Journal of Religious Education最新文献

Teacher quality is one of the most important factors influencing a student’s educational outcomes, yet scant research has examined teacher hiring and quality in Protestant Christian schools. In this qualitative work, we thematically analyze interviews about Christian schools’ teacher hiring practices with a group of 12 leaders from 10 member schools in the Association of Christian Schools International. We find that these 10 schools generally follow a standard hiring process. The qualifications they seek in teachers could be arranged into a pyramid, where the base—the most fundamental quality—is demonstration of authentic belief in Protestant Christian doctrines. After faith, school leaders desired teachers to demonstrate Christian virtue and to be a good “fit” for their school culture; at the tip of the pyramid is the category of professional and pedagogical skills. While there was some heterogeneity in the top three tiers among school leaders, all agreed on the importance of Christian school teachers having “a heart for Christ and a heart for kids.”

The personal formation of students is an important goal in Religious Education in secondary schools in the Netherlands. This article, which is based on the design research of my PhD dissertation, examines how a contemplative approach to reading stories can, according to Religious Education teachers, contribute to the personal formation of students. Thus, a teacher’s manual, based on the monastic tradition of Lectio Divina, was designed and tested for the Contemplative Reading of Biblical parables. What possibilities does this teacher’s manual for Contemplative Reading offer for creating space for the personal formation of students in daily teaching practice? How do the results of this intervention contribute to the theory of personal formation and the theory of contemplative practices in education? Cultivating a space for freedom—vacare—appears to be essential. Contemplative Reading can open this space of attention and listening in the classroom.

This study argues that religious education is uniquely positioned to resist and transcend contemporary dialectics of wonder that serve to diminish, commodify, or instrumentalize the place of wonder in society today. Wonder is traditionally characterized by a sense of importance that accompanies our encounters with mystery. In a world less comfortable with interiority and less willing to accept the sense of ignorance true wonder presupposes, the contemplative element of wonder has largely evaporated, to be replaced by a more fleeting (Schinkel in Stud Philos Educ 39(5):479–492, 2019, 481) and less challenging ‘curiosity’. Curiosity favours mastery over mystery; it elides the puzzlement or contemplation inherent in traditional understandings of wonder. In pedagogical settings, curiosity is increasingly advanced at a catalyst that motivates and directs the inquiry of the learner. However, educational literature continues to note a worrying absence of any kind of wonder in classrooms today (Jirout et al. in Front Psychol 13:875161, 2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875161). This study will suggest that the advancement of wonder as curiosity in education only reinforces the very sense of apathy it is designed to counteract in its students. If wonder is recast as curiosity—a ‘skill’ that leads reliably to the ‘right answer’—students will inevitably find quicker, more efficient means to arrive at the required information. Religious education is uniquely equipped to supplement inquisitive curiosity with a more contemplative wonder that eschews easy answers. In doing so, it would equip students to grapple with what modern society has become so adept at evading: the “stubborn there-ness” (Arendt in Medina J, Wood D (eds) Truth: engagements across philosophical traditions. Blackwell Publishing, London, 2005, p. 310) of mystery that characterizes the most meaningful questions of our existence.

Grounded on scholarly works this study examined the lived experiences of children in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church school through the lens of a child rights-based approach. Three articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) were chosen as an analytical framework. The review revealed that the vast majority of Yekolo Temari joined the EOC school with their own interest, but the practice left them deprived of the family environment. They needed the protection and care necessary for their well-being. This study recommends that the government of Ethiopia and all stakeholders enforce domestic laws that ensure the well-being of Yekolo Temari.

Joseph of Nazareth has a high profile among Catholics globally. His name adorns a multitude of schools, Catholic agencies, cities and towns and he is the patron of numerous causes in the Catholic tradition. This elevated position contrasts markedly with his profile in the Bible, where he is consistently silent when he appears in the narratives, and conspicuously absent in most New Testament accounts. In recent decades, reflections on Joseph’s place in the stories of Christian foundations and traditions about him have relied upon a careful reading of the historical Joseph. Pious traditions that emphasised his supplementary, supportive, and subordinate role in the Christian tradition are giving way to thoughtful examinations of the available evidence. Portraits of Joseph offer resources for contributing to the identity of Catholic schools and other agencies which count Joseph as a patron and mentor. This article traces contemporary scholarship on the biblical, historical, and modern conceptualisations of Joseph of Nazareth and explores implications for Catholic identity and religious education in Catholic schools.

In this article, the aim is twofold: firstly, to explore, through a systematic literature review, what discourses on religion may be identified in previous research that focuses on students’ perspectives, and secondly, to discuss this in relation to research concerning challenges and opportunities in Scandinavian religious education (RE) and classroom negotiations, which is presented as a background to and scientific landscape for the study. Seven discourses relating to students’ understanding of religion have been identified in the text sample from the systematic review, religion as: threatening, a relic, needing to be tolerated, truth claims, plastic, a source of existential curiosity, and security and comfort. The findings show how these discourses together constitute a broader repertoire of discourses on religion than can be found in the Scandinavian RE classroom research presented as a frame for the study, especially when taking into account current orders of discourse and dominance structures. As stressed by discourse theory and sociocultural perspectives on learning, having access to broad repertoires of discourses on religion provides a basis for more nuanced ways of thinking about religion. It is vital that teachers are aware of this and can challenge dominant discourses and broaden existing repertoires. An important step in such a direction is an awareness of discourses on religion, such as the seven presented here, which may potentially be present in the classroom, even in practices other than the ones these discourses emanated from.

The aim of this article is to examine patterns in Swedish children’s existential questions and worldviews in 2020 in relation to patterns from 1970 and 1987, but also to point towards a further discussion of importance, about possible RE responses to these findings. The material, children’s texts, comes both from studies conducted by Sven Hartman and colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s, and from new empirical studies. The children’s responses are collected according to the same method, sentence completion tasks, in both cases. Theoretically, the article is anchored in both the tradition of Swedish worldview studies and the new international interest in these perspectives for religious education. Existential questions and worldviews are seen as interdependent in human beings’ life interpretations, which are continuously developing and are both sociocultural and existential in nature. The empirical findings show a strong and increasing focus on relationships, but also a recurrent focus on achievements, which relates to school as context and community. In relation to these findings, the article stresses the importance of RE responses, and discusses concretely what such responses might advantageously include. Among other things, the importance is stressed of an RE that offers the student greater awareness of her life interpretations, and encourages her to develop broader repertoires of frameworks, through which the student might have a better chance to be the author of her own life, which is inevitably a collectively shared life.