KNOWING GOD: REVELATION AND THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

The author describes a public vision and task for religious education and Christian religious education. Using personal experience and the insights of ethnographic research and congregational studies, the author describes how religious education is grounded in a community, its story, and its practices. He illustrates how religious education often conflicts with the education that occurs in public life, and raises questions about how individuals negotiate the differences and build a religious education that nurtures public life and public conversation.     

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AT THE EDGE OF HISTORY

This article suggests that religious education discourse in the future must be multilingual if it is to prepare people to participate in a postmodern world of religious diversity and secularism. Five “languages” are suggested, including those native to the religious education of particular religious communities, the language of interreligious education, the language of public religious education, a postreligion religious education language, and the language of academic religious education.     

Faith and education in Bangladesh: A review of the contemporary landscape and challenges

Relationships between religious beliefs, institutions, educational strategies, and delivery pose practical challenges for policy makers in all countries. They have particular significance today in Bangladesh given the national and regional developments that shine light on religious roles within national identity and minority communities. Challenges range from coordination of different systems for purposes of employment credentials, equity, and quality assurance to fundamental questions about the values that underlie curricula. A related challenge involves national objectives to instill shared civic values through education and to address mounting intergroup tensions. How the wide variety of religiously managed education institutions in Bangladesh approach these issues is poorly understood and subject to significant misunderstandings. Knowledge about different types of schools and programs led by religious institutions in Bangladesh is incomplete in terms of numbers, approach, and results. Knowledge gaps contribute to misunderstandings and social and political tensions. This review describes and analyzes faith-inspired education providers in Bangladesh, the most prominent of which are Islamic madrasas and Catholic schools. It sets faith-inspired education in a historical context and highlights contemporary issues for policy makers that arise from their approach and that feature in public discourse about the links between religion and education. The aim is to build constructively on the legacies of religious contributions to education, address both articulated and unarticulated tensions, and to identify ways in which contemporary innovations among religiously inspired education providers contribute to broader national education goals.     

STUDENT RIGHTS TO RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION AND THE SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SCHOOLS

In this essay Bryan Warnick explores how rights to religious expression should be understood for students in public schools. Warnick frames student religious rights as a debate between the conflicting values associated with the Free Exercise Clause and the values associated with the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. He then asks how the special characteristics of the school environment should guide us in prioritizing those values. The overall weight of the considerations, particularly concerns about civic education, leads to a two‐pronged approach to religious rights. The first prong involves a robust protection of student religious exercise; the second involves an equally robust regime of school disassociation from student religious exercises.     

PERCEPTIONS OF THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AMONG RELIGIOUS TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS IN ISRAEL

This research examines the purposes of education perceived by teacher education students preparing for a career in Israeli public religious schools. Participants were 164 men and 364 women in their first or final year of teacher education. They responded to questionnaires that explored educational purposes in four ways. Twenty-four students also were interviewed. Major results indicate that: 1) universal and religious purposes of education are considered highly important; 2) men attribute greater importance than women to religious- Torah purposes; 3) academic-intellectual growth is not considered an important educational purpose. Implications of these and other findings are considered for educational policy and practice in public religious schools.     

Aspects of Fiscal Federalism in Higher Education Cost Sharing in Latvia

This case study explores devolution of low-income student subsidies, via the national student loans program, from the central to local governments in Latvia by means of decentralizing political and financial responsibility to provide public assistance to low-income students in obtaining funds for higher education. It describes municipal engagement in providing primary loan guarantees and in assuming full risk for low-income student loans. This article argues that although there are venues for local governments to support low-income students' access to higher education, the central government should sponsor this policy politically as well as financially.     

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.     

Some Old Wine and Some New Bottles: Religious and Moral Education in New Zealand

Abstract:

This article briefly describes and accounts for the present resurgence of interest in moral education in New Zealand. The tendency has been for moral education to be equated with sex education or religious instruction and the present debate stems in part from the former and spills over into the latter of these and is further complicated by a suggested merger between Church and State schools. The development of present legislation regarding religious instruction is traced and the current situation outlined. Religious and moral education in schools have, in the past, been matters of generally ineffective compromises which are likely to be perpetuated under a highly centralised situation with debate on a national, political level.     

A PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE ON THE STUDY OF HIGHER EDUCATION

This article explores the relationship between higher education research and the study of public administration, the concpetual perspectives of which are useful for understanding the links between government policy‐making and higher education. A short introduction to the study of public administration is followed by the presentation of six newly evolved concepts of public administration which are labeled as follows: comprehensive rationality, the community action approach, the public choice approach, political systems theory, policy sciences, and contingency and inter‐organizational approaches. All of these have contributed to the eclecticism and the conceptual pluralism of the discipline of public administration as a whole. Having been adapted to the theoretical underpinnings of the administration of higher education, these six concepts have stimulated the development of four theoretical models for the analysis of decision‐making processes in higher education: the analytical or rational actor model, the garbage can or organized anarchy model, the collegiality model, and the political model. Specific problems in higher education administration have been addressed, as they have arisen, with reference to one or more of the six concepts and the four decision‐making models. For the future, the public administration approach to higher education will be most likely to draw upon the study of co‐ordination mechanisms in collective decision‐making processes and the comparative analysis of the external functions and performances of government.     

TASK ANALYSIS: BULIDING MODELS OF CHANGE PROCESSES IN GIFTED EDUCATION

Researchers in the field of gifted education are becoming increasingly aware that a variety of research approaches can make contributions to research on giftedness. This paper describes task analysis, a research methodology derived from counseling process research. Task analysis appears to be a useful research approach for building theoretical models of how therapeutic and educational interventions can facilitate positive changes in gifted children. The paper traces the historical development of task analysis methodology, describes the steps involved in conducting a rational‐empirical task analysis of change processes, and provides an example of how task analysis methodology might be applied to investigations of change processes in the field of gifted education.     

Factors that impede curriculum change: a preliminary report

The management of curriculum change in religious education is of interest to all who are concerned with a continuing pursuit of excellence in this curriculum area. Utilising a grounded theory approach, this paper describes some findings concerning the management of curriculum change in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia. It reports the perspective of religious education coordinators, who were responsible for managing a major change in the religious education curriculum in Catholic secondary schools. Emanating from a broader on‐going study, the report focuses on factors that the religious education coordinators felt impeded curriculum change.     

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.     

DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF PROJECT TEACHING

After an elaboration of the paradigm shift concerning religious education in Europe, we will give a critical presentation of the Belgian and Flemish system of religious education. The article continues with a discussion of diverse proposals to change the religious education system in Flanders, and concludes that the introduction of an independent, nondenominational, and obligatory subject about religions, ethics, citizenship, and philosophy is the most promising option. In addition, denominational religious education can still be offered as an optional subject. This double system seems the best approach to cope with the educational challenges, the freedom of religion, and (religious) education in Flanders today.     

STUDY ON LATVIAN MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ ESPOUSED BELIEFS ABOUT TEACHING AND LEARNING AND REPORTED PRACTICES

The aim of the research was to compare espoused beliefs about teaching and learning and reported practices for the teachers of mathematics in Latvia. The sample consisted of 390 teachers of mathematics from different regions of Latvia. The present research is a part of an international comparative research within the NorBa project (Nordic–Baltic Comparative Research in Mathematics Education) that makes use of a quantitative questionnaire for mathematics teachers. The results show that the espoused beliefs of Latvian teachers of mathematics on efficient teaching tend more to a constructivist approach, whilst reported practices are more oriented to a traditional approach; yet, there exist statistically significant differences for teachers of different social and demographical groups. The research outcomes may be used for the improvement of teacher further education programmes.     

A private matter? Religious education and democracy in Indonesia and Israel

The article examines state-supported religious education and its consequences for civic attitudes in Indonesia and Israel, two democracies that grant religion a prominent place in the public sphere, particularly in education. The comparison reveals that while in Indonesia the state was able to gradually introduce a secular curriculum in religious schools and establish an accreditation system by which it could exert influence on the way religion is taught, in Israel, by contrast, state-funded religious schools over time became increasingly opposed to a mandatory ‘core curriculum’ of general studies. The comparison further suggests that in Indonesia the inclusion of a secular curriculum in religious schools in the 1970s should be seen as one of the factors promoting the production and dissemination of ‘rationalist approaches to religion’ and brought religious actors on board of democratisation, while in Israel the exclusion of a secular curriculum from religious schooling has undermined civic commitments among ultra-Orthodox Jewish citizens and as such weakened Israeli democracy. The article is based on public opinion data, data from the Ministries of Religion and Education, and court decisions in both countries.     

Religious discrimination discourse in the mono-cultural school: the case of Poland

The article forms an analysis of the religious discrimination discourse in Polish public schools, with special attention paid to the culturally specific, Polish understanding of the notion of religious discrimination. The introductory part presents the concept of religious discrimination as present in anti-discriminatory policies. The following part outlines the Polish system of religious education and its relation to the religious discrimination. Studies on religious discrimination in Poland are presented and discussed. Important context is supplied by a presentation of two recent cases of religious discrimination in Polish public schools, and the actions undertaken by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Authors of the article point out the important influence of cultural context on the perception of religious discrimination. The attention is drawn to the seemingly homogenous environment of the Polish school and of the discriminative discourse used in political and social debates. The analysis shows that the presence of religion as a subject in Polish schools remains a cause of conflict between the religious and atheist citizens, a conflict in which concepts of religious discrimination and religious freedom are used as arguments by both sides.     

Should religious studies be part of the compulsory state school curriculum?

This article argues that of the various approaches taken in state education internationally, the inclusion of a discrete academic subject dealing with religious traditions and spiritual or secular alternatives is the most effective way of addressing religious plurality in education. It examines the increasing presence of religion in public discourse, various educational responses to this, and argues that a separate subject, taught by specialist teachers, is the most likely to achieve the aim of the United Nations for mutual understanding and peace between diverse religious and cultural traditions.