Where are We? Critical Race Theory in Education 20 Years Later

This article explores the territory that has been covered since the publication of Ladson-Billings and Tate's 1995 article, “Toward a Critical Race Theory in Education.” We organize our review of the CRT literature is organized around what we are calling CRT “boundaries.” We identify six boundaries for CRT and education: 1) CRT in education argues that racial inequity in education is the logical outcome of a system of achievement presided on competition; 2) CRT in education examines the role of education policy and educational practices in the construction of racial inequity and the perpetuation of normative whiteness; 3) CRT in education rejects the dominant narrative about the inherent inferiority of people of color and the normative superiority of white people; 4) CRT in education rejects ahistoricism and examines the historical linkages between contemporary educational inequity and historical patterns of racial oppression; 5) CRT in education engages in intersectional analyses that recognize the ways that race is mediated by and interacts with other identity markers (i.e., gender, class, sexuality, linguistic background, and citizenship status); 6) CRT in education agitates and advocates for meaningful outcomes that redress racial inequity. CRT does not merely document disparities. We suggest that these core ideas provide a framework for analyzing the work that has been done in education in the past and a way to determine what might be left to do.     

The Free Schools “Riddle”: Between traditional social democratic,neo‐liberal and multicultural tenets

The question of what role free schools should perform in the Swedish educational system has been a contested subject between three ideological, theoretical, political and policy tenets. The first, “contribution to pedagogical diversity in a controlled school market” reflects a traditional social democratic view. The second, “contribution to a better education on a competitive school market” reflects a neo‐liberal approach. The third tenet, “contribution to the maintenance of groups' and individuals' cultural and religious identity” reflects a multicultural view insisting on the thesis that a family's cultural and religious identity should be a steering motive for the school choice. The aim of this article is to take a closer look at what the three tenets that constitute the “riddle” contain—including their claims, responses to critics, arguments and empirical evidence—and to discuss some of their practical impacts on the shaping of educational policy.     

A Forward Look in Religious Education

This article describes six constitutive “senses” of the “Christian educator's imagination.” These dispositions toward knowing, being, and doing characterize competent leadership in educational ministry. They include a sense for vocational empowerment, a sense for teaching and learning, a sense for seeking God's presence; a sense for the contours of one's own soul, a sense for “what makes persons’ tick, and a sense for institutional leadership. The author contends that scholars of Christian religious education should seek to cultivate these senses in their students.     

CHILDREN'S SPIRITUALITY AND “THE GOOD SHEPHERD EXPERIENCE”

This article aims to explore the connections between a religious education curriculum's methodology in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia and some contemporary theories about children's spirituality. “The Good Shepherd Experience” curriculum is intended for use with 5- and 6-year-old children in the first years of formal schooling. It forms a part of the To Know, Worship and Love religious education text based curriculum, directed for use by schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne as a key text in the religious education curricula. In exploring connections with children's spirituality, this article analyzes “The Good Shepherd Experience” in terms of wonder (mystery-sensing, contingency, and dependability), play and imagination, and the ability to use religious language and concepts.     

TOGETHER WITH QUESTIONING MINDS: SOPHIA LYON FAHS (1876-1978)

Abstract Sophia Lyon Fahs's legacy for religious education is a rich source for understanding the initial decades of the movement, its present situation and its possibilities for future growth. A theorist and practitioner, Fahs's long career in religious education witnessed the ebb and flow of evangelical, liberal, neo-orthodox, radical, and revisionist theologies. In a short section of her last full text on religious education, Fahs considered the fragmentation between the cognitive and affective aspects of religion in Western culture and put forth “some conditions for a new unity” in the form of four directives. Fahs understood these considerations to be part of a balanced pedagogy for religion, one in line with what she foresaw as challenges to religious education in seeking to harmonize classroom, worship and life experiences. The directives offer implications for the self-understanding of religious education today.     

President's Introduction: Religious Education for Peace and Justice

This article gives an overview of “practical theology” as an emerging paradigm, and discusses problems and possibilities in using the paradigm for religious education of “Generation X” in a postmodern context. The article posits that a postmodern sensibility does not imply the cognitive capacity for a truly postmodern style of meaning‐making. Drawing on Robert Kegan and the author's teaching experience with young adults, the article raises the caution that Generation X may not be prepared developmentally for postmodern educational approaches. Possibilities for using practical theological elements such as story, playfulness, and making connections are raised in relation to this age‐group.     

The place of qualitative research in science education

This article develops a way to conceptualize the complementarity of quantitative and qualitative research in science education. The differing sets of metaphysical presuppositions that give rise to the two approaches are systematically examined by using Stephen Pepper's “world hypotheses”: it is argued and demonstrated that quantitative research is formist/ mechanist in its metaphysical preoccupation, while qualitative research is contextualist/organicist. The vehicle for demonstrating how these metaphysical systems actually influence science education research is Stephen Toulmin's “argument pattern.” It is demonstrated through analysis of examples that quantitative and qualitatitive research reports follow the same pattern of argument, even though the metaphysical roots behind the approaches, which control their differing methodologies and other features, are obviously different. Given the emergence of qualitative research styles, implications are explored for the development of science education research as a total enterprise. Special attention is paid to the problems of appraising the quality of qualitative research reports and to the need for a comprehensive view of what constitutes legitimate research in science education.     

The Service of the Association∗

This article begins with an acknowledgment of the complexities of religion's position in the English school system that open it to diverse interpretations. It uses research in a variety of schools to illustrate three different approaches to religion: doxological, sacramental, and instrumental, founded, respectively, on certain faith in God, on openness to the possibility of God, and on a default scepticism. The contested nature of religion's place in schooling is acknowledged and, in response, both secular and religious reasons are given for hearing religious voices in the educational sphere. The argument is made that an equitable religious-and-secular settlement is dependent on “religiously understood” religion being allowed into the conversation. The relationship between penultimate and ultimate is used to analyze each of the three approaches for their engagement with “religiously understood” religion and their contributions to religious and secular understanding.     

Connecting religion and teacher identity: The unexplored relationship between teachers and religion in public schools

It is increasingly acknowledged that for individuals to participate in a pluralistic and democratic society, they must understand religious conviction and difference. In educational literature, the discussion surrounding education and religion focuses on the implications for students. It is important to consider what this may mean to the teachers, as teachers directly influence student learning. This article uses literature on religion, multiculturalism, teacher identity, and popular culture to connect teachers' private religious identifications to their professional identities in public school classrooms. It supports future research in this area and provides a theoretical framework for subsequent studies.     

The Merits of Using “Worldview” in Religious Education

This article aims to argue that worldview is a useful concept in religious education because of its encompassing character. In the first part of the article three essential characteristics of “worldview” are distinguished: “worldview” includes religious and secular views; a distinction between organized and personal worldviews should be made; and existential questions are a necessary part of “worldview.” The second part of the article demonstrates how two articles about Grimmitt's distinction between learning about and from religion benefit from using “worldview” and how the authors can address their points more clearly by using the concept and its three essential characteristics.     

Towards a Realist Sociology of Education: A Polyphonic Review Essay

This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Education as a recent examination of the sociological causes and effects of education in the tradition of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. Maton's book synthesizes the scholarship of Bourdieu and Bernstein and complements their work with “discoveries” from the world of systemic functional linguistics to produce a new “realist sociology of education.” It does so by means of Legitimation Code Theory, defined as a “toolkit” to analyze knowledge construction in cultural fields, especially education. The authors of this review essay take a polyphonic approach in assessing this ambitious synthesis, offering four perspectives on Maton's book. Brian Barrett provides a Bernsteinian perspective; Dan Schubert approaches the book from his grounding in Bourdieu; and Susan Hood contributes a view from systemic functional linguistics. Michael Grenfell weaves these three perspectives together and provides introductory and concluding reflections. They aim, through their combined expertise, to use Maton's book as an occasion to take stock of the state of the field of sociology of education generally and to reflect on the questions: What is its nature and what type of knowledge does it express? To what uses may it be set and what is its place within the larger project of educational theory?     

Religious Education: The Depth of the Field

This article responds to sociologist Christian Smith's claim that many teenagers today have lost traditional religious faith and instead espouse a new and erroneous faith in God the “Cosmic Therapist.” The author challenges this claim by comparing two of Smith's chief complaints vis-à-vis teen faith to established portraits of adolescent faith. The comparison reveals that despite differences significant continuities exist between adolescent faith “then” and “now,” a finding that underscores the inherently (but not exclusively) developmental nature of religious faith. The article concludes by affirming Christian Religious Education as a dynamic process of bringing “life to faith and faith to life” with humility, compassion, and hope.     

White gazes,brown breasts: imperial feminism and disciplining desires and bodies in colonial encounters

This article examines the colonial encounters of gender, race and sexuality in the United States and the Philippines in the early 1900s. It traces the anxieties over US men's moral degeneracy and the representation of Filipinas as libidinal temptations, which mobilised US women's active participation in colonial biopolitics and governmentality. It contends that white women as imperial feminists asserted their principled crusade and superiority over white men and brown women by becoming bearers of racialised heteronormative traditions and feminine respectability and becoming barriers to inter‐racial sexual relations. White women focused on the white male domains of military and government and on the colonial education of brown women. Ultimately, the article supplements the Spivakian claim that “white men are saving brown women from brown men”, which has become the quintessential narrative of colonial justification and redemption, with “white women are saving white men and brown women from each other”. Drawing on government, newspaper and school documents, the article engages feminist discussions on the role of women in empire and education.     

Education of Roma Youth in Hungary: Schools,Identities and Belonging

Historically, schools have been homogenizing institutions that often disadvantaged people of color and ethnic and religious minorities. In this article I examine Roma education in Hungary, focusing on (re)production of racial identities and the negotiation of ethnic labels. I distinguish two models of education as they relate to ideas of integration, and assess the evolving ethnic labels: “bad Gypsies” and “good Roma.” These labels reflect different philosophies of education, and both contain different tensions and challenges.     

The Religious Education Association in Our Global Reality

The article identifies international cases—from the United States, Europe, and the United Nations—of an emergent interface of religion, education, and security. This is manifest in the uses of religion in education to counter religious extremism, the notional “counter terrorist classroom.” To avoid an over-association of extremism with religion, the article provides some historical reminders that the post-Enlightenment centuries were marked by political extremism, particularly in the phenomenon that came to be known as totalitarianism. In freedom-espousing doctrines on all sides—Communist, Fascist, and Nazi as well as democratic—education here too was an invariant adjunct of political and security processes. All regarded religion too as contributory or contrary to such freedom. What is new now is the global use of religion in education for political and of late security purpose. Using Isaiah Berlin's (2002) “two concepts of liberty,” I argue that evidence of—often subtle, often explicit—security uses of religion in education mark in new ways a connection of the political with the religious. Although such moves are in intention benign, I conclude that political and security interventions and justifications for religion in education will inevitably shift the aims and purposes of religious education to the aims and purposes of political and security interest.     

Establishing an epistemological base for science teaching in the light of contemporary notions of the nature of science and of how children learn science

The quality of science education is a pervasive concern in educational improvement efforts. This article examines two aspects of science education that have been identified as being of concern: Is the material presented in science classrooms representative of science “as it really is” and, secondly, what is the bearing of notions of “children's science” on curriculum reform? A review of the literature in both areas shows that educational theory has, so far, had little effect on classroom practice. An attempt is made to synthesize contemporary views on the tentative nature of science with a generative model of learning in science in order to establish a common epistemological base which could be used as a template for curriculum reform efforts.     

Weekday Religious Education in Connection with the Public School

In sympathizing with a program of “release time” for religious education, I am perhaps opening myself to a torrent of attack. I shall take it, because what 1 state here is my own personal opinion

May I indulge the hope, however, that the discussions which this article may arouse, concern themselves with a realistic and logical treatment of what I have to say, rather than rhetorical invectives. The world has changed profoundly in the spiritual realm during the past quarter century. The cry goes up from our pulpits and pews for a new appreciation of religion. Yet in so many places, there is no recognition of the new demands in terms of an adjustment of positions which, formerly sound and tenable, now are quite the opposite

This statement is submitted in an open‐minded manner in the hope of stimulating frank discussion on one of today's most important problems     

A Race to the Top From the Bottom of the Well? The Paradox of Race and U.S. Education Reform

Abstract

This article explores the paradox of “race” and U.S. education reform in the 21st century. I consider how the invisible ontology of race and its entangled relationship with class divert our attention from economic inequality and undermine policies intended to redress racial inequality in schools. I conclude that the education research community must unpack its use of “race” and focus on the role of racism in the maintenance of racial caste in America's schools.     

Religious justification,elitist outcome: are religious schools being used to avoid integration?

Despite ongoing efforts to promote ethnic, racial and socio-economic integration, segregation continues to challenge education administrators and legal scholars. Privileged parents seeking to avoid integration employ various strategies such as attending private schools or buying houses in neighbourhoods with good school. This paper offers a combined empirical and legal research of another such strategy: the resort to religious schools. The research is conducted within one specific context, that of Israeli Religious State Schools. The empirical study examines whether “Torani” religious state schools (a category of religious schools that offer enhanced Jewish studies and a strict religious environment) induce socio-economic segregation. The findings indicate that “Torani” schools are indeed socio-economically segregated and serve children from higher socioeconomic class than regular religious state schools. It also shows that “Torani” schools are less reflective of their surroundings than regular religious state schools, and are more likely to be established by privileged parents in poor areas, where they are dissatisfied with the local state schools. The legal research offers an explanation of how legal regulation can determine whether religious schools will become a means for avoiding integration. Specifically, it points to three areas in which “Torani” schools are regulated differently than regular religious state schools – the rules regarding the establishment of new schools; the rules concerning school funding; and the rules concerning student enrolment – and argues that special treatment meant to protect religious interests is responsible for making “Torani” schools socially segregated.