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.

The pragmatics of reading prayers: Learning the Act of Contrition in Spanish-based religious education classes (doctrina)

Abstract: In this article I investigate the convergence of a number of linguistic, interactional, and textual resources employed in religious reading activities in Spanish-based Catholic religious instruction (doctrina) for school-age Mexican immigrant children. I examine the use of these resources through an analysis of the reading and memorization of the Act of Contrition (AOC), a prayer said during the religious ritual that involves the confession and absolution of sins. I discuss examples of a classroom reading activity that centers on the interactions of four female students and their teacher as they read the AOC. The analysis of their interactions illustrates the ways in which their collaborative reading engages a ritualization process that focuses and constructs text as sacred. The reading activity supported this ritualization process through (i) parallel reframing and interpretation of the words being read and (ii) verbalizations of cognitive activity related to ways of reading text. I also discuss how the activities of ritualization socialize attention to both text and other participants in the activity. Descriptions of doctrina instruction and the origins of the AOC are also provided.

Against Spiritual Education.

Abstract: Spiritual education is only possible within specific religious traditions. In the context of state schools it is a contradiction in terms; and we should beware the political ambition to extend it into that context. Spiritual awareness is a sensitivity to sheer contingency inappropriate to secular institutionalisation. The adequacy of equating spirituality with a sense of the transcendent, as argued recently by David Can, is questioned. This equation marries the spiritual to the rationally knowable and to a concept of ‘a spirit’, elisions which each dictate too tendentious an account of spirituality to justify spiritual education. Spiritual awareness of contingency concerns radically general aspects of human existence. Consideration of the mediation of experience through language supports the claim that spirituality is as much concerned with immanence as transcendence; and that awareness of contingency is the more fundamental issue. The sacrifice and intensity which can attend heightened exercises...

From Confessional to Cultural: Religious Education in the Schools of Québec

Abstract: Quebec has had a unique history in North America regarding religious instruction in public schools. To understand Quebec's new Ethics and Religious Culture Program, it is important to have an appreciation of some of the major historical events and contexts that led to the program. This article presents the history of Quebec religious instruction from its roots in New France to the present day. It highlights the key elements of the evolution from a confessional religious program to an ethics and religious culture program that is now a requirement for all students.

Materials Used to Teach about World Religions in Schools in England: A Summary

Abstract: Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit researchers wrote a report on a large scale study for the UK Government's Department for Children, Schools and Families published in January on the internet. Twenty-nine researchers and reviewers were involved in this study, the first ever to focus on the use of materials used in religious education across England. In addition to reviews of numerous books, audio-visual materials, and websites by panels of specialist academics, faith group consultants, and professional experts, there were 20 case studies of different schools across England, including maintained and independent, primary and secondary, and faith-based and nonfaith-based schools, plus a quantitative survey of schools of all types.

Talking to children about death

Abstract: This short paper considers a response to requests from schools to help them when working with children who have been bereaved. It sets out a consideration of a more systematic way of providing teachers with a context in which they might address questions about death and how they might do so in a way that considers death as an event in which we are all involved and not one needing specialist intervention. The method outlined suggests that death can be incorporated across the British school curriculum into every subject already being taught and does not need to be either a specialist area, part of religious education or to be left to personal, social and health education. A small survey with children is included to illustrate children's own attitudes towards teaching death in schools.