Catechesis and Religious Education in Canadian Catholic Schools

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.     

Navigating Between National Religious/Confessional Ideology and Interreligiosity: The Case of Greek-Cypriot Teachers in Religious Education

This article examines what resources religious education teachers draw upon, in what ways, and under what conditions, to navigate between national religious/confessional ideology and interreligious values in education. The article is based on a year-long ethnographic research project on religious education in Greek-Cypriot schools. It shows the importance of teachers’ personal and professional biography, political affiliations, religiosity, the sociopolitical context of schools, and the wider society of Cyprus.     

Religiosity and Education: The Views of Greek Student Teachers on the Religious Education Course

The correlation of student teachers’ religiosity with their views on the religious education course that they are called on to teach in Greek public schools is the subject treated in the present survey. The five main features of religiosity, that is, (1) religious faith, (2) religious knowledge, (3) religious experience, (4) participation in a religious group or community, and (5) daily practice and conduct, were assessed for 1009 student teachers. With the help of data processing and cluster analysis, a causal relationship was found between their religiosity and their views on religious education.     

民办高校学生宗教信仰及宗教观教育现状调查——以上海民办高校为例

民办高校学生已成为大学生群体的重要组成部分。调查显示,上海地区的民办高校学生中信教人数不多,且多数信教学生能够过正常的宗教生活,但少数信教学生也有在校园传教的冲动;未信教学生有较深厚的宗教意识,对宗教保持较高的兴趣度。学生对当前民办高校宗教观教育的满意度较低;多数教师缺乏应有的宗教知识和宗教政策观念、法律意识,民办高校宗教观教育能力有待提高。     

Religious Tolerance and Understanding in the French Education System

This research is based on an interview and survey-based case study of an Islamic lycée, a Catholic lycée, and two public lycées in the Ile-de-France region of France. The study investigated whether students in private schools receiving some form of education about religion tend to be more tolerant and demonstrate more religious understanding than students in public schools receiving little to none. The results showed that tolerance and understanding were not necessarily codependent and that a number of other factors seem to have a similarly significant impact on student religious tolerance and understanding as receiving education about religion.     

Beyond the Bullet Points: Teaching the Bible in Norwegian Upper Secondary Religious Education

Abstract

This qualitative study examines semi-structured interviews with four Norwegian teachers to explore how they teach biblical texts in upper secondary religious education (RE). The theoretical framework combines one model from biblical hermeneutics with one from RE. The former differentiates between the worlds behind, in, and in front of the biblical text, the latter between the universal, common religious, and religion-specific dimensions of religious narratives. Chief findings: All teachers utilize examples from the reception history of the biblical texts; they thus extend Ricoeur’s notion of the world in front of the text. The common religious aspects of biblical texts are mostly overlooked.     

Finding a Golden Mean in Education Policy: Centering Religious and Public Schools

The separation between Church and State, private and public education, is blurring, and coming together, as the government gives families vouchers to attend private and religious schools. Religious groups are starting and supporting their own charter schools, and local jurisdictions (cities and counties) are providing free transportation and food services to children attending private schools. What emerges, and is the focus of this analysis, is the new “middle ground,” a “golden mean,” by which public schools learn diversity and choice while private/religious schools are helped by public programs and funds. The oldest, perhaps, was Lyndon Johnson's compromise with the Catholics to get Title 1 passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sends public school teachers into private schools to help children in need. This study examines the emergence of a middle group in public–private education, and how the policies are working and what's changing. It argues that the child is the center of education, and government and private agencies are changing and should come together to serve the clients, the children.     

民办高校马克思主义宗教观教育的实践与反思

加强民办高校马克思主义宗教观教育,是民办高校思想政治教育的重要任务,是落实我国相关宗教政策法规的重要措施,是民办高校防范宗教渗透和促进学生健康成长的重要途径。在调研基础上,从加强师资培训、完善思政课教学、开设宗教学类选修课、拓展素质教育渠道、开展咨询答疑活动等方面对民办高校宗教观教育实践进行了探索。在实践探索中发现,各方面的支持和协作、思政课教学和学生管理工作的完善、宗教学类选修课的开设、丰富多样的校园文化生活等,是推动宗教观教育实践顺利开展的积极因素;与专业课教师之间缺乏必要的沟通、人文素质类师资力量匮乏、防范和抵御宗教渗透措施的缺失等是民办高校宗教观教育面临的重要挑战。     

A Framework for Religious Education

Religious education is not compulsory for pupils in special schools and its curriculum content is not laid down in the National Curriculum but Erica Brown believes that the spiritual and religious development of all pupils with special educational needs must be encouraged. She is director of special educational needs, The National Society, Church House, Westminster, responsible for in-service training for church schools in England and Wales, and editor of RESPECT, a bi-annual journal for teachers of RE to pupils with special educational needs.     

A Year of Week Day Religious Education in Wichita

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of the relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretative comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract number is Volume 28, Numbers 7‐8, July‐August, 1954     

马克思主义宗教观教育的新视角

马克思主义宗教观教育是马克思主义信仰教育的重要组成部分。当代马克思主义宗教观教育的重点是马克思主义宗教理论的普及。同时,要通过马克思主义宗教观教育,彰显中华文化,注重精神信念的塑造,实现马克思主义宗教观教育的与时俱进。     

Religious experience as an aim of religious education

This article presents a model for religious education based on three central elements. First, it is argued that religious experience, or direct experience of the Divine, is an essential part of a full religious life, that religious experience is based in, enabled by and examined against, the body of knowledge in a given religion, and that religious experience is itself a form of knowing. Second, it is suggested that there be three sets of aims in religious education curriculum: knowledge aims, moral value aims and spiritual aims, the last of which encompasses religious experience, which religious education should aim to encourage and facilitate among students. Third, the teacher is presented as the central factor in such facilitation, and the pedagogical and personal characteristics of this ideal teacher are described.     

Spiritual Development in Public and Religious Schools: A Case Study

This article addresses teachers' understanding of spiritual development in public and religious schools in Boston and Chicago. It examines how teachers define spiritual development in different educational contexts and looks at the way they relate spirituality to a number of factors including community, identity, and character. The data from the research indicates that teachers understood spiritual development within the specific environment of their school but that they all located the need for spirituality within education as part of the reaction against the perceived negative side effects of modern society.     

Moral and Religious Education for Nigeria

Abstract

The paper considers moral and religious education programmes appropriate for Nigeria. Starting with a brief analysis of the current crisis in moral, spiritual and political beliefs, the paper progresses by analysing traditional Nigerian education and the approach to moral education which it advocated. It then analyses the epistemological underpinnings of traditional moral education as well as the social institutions supporting it. A brief section outlining certain shortcomings in traditional education follows. This is then followed by a consideration of contemporary approaches to both moral and religious education by focussing on the question of the possible independence of moral from religious education. Having agreed with certain writers that the two are independent, the paper concludes with a sub‐section on the aims of moral education as a distinct activity.     

Toward the Implementation of a Multifaith Approach in Religious Education: A Phenomenological Guide

This study explores phenomenology of religion as a potential guide for the implementation of a multifaith religious education curriculum in Zimbabwe. The study relies on document analysis, in particular the 1999 Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training report, the Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education (2015–2022), and literature on multifaith religious education and phenomenology of religion. While these documents recommend the adoption of a multifaith approach in religious education, they are silent on the methodological framework. As such, I posit that principles of phenomenology of religion are a potential guiding framework for teachers to effectively engage multifaith syllabi.     

Religious education in Syria: unity and difference

This article discusses the almost identical syllabuses of the Christian and Muslim religious education programmes of the Syrian Arab Republic. Content analysis of the students’ textbooks and teachers’ guides (in Arabic) reveals common themes of citizenship education and national unity. Classroom observations in Damascus also highlight how Christian and Muslim teachers have similar ways of teaching religion. Finally, the article describes how each programme aims to unite, in its own way, all the Christians of Syria as well as the Muslims. It becomes evident that the Syrian religious education programmes strike a balance between the religious autonomy of the faith communities and the need for national unity.     

Shaking Religious Education: A New Look At The Literature

This article offers an analysis of religious education practice through the literature that informs it. It engages Derrida's critique of the “metaphysics of presence” (1982a) to develop a theoretical framework for a new look at the ways in which different approaches to religious education represent religion and racial difference. The article specifically examines literature that has impacted mainstream Christian and “secular” religious education in South Australia from the 1970s until today. The article concludes by proposing a new approach to racial, cultural, and religious difference in religious education—one that begins to understand religious education's engagement with Others in terms of ethical questions, deliberation, and a radical openness to what is unforeseeable. It argues for the need for religious educators to begin to actively and deliberatively engage with “who” and “what” has traditionally been absent from multireligious approaches to religious education.     

Religious Education, Religious Literacy and Common Schooling: a Philosophy and History of Skewed Reflection

In recent times, questions of religious education—about the place and significance of knowledge and understanding of religious belief and practice in the general educational development of children and young people—seem to have been largely overshadowed or overtaken by controversies concerning the relative merits and shortcomings of common and faith schools. However, in as much as such controversies have also turned upon questions of the relative merits of so-called confessional and non-confessional conceptions of religious education, they have mostly served to obscure the inadequacies of both these approaches to religious education. The present paper maintains that the real question of religious education—as a key element in the educational formation of all children—is that of how the great religious narratives of diverse cultural inheritance might be meaningfully understood and taught in a broadly liberal educational spirit. To this end, it is argued that a form of religious literacy—avoiding the errors of both confessional and non-confessional approaches—can and should be promoted in common schools as not just compatible with but indispensable to liberal education.     

Religious education legislation in an atheist state: towards a typology and policy analysis for contemporary China

ABSTRACT

The rule of law presents a new path for understanding and handling religious affairs in contemporary China. The field of religious education is no exception and current legislation has to be improved so that China’s religious education can be further promoted. This research examines the legislation and legislative regulations governing China’s diversified and dynamic religious education, which includes professional religious studies, religious education embedded in ethnic education, missionary religious education, religious education included in general education, and education on religious policies and regulations. It argues that how to understand and implement the principle of separation of education and religion stands out as the core issue, as China requires a more dialectical and pluralistic religious education.