Countercultural Autobiography: Stories From the Underside and Education for Justice

This article describes a countercultural approach to autobiography in comparison with three dominant uses of autobiography in religious education. It defines countercultural autobiographies as stories from the underside of society meant as tools for education for justice and as invitations for transformative dialogue in institutional and societal settings. The article's goal is to invite religious educators, in seminaries and faith communities, to begin a dialogue for finding ways to use countercultural autobiographies to inform theories and practices of religious education that will educate us all in the path of God's vision of justice for the world.     

THE UNIVERSITY PASTORATE MOVEMENT∗

Building on the author's experience in leadership development in Roman Catholic parishes and recent work in the field of congregational studies, this essay examines the religious educator's role as a catalyst in the transformation of the culture of the local church. As an alternative to an instructional/schooling approach to religious education, the paper proposes a model of congregational education directed specifically to the transformation of the corporate life of the faith community by its members working together to reshape concrete behaviors, structures, and roles in order to carry out the church's mission and ministry.

This argument is developed through a discussion of foundational assumptions about the significance of congregational life for the church's educational mission and a brief case study illustrating central dynamics in the process of congregational education. The paper concludes with observations about the range of skills required of congregational educators, especially their ability to understand and evaluate the complex dynamics of congregational life in a disciplined way.     

The Christian Family as Mediator

The publication in 2011 of This is Our Faith (TIOF), the Catholic Church in Scotland's syllabus for religious education in Catholic schools, is a significant contribution to wider debates on the appropriate conceptual framework for religious education. Recent teaching of the Holy See has suggested that religious education in Catholic schools should adopt a scholastic shape and serve as a complement to catechesis. In TIOF, pedagogy, assessment issues and the relationship between cognitive and affective approaches to learning are merged in the context of a distinct faith tradition. TIOF's adoption of a catechetical vision of religious education shows how local churches can adapt Catholic teaching to their own circumstances.     

Fostering Cross‐Cultural Learning and Advocacy for Social Justice through an Immersion Experience in Puerto Rico

Our country's increasing social diversity, the richness and complexity of cultures, diversity of self‐defined individual identities, and complexity of cross‐cultural interactions make effective diversity teaching a challenging but critical need. In addition, for services to be provided in culturally competent manner educators must prepare social work students to understand and address the causes, dynamics and consequences of oppression in the life experiences of diverse populations. This article will describe a graduate travel study social work course designed to provide a cultural immersion experience in Puerto Rico. Anecdotal evidence of the students' transformative learning experiences and commitment to social justice advocacy are offered.     

The conception,construction, and maintenance of the identity of Roman Catholic female religious teachers: a historical case study from Ireland

Over the last three decades, there has been a burgeoning of research on teacher identity. While the various bodies of work produced are very valuable, further lines of enquiry need to be pursued in order to take account of the complexities involved. This paper on the conception, construction, and maintenance of the identity of Roman Catholic female religious teachers in Ireland from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s is offered as one contribution. Being restricted to a particular time and place, it is a response to those who have emphasized the need to investigate teacher identity in different national contexts. Secondly, by focusing on female teaching religious, it highlights the importance of studying different ‘types’ of teachers other than those identified by age group, school subject, or grade level taught. Thirdly, it represents a shift in research framing away from the more usually utilized concepts of ‘personal identity,’ ‘social identity,’ ‘professional identity,’ and ‘the self.’ Documentary evidence and oral testimony indicate that the professional life of the female teaching religious was viewed by them as being integral to their religious vocation. This particular notion of vocation embodied a spiritual belief in being called by God, to work for God. Thus, it meant that the female teaching religious approached teaching, quite literally, with religious zeal. It also meant that their commitment was, first and foremost, to their religious life and that teaching, while deemed to be very important, was always in accord with and, where necessary took second place, to that life.     

Performance power: the impact of neoliberalism on social justice educators’ ways of speaking about their educational practice

ABSTRACT

Few studies have attended to the specific influence of neoliberalism on education for social justice, despite the complex ways in which the competing discourses of neoliberalism and social justice work side by side in local educational settings. This article reports data derived from interviews with 28 educators committed to social justice education from across Ontario, Canada. Participants were asked how they perceived the impact of neoliberalism on education and on their teaching practice. Findings were interpreted through critical democratic theory and discourse analysis. An unanticipated finding is the influence of neoliberal discourse on the ways that educators spoke about their teaching practice for social justice. The study found that discourse of performance is one arena where competing discourses of neoliberalism and social justice not only coexist but also intersect. This finding has important implications for the transformative potential of social justice education through more concentrated attention to the power embedded in everyday speech acts. Attending more to the performative potential of neoliberal discourse toward social justice ends can be a mechanism for resistance and teacher agency.     

Outthinking the Media: Lessons from a Tennis Master

This article challenges contemporary religious educators to take notice of some of the competitive aspects of media, not to scapegoat the technological changes of twenty-first-century life, but to address the concerns of a people who feel overwhelmed by media's game plan yet long to work for a more invigorated future of American religious education. Just like winning tennis superstars, religious educators can master the media environment by recognizing, analyzing, and capitalizing on various options of resistance and consent in every media moment.     

STANDARDIZING TRAINING INSTITUTIONS FOR RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL WORKERS

The progressive spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) spawned a myriad of graduate departments of religious education in American Catholic colleges and universities. These departments evolved to include other master degrees (e.g., pastoral studies, pastoral counseling, divinity, spirituality, and social justice). As the numbers of students in religious education degree programs significantly diminished, the degree designation in religious education was often terminated. Today, an ever increasing number of religious education practitioners in the Catholic context do not have graduate degrees in religious education. This ongoing reality significantly alters the field of religious education and its practice in the Catholic context.     

Educating about homosexuality: what do American Catholics think?

The purpose of this study was to examine American Catholics' attitudes regarding education about homosexuality. Participants were 1000 self‐identified Catholic adults who were interviewed via telephone. The majority of respondents agreed that Catholic colleges should offer courses on human sexuality, although religious and political conservatives were more likely to disagree that these courses should include education about justice and equality for gays and lesbians. Conservative and older respondents disagreed significantly more often that homosexuality should be included in tolerance teaching for children. Religious conservatives and males were less likely to agree that gays and lesbians should be hired as schoolteachers. The results indicate that the variables of Catholic ideology, political ideology, sex, age, and education are important in understanding the diversity of Catholics' views about these issues.     

Addressing Social Difference with Prospective Teachers Who Want “To Make a Difference”

This paper focuses on a cohort of B.Ed. students' understandings about social difference and social justice as recorded in their professional journals in the first semester of third year. It shows that their reasons for choosing teaching as a career, reflections on their school experiences and discussions about future students are grounded in the culture of individualism that is commonplace in Australian society. However, some also acknowledge that class, race, gender and ethnicity shape their lives and their future students' worlds. Furthermore, most were prepared to engage with social justice in their professional journals. Keeping these findings in mind, the paper identifies discursive spaces where teacher educators might work with prospective teachers to promote critical reflection about social difference and facilitate a commitment to social justice in education.     

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Most research into religious education has concentrated upon older children, but this paper reports findings obtained from the teachers of junior (seven to II years old) school children. From the content of religious education lessons and the overall religious sub‐cultures of classroom and school, conclusions are drawn about the religious socialization process of the child. A distinction is made between the child's own religious quest for meaning and the Christian culture which is generally accepted in Britain and taught in school. The child's religion is divided into the cognitive and the emotive while the socialization process is treated as cognitive, explicit and implicit. The general conclusion reached is that religious education lessons do not respond to the child's own cognitive level and are thus likely to confuse, whereas the religious life of classroom and school leads to an emotive affinity with Christianity. Thus ambivalence towards the Christian religion is produced in the child.     

A Review of: “Learning to Labor in New Times”

This article explores the limits of introductory social justice education and the ways in which a social foundations course could expand and deepen the social justice lens of current and future educators. The authors, members of an introductory graduate-level Social Foundations course, discuss the limitations they realized in their previous social justice education courses, and the importance of courses that further student's understandings of the ever-evolving ways people enact and experience identity, power, and privilege. The authors identify three main pedagogical and theoretical elements that advanced their social justice knowledge: examining theories for their potential to uncover or obscure lived experience; unpacking binary constructions of identity; and exploring the limits and possibilities of intersectional thinking. This article offers implications and suggestions for educators who seek to challenge and expand the social justice knowledge of future educators and administrators.     

The Blending of Andragogical and Pedagogical Teaching Methods in Advanced Social Work Practice Courses

Many social work educators have endorsed an andragogical appraoch to instruction as a means to reach the diverse student population of today's classroom, without recognizing the larger debate and concerns voiced by adult education detractors. Andrgogical methods provide practical experience-related learning opportunities where self-directed learning is emphasized. Although these methods are effective and have improved social work instruction over the past two decades, there is sufficient research to support the importance of and rationale for belnding pedagogical and andrgogical techniques. This paper will highlight innovative teaching strategies and evaluation components that were used in an advanced social work practice course that blended pedgogical and andrgogical teaching methods.     

Catholic women educators’ discourse and educational measurement in the early twentieth century in the United States

ABSTRACT

In the early twentieth century in the United States, Roman Catholic schools grew in number and became increasingly regulated by state departments of education. This led to the increased influence of public school reform movements in Catholic schools. Some Catholic educators questioned these movements, while others embraced them. Educational measurement strategies, such as IQ and standardised testing, gained support from women religious orders and congregations, who made up the majority of the Catholic teaching force. For pragmatic reasons, they saw some value in the promises of modern educational science for teaching and learning. This practice, however, put them at odds with some of the beliefs and values of their Church. This study demonstrates how Catholic sister teachers attempted to shape the debate on the introduction and use of reform strategies like IQ and standardised testing. It also examines how Catholic sister teachers made use of Catholic beliefs and values to make arguments in favour of IQ and standardised testing in Catholic schools. Using agreed upon Catholic religious tenets and working within their gendered reality, Catholic sister teachers demonstrated how they tried to convince their colleagues, male and female, to come to an understanding around the use of educational measurement.     

Examining some aspects of the worldview of students in Australian Catholic schools: some implications for religious education

Abstract

Religious education always takes place within a cultural context. In recent decades, this context has changed significantly and Catholic schools now engage with a world that is very different from the immediate post-Vatican 2 era. This changed cultural context shapes the views, beliefs and practices of students in Catholic schools. One way of exploring this contextualisation is to describe the worldviews of young people and to discuss some of the major features of these. This paper reports on an ongoing study of students in Catholic schools. It records how they see themselves, their involvement in Church and their religious expression. Results indicate nuanced responses that invite sophisticated analysis of young people and worldview. One clear trend to emerge is the changing perception of students as they progress through the school system. This finding is in accord with a view that describes religious engagement of young people reaching a plateau at a relatively early age. Some of the implications of this study for religious educators in Catholic schools will be drawn out and discussed with a number of recommendation made for practitioners.     

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR TRAINING RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN THE PRESENT AGE

This analysis of the works of Bettelheim finds three areas of intersection with religious education: identity formation, moral education, and the role of fantasy and ritual. Bettelheim's theory of identity formation came from reflection on his personal experience as a concentration camp survivor. He claimed that prisoners in the camps lost their identity. He sought to inversely foster identity formation in autistic children by creating an environment that built autonomy as opposed to the environment of the camps. His studies on the role of the environment in the formation of selfhood lead to conclusions on identity formation in religious education. Bettelheim critiqued moral education and advocated the teaching of morality by example. Morality should not be imposed as a system of rules, but should follow from love. This paper identifies how Bettelheim's explanation of the ways in which fantasy works to facilitate the formation of the self through meaning attainment is important for religious education.     

Dissertation as performance [Art Script] (Take Three)

This paper considers the absence of things queer within the texts of arts-based education theories and narratives of K-12 educators working within / against these reforms. Dancing through the dramatic shifts and movements of his performance-art dissertation,the author questions the limits of standard dissertation protocols. He argues that arts-based education schemes have not confronted or considered arts' complicity in social constructions of heteronormativity, and that the arts should be taught toward the ends of social justice and democracy.     

Untangling the Net

Abstract

The importance of computer training in social work education will continue to increase as the profession becomes more globalized and technological. It is the authors' premise that social work education must include the integration of training in computer technology. One resource available to educators is the Internet. The world wide web contains a vast amount of information on policy and social issues. This article discusses the use of web based learning exercises to simultaneously teach social policy and enhance student computer skills. Two learning exercises are presented which are designed for use in social work policy courses. The authors present their teaching experiences and provide suggestions on using this approach in the classroom environment. Information on resources and useful URL's for policy research is included in the discussion.     

Research in Religious Education: Content and Methods for the Postmodern and Global Era

This article presents an overview of how “Christian religious education” as a “polydoxical” discipline is being taught, based on a survey of 24 syllabi of graduate courses offered by scholars teaching in Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Catholic theological schools. The review offers an account of how the scholars frame the discipline in four dimensions: (1) how they define the nature and purpose of CRE; (2) how they describe and interpret the environment(s) for teaching and learning; (3) how they frame the “canon” of the discipline through texts and topics; and (4) the methods of teaching and learning employed.     

Religious activism in a secular world: the rise and fall of the teaching congregations of the Catholic Church

In Europe, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are characterised not only by processes of secularisation, but also by religious reactions to the perceived secularisation of society. In the Catholic Church, the rise of active congregations constitutes a prominent part of this reaction. With their work “in the world”, the members of the active congregations (brothers and sisters) had to represent and disseminate religious values in a modernising and secularising world. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, many of them became active in the field of education. Until well into the twentieth century, teaching sisters and teaching brothers were a customary feature in the system of Catholic education. This article provides a theory-driven historical–sociological and historical–educational analysis of this form of religious activism in the field of education. Overall, its focus is on mechanisms of social differentiation and inclusion in modern society at large, and on the opportunities and problems they create for fields such as religion and education. Empirically, the focus is on the rise and fall of the congregations of teaching brothers and teaching sisters in the Low Countries, especially Belgium.