Assessing student attitude toward Christianity in Church in Wales primary schools: does aided status make a difference?

Abstract

As a consequence of the 1944 Education Act church schools were given the choice of opting for voluntary controlled status or for voluntary aided status. In voluntary aided status the Church had more control but carried greater costs. Within England and Wales this distinction is still maintained. This study measures the attitude toward Christianity of 4581 year 4, 5 and 6 students (8- to 11-years of age) attending 87 Church in Wales primary schools, and compares the responses of 1678 students attending controlled schools with the responses of 2903 students attending aided schools. After controlling for sex, age and frequency of church attendance, voluntary aided status is associated with a more positive attitude toward Christianity. In other words, aided status does make a difference to the attitudinal dimension of students’ religiosity.     

The Inclusion of Intentional Ethos Enablers in Electronic Distance Learning Opportunities of Christian Institutions

Abstract

Communicating the Christian ethos of Christian institutions constitutes a significant portion of the effort and monies of these institutions. Included in the purview of ethos enablers are faculty input and advising, student services, required chapel/worship, ministry formation/field experiences, admissions procedures, and opportunities for students to interact with one another in informal settings. Each of these is included in the core functioning of campus-based Christian institutions. As these institutions move more and more to providing distance learning opportunities, it is questioned if equal importance is being given to these ethos enablers in interactions with distance learners. The purpose of this study is to describe what is being done and how effective selected Christian institutions perceive themselves to be in including intentional ethos enablers in their distance learning opportunities.     

International schools’ leadership and Christianity

ABSTRACT

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a secular educational franchise, educating the globally advantaged and potential future leaders. Drawing on Bourdieu, this article involves original interpretivist research, reviewing data surrounding the international IB school and its educational leadership. It presents findings pertinent to the remarkable pervasiveness of Christianity and Christian values in the orientation of IB directors in a Western European context.

IB directors foreground Christianity in their make-up. In the fluid global market-place of IB schools, consistency is rare, and highly valued. Through Bourdieu, IB directors emerge as islands, with relative freedom from the State. They lead a secular school, with an implicit Christian orientation. The IB purposefully pluralises the culture of the IB experience through the IB learner Profile (IBLP). In the main, IB school leadership rejects the operational consistency of the IBLP and embraces pluralism through the consistency of Christianity.

The international school is an incubator for Anglo Christian values providing cultural laundering, ontologically tied to the imperial gaze in this globalised neo-liberal schooling context: the international gaze.     

Christian Contributions to Moral Education

Abstract

Moral Education theory commonly attacks religion‐based morality as authoritarian and wants to divorce ME from RE. Three significant Christian documents, the Fourth R (the Durham Report on RE), Teaching Christian Ethics and The Child in the Church are used to support the claims that the relationship between Christianity and Ethics is more subtle, and that Christians can help young people consider issues in moral education in a balanced way and thus arrive at their own conclusions. A study of Christianity has significant contributions to make to moral education.     

Attitude toward Christianity among secondary school pupils in Northern Ireland: shifts in denominational differences

Background Northern Ireland is a province that remains deeply divided between Protestants and Catholics and maintains a segregated system of schools.

Purpose The research builds on a series of studies conducted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to monitor the attitude toward Christianity of males and females educated in Protestant and Catholic schools.

Sample A sample of 2359 16- to 18-year-old pupils attending Catholic and Protestant schools in Northern Ireland.

Design and methods A random sample of seven Protestant and nine Catholic schools invited all pupils attending their lower and upper sixth-form classes to participate in the survey and to complete the Francis scale of attitude toward Christianity.

Results The data demonstrate that, while males attending Catholic schools maintained a more positive attitude towards Christianity than males attending Protestant schools, females attending Catholic schools reported a less positive attitude toward Christianity than females attending Protestant schools. These findings are compared with studies conducted during the 1970s and 1980s when both males and females attending Catholic schools recorded a more positive attitude toward Christianity than their peers attending Protestant schools.

Conclusions Repeated cross-sectional studies of this nature help to profile the changing religious climate of Northern Ireland.     

‘Marching at the Speed of the Slowest Man’: The Facilitation and Regulation of Student Autonomy in a Pluralist Jewish Day School

ABSTRACT

Faith schools are often perceived as restricting students’ autonomy through inculcating a single religious ideology and compelling participation in collective worship. Based on interviews and focus groups with parents, students and senior staff, this article investigates how England’s one pluralist Jewish secondary school has, in contrast, attempted to accommodate various forms of Jewish practice and facilitate students’ agency to determine their Jewish identities as desired. It reveals that students enjoy opportunities to actively negotiate Judaism, but that their autonomy is not without limits, and issues inherent to pluralism exist in executing an ethos accommodative of diverse, personalized expressions of Jewishness.     

School bullying in Korea and christian educational approach

The central purpose of this study is to examine approaches for dealing with the problem of bullying (wangtta in Korean) in schools from the Christian educational perspective. There has been much development in both research and practice in the 1990s and 2000s relating to bullying in Korean schools. Most Korean research on bullying, however, has almost exclusively focussed on verification of the facts that bullying or peer rejection is a widespread phenomenon in schools. This study, however, is mainly concerned with how to tackle effectively the bullying problem on the basis of Christian educational philosophy. To do this, this paper suggests a four stage approach to dealing with bullying: namely, clarifying the Christian school ethos, leading to determine the school’s bullying policy. With the bullying policy, school anti-bullying programs could be developed in order to create a bullyingfree school environment.     

Drama in Education: An Annotated List of Selected Works

The present study aimed to examine Jewish, Arab (Christian and Muslims), and Druze teacher trainees' orientations toward teaching-learning processes in relation to their cultural background. The parameter used for characterizing culture comprised the continuum of individualism-collectivism. As a generalization, Jews were located at the individualistic end of the continuum, Muslim Arabs at its collectivistic end, and Christian Arabs and Druze in between them. Data were collected via a questionnaire. Teacher trainees' responses revealed differences in orientation toward teaching-learning processes in accordance with culture, mainly contributed by the Jewish and Muslim students.     

论近代来华传教士的通识教育思想

近代来华传教士提倡通识教育，主张人的灵、智、体应当全面，其主旨在于培养教会学生的基督化人格，使学生皈依基督教。这种教育思想在当时之所以能得到部分传教士的认同，除了受国际教育大趋势的影响外，与传教士本人的神学观念以及当时中国教会学校所面临的教育环境也有一定关系。     

Whose confession? Which tradition? (A preliminary critique of Penny Thompson, 2004)

What does Penny Thompson really want? Reading her article in BJRE 26 (1) proved a baffling experience: it clearly wanted to say something, and to say it passionately, yet signally failed to do so. It fails largely because it lacks an argument; there seems also to be conceptual muddle at its heart. A fuller critique will need to attend to Thompson’s reading of religious education’s history, particularly to her use of evidence—but that is a story for another night. Consequently, this brief critique has at its core four questions to elicit clarity where at present there is none: First, does Penny Thompson want so to revision religious education in community schools that she and other aspirants to ‘Christian confessional religious education’ may freely work to convert young people to ‘Christianity’ and to nurture them in a Christian tradition? Second, in what sense, or senses, does Thompson want readers to understand her phrase, ‘the truth of the Christian faith?’ Third, in whose confession and in which tradition does Thompson want this Christian confessional religious education to be rooted? Fourth, is Penny Thompson willing to allow Christian teachers to present alternative understandings of Christianity, critical of her (implied) view? These questions are preceded by reflection on the form of her article’s argument and on its use of ‘confess’ and its cognates.     

接受与背离：“五四”一代人与基督教

中国现代作家、现代知识分子与基督教有千丝万缕的关系,他们在写作与言论中吸收了大量的基督教文化、思想资源,但真正信任基督教或理解基督教教义的却为数甚少。中国传统的世俗化的政治化的宗教观、“五四”时期的“反传统”、“反殖民”情绪、实用理性主义、政治民族主义、马克思主义的传播等因素,使“五四”一代人对基督教从接受转向背离。     

Christian Higher Education in a Changing Context: Shifting From Pillars to Practices

ABSTRACT

The process of global modernization has reached a new phase. In many parts of the world, societies have become so complex that the logic that characterized first modernity no longer works. Simultaneously, societies are confronted by huge and complex side effects of modern rationality, such as climate change, migration influx, global inequality, and waning confidence in the nation-state. Consequently, we are entering an age of reflexive modernity. In our view, this new social configuration has important consequences for what Christian higher education can contribute to the education of new professionals. In this article, we will reflect on the way in which three collaborating Christian universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands are searching for answers on the challenges of our time. We propose, firstly, that they should give more attention to the relational formation of professionals than before. These professionals have to bridge the gap between professional and client, system and lifeworld, professionalism and personality, and professionalism and spirituality. Secondly, the professionals trained at Christian institutions of higher education should develop a strong professional ethos that allows them to act swiftly and efficiently in complex situations. In order to develop such an ethos, moral traditions are indispensable. Although the new social configuration does not seem to be very favorable for Christian higher education, on closer inspection it brings new opportunities.     

Attitudes towards science and views of nature of science among elementary school students in terms of gender,cultural background and grade level variables

Background: There is a growing interest in investigating attitudes towards science and views of Nature of Science among elementary grade students in terms of gender, cultural backgrounds, and grade level variables.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes toward science and views of Nature of Science among Spanish students, Spanish students of gypsy ethnicity and second-generation Spanish students with east-European heritage, and to determine if their attitudes are related to their views of Nature of Science.

Sample: Data for this study was gathered from seven elementary schools in Spain, forming a convenience sample of 149 students enrolled from 2nd to 5th grade.

Design and Methods: The Nature of Science Instrument (NOSI) and an adaptation of the Test of Science Related Attitudes scale (TOSRA) were used. Follow-up structured interviews were performed with 15 participants.

Results: Regarding gender, boys had better attitudes toward Science than girls but more naïve views of the empirical Nature of Science. In relation to cultural background, second generation Spanish students with east-European heritage reported significantly better attitudes toward Science than Spanish students and Spanish students of gypsy ethnicity. No differences in Nature of Science views were found. Concerning grade level, third graders had more positive attitudes toward Science than fifth and sixth graders and more informed views of the tentative Nature of Science. Finally, no relation between Nature of Science views and attitudes towards Science were identified.

Conclusion: This study stress the need to address the steady decline in positive attitude toward Science and to improve students’ views of Nature of Science from early elementary grades, and to use gender and culturally inclusive science teaching strategies.     

English as a Site of Evangelical Contact: A Critical Ethnography of Missionary English Teaching between South and North Koreans

ABSTRACT

Drawing from a larger ethnography of North Korean young adults learning English in Christian educational programs in South Korea, this article explores the power relations between evangelicals and minority people and the political economy of missionary English teaching. This article follows Christian educational programs that provided various forms of resources—including English teaching—to North Korean young adults to examine how access to resources was regulated in relation to learner identity. Building on the sociolinguistic framework of political economy of language and emerging research on religion and second language learning, this study illustrates the integration of Christianity and English, and the intersection of religion, nationalism, and neoliberalism. The findings elucidate how English works as a secular resource in religious spaces, thus serving as a site of religious contact between people of divergent goals. Issues of professional ethics are also discussed.     

对民众在基督教世界构建中矛盾心理的理性思考——以1860-1898年鲁北乡村社会为例

传教士怀着极大的热忱和虔诚的信仰以大无畏的勇气只身来到鲁北的穷乡僻壤安置“十字架”,令他们始料不及的是,他们的宗教在这块土地上很难打开局面。民众一方面出于各种动机对传教士兴学、施医、赈灾的举动抱有好感,这给了基督教教士扎根乡村的信心;另一方面,又对基督教的征服性、政治性、排他性,乃至附于其上的异质文明采取冷淡、怀疑和斥拒的态度。对待基督教截然相反、前后迥异的行径就是鲁北乡土民众对基督教矛盾心理的一种折射。     

An Empirical Examination of the Warfare Metaphor with Respect to Pre-Service Elementary Teachers

Since its origination in the late nineteenth century, the warfare metaphor has been used to characterize the relationship between science and religion, especially orthodox Christianity. Though thoroughly discredited by historians of science, the ideological descendants of Thomas Huxley, who spoke of science in quasi-religious terms, have kept the warfare metaphor alive. On the other hand, there are substantial numbers of Christians who at least appear to oppose science given their high-profile opposition to the general theory of evolution. The research reported in this paper asked, “Does anti-science sentiment increase with increasing orthodox Christian belief?” Two validated, published instruments were used: The Thinking about Science Survey Instrument and the Christian Fundamentalist Belief Scale. The subjects for the study were 545 preservice elementary teachers. The analysis did not show that anti-science sentiment increases with increasing Christian belief. Subjects with strong Christian beliefs were found to be just as supportive of science, if not more so, than subjects with no Christian beliefs. The study concludes with a caution against projecting attitudes toward science “on the whole” based on attitudes specifically toward evolution when working with preservice elementary teachers. Such a projection could well be counterproductive. The study has implications for other modern countries having highly religious populations such as Turkey.     

Classification and Framing of the Curriculum in Evangelical Christian and Muslim Schools in England and The Netherlands

This article examines some of the ways that Muslim and evangelical Christian schools in England and The Netherlands deal with religious education. Various schools take different views about how aspects of religious belief should be taught and how Christian or Muslim belief should be related to the wider curriculum of the school. While some of the schools have attempted to integrate, for example, evangelical Christianity throughout the whole of the curriculum, others have been content to have the religious teaching as a separate component of the curriculum. This paper uses the work of Basil Bernstein to describe and understand the nature of the religious curriculum in these schools. Through a series of case studies of schools and curricula it examines the nature of the curricula and their possible effects on children.     

Understanding and Nourishing Christian Vocation to Higher Education in a Postcommunist Society

ABSTRACT

To understand the concept of Christian vocation within the context of higher education in a postcommunist society, reflection on its communist and postcommunist history is necessary. Thus, the authors first present an analysis of Eastern Europe's Marxist past, specifically focusing on the external and internal impact of that past on attitudes toward higher education of people living in a postcommunist society. Marxist statism, or the total dominance of the state over an individual, remains an external influence more than a quarter of a century since Eastern Europe's 1989 democratic revolution that reshaped much of the continent. In considering the topic of vocation within the context of Eastern Europe, the ethos that works inwardly on members of postcommunist societies must be noted: suspicion leading to self-doubt, passivity kept alive by bureaucratization, and strict compartmentalization of knowledge into science versus religion. In the second part of the article, the authors describe the concept of Christian vocation in a postcommunist society, as understood by contemporary younger and older generations based on data from two recent qualitative investigations. These studies allowed for comparison between the generational views and documented important attitudinal changes. The third section concludes by providing examples of good practices for nurturing an understanding of Christian vocation in higher education in a postcommunist context. Although the effectiveness of some of these practices has been documented over time, most are still in their infancy. Despite the new democratic political system, Christians need to reconsider the former dichotomies (i.e., state–church, public–private, scientific–religious) and become more actively involved in previously inaccessible and challenging areas of influential work such as teaching and managerial positions in higher education institutions. It should be noted that the term vocation, as used in languages of postcommunist European countries has several meanings such as invitation, calling, occupation, or profession; accordingly, the authors use the terms vocation and calling interchangeably in this article.     

Moral Voices of Women and Men in the Christian Liberal Arts College: Links between views of self and views of God

Views of self (using Gilligan's paradigm) and of the Christian God (using a similar, newly-developed paradigm) were explored in 44 first-year and senior Christian college students. Men aligned with a self-ethic of justice; women, more often with justice than predicted. Moral voice thus appears contextually dependent, contrary to Gilligan's earlier predictions. Senior students integrated both views of self, but not both views of God, more often than first-year students. This suggests that the Christian liberal arts context nurtures integrated and complex views of the self, but authoritative views of God. All but one student described God as authoritative; most did not see God as relational. This preference for authoritative views of God perhaps shaped the heavy justice self-ethic. Consistent with earlier findings, justice views of the self were generally elicited by impersonal dilemmas; authoritative views of God, in contrast, were equally associated with both impersonal and personal dilemmas.     

基督教会在沂蒙兴办近代教育的历史分析

基督教会传教士为了传播基督教，在沂蒙创办了大量的教会学校。这些学校遍布沂州府所属各县，采用西方近代教育体制，招收教徒和非教徒子女授学，宗教是必修重点学科，此外开数，理化，外语，体育，实验等课程。初办时，少收或不收任何费用，后收费越来越多。教会粉学属于文化侵略的范畴，一些沂蒙人因到教会学校就读而信仰了基督教，很多教会学校的毕业生成了洋奴和帝国主义侵华的帮凶。但教会学校也扩大了西学在沂蒙的传播和西学对沂蒙的影响，培养了一批新式人才，客观上促进了沂蒙近代教育的发展。