refused to occupy his favorite chair for fear of "sitting on God" and thus revealed his spontaneous conception of God's omnipresence. In contrast to these spontaneous mental constructions there are many religious ideas and beliefs that the child acquires directly from adults either through imitation or through instruction. A child's recitation of the standard definition of theological terms or of particular prayers would thus reflect acquired rather than spontaneous religion. It is fair to say that by far the majority of research on religious development has concerned itself with acquired rather than with spontaneous religion. For example, in many of the studies dealing with the God conception (Barnes, 1892; Tanner, 1906; Bose, 1929; MacLean, 1930; Mathias, 1943) questionnaires were employed which either asked children to choose among standard conceptions of the Deity or required them to complete sentences which strongly suggested the standard conceptions (e. g., "God, where is he?"). While such studies of acquired religion are of value for assessing the degree to which children profit from religious education, they do not reveal the full nature of religious development. Indeed, they can be misleading I In all of the studies mentioned above none of the investigators noted any marked age differences in the God concept even when a considerable age span (4-14) was sampled in the study. Yet, developmental psychology has repeatedly shown (Reichard et. al., 1944; Welch & Long, 1940, a, b, c; Piaget, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1952) that children's spontaneous conceptions follow a regular sequence from concrete to abstract conceptualization between early (4-6) and late childhood (10-12). This is not to say that results from the traditional questionnaire studies of religious development are wrong but only that the acquired religion revealed by these results does not follow the same developmental course as spontaneous religion. Since even the young child can memorize definitions of religious terms, it is not surprising that when children are tested on these definitions the young children do about as well as the older children. If, on the other hand, the understanding of these definitions were to be evaluated, it is likely that significant age differences would be found because the understandings would reflect the child's spontaneous and not his acquired ideas. Only the child's spontaneous ideas follow the sequence from the concrete to the abstract that we have come to expect in developmental studies of concept formation. As yet, however, we have little informa-