Secular youth and religious practice: candle lighting in Norwegian folk high schools

Although large international studies have defined Norway as one of the most secular countries in the world, Christian folk high schools in Norway have experienced record high attendance. This paper presents case studies of the religious education (RE) and practices of two Christian folk high schools in Norway. A survey shows that students at these schools can be considered representative of the confessional backgrounds and stated values of their cohort of Norwegian youth. The studied institutions have the declared goal of offering RE, of which an on-campus worship service is a central element. A large portion of the student body attends these services. Using a reconstruction of Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice, the author analyses student participation in the school worship service, specifically in the act of candle lighting. Observations and student interviews indicate that the service can be described as a reflective practice representing a dialogic form of religion. This article contributes an analysis of the distinctive form of RE offered by Christian folk high schools in Norway. In a broader sense, it contributes to the understanding of secular youth and their relation to religious practice.     

THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATOR AS CULTURAL SPEC-ACTOR: RESEARCHING SELF IN INTERCULTURAL PEDAGOGY

This article seeks to explore notions regarding the conceptualization of culture in the field of Christian religious education. These conceptualizations are central to understanding the social nature of faith communities and the role of religious educators as they respond to this nature. The author proposes that the faith community is intercultural in that people with distinct cultural perspectives come together to forge a shared religious identity. Consequently, the vocation of the religious educator is presented as a call to be a specactor1, a practitioner who constantly assesses his/her own cultural orientations in relation to those of the learners. The article concludes the paper with some suggestions on how to develop a contrastive pedagogy that takes into account both the intercultural dynamics of the Christian educational experience and the vocation of the intercultural religious educator.     

Teaching and Learning in Iraq: A Brief History

This article investigates the Iraqi educational system and the historical, political, religious, and cultural factors that have influenced teaching and learning in Iraq. It is based on the author's personal experience as an educator within the system for three decades. The author posits that Iraqi educators must establish a collaborative and cooperative endeavor for a reformation of the Iraqi educational system. The current educational system of rote memorization has governed Iraqi schools and universities for almost one century. The author envisions a new educational system that would be based on new teaching and learning approaches that cultivate students’ critical thinking skills, as well as teachers’ pedagogical skills.     

基于个体成长史的人民教育家于漪生成机理分析

于漪是怎样从普通教师成长为人民教育家的呢?从教育家个体成长史的视角,分析其成为人民教育家的生成机理,剖析影响其成长发展的要素,人民教育家的成长是内外因、主客体各种因素综合作用的结果。让生命与使命同行是其成为人民教育家的强大内驱力,一辈子学做教师是其成为人民教育家的唯一捷径,付出浓浓的教育爱是其成为人民教育家的发展秘诀,书写中国基础教育学是其成为人民教育家的巨大贡献,关键人物影响是其成为人民教育家的重要外因。     

Religious engagement and attitudes to the role of religion in society: their effect on civic and social values in an Asian context

This paper explored the impact of religious engagement (religious background, religious service attendance and religious activities participation) on adolescents’ civic and social values. Attitudes towards the influence of religion on society were investigated as a possible mediator/moderator of religious engagement. A model based on Western literature was tested using a sample of over 2000 Hong Kong students. Secondary data were drawn from the International Civics and Citizenship Education Study 2009. Multi-level modelling was used to assess individual and school level effects on civic and social values. Results indicated that religious engagement exerted varied effects. Religious background showed small and negative effects on students’ civic and social values. Participation in religious services indicated a small, positive and significant effect on social but not on civic values. Participation in religious activities showed no significant effect on either social or civic values. These variables exerted a small moderating effect on social and civic values through attitudes to the influence of religion on society. The latter exerted a positive and significant effect on civic values and a negative effect on social values. These results suggested that Western models depicting the positive relationship between religious engagement and citizenship values may not hold for Asian societies.     

Linked to innovation: Shaping an innovative climate through network intentionality and educators’ social network position

This study investigates whether educators’ cognitive and structural social capital is associated with perceptions of innovative climate in charter schools. We explore a new concept to assess educators’ cognitive social capital, namely network intentionality, meaning the extent to which an educator is intentional in connecting and interacting with others. We hypothesize that network intentionality (cognitive social capital) is related to the extent to which educators perceive their school’s climate to be innovative, but that this relationship is dependent on the educator’s position in their school’s social network (structural social capital). Findings suggest that the relationship between cognitive social capital and perceptions of innovative climate is partly mediated by structural social capital. In other words, those educators with high network intentionality, as evidenced by an orientation towards connecting others, also perceive the school’s climate as being more innovative, partly because this strong network intentionality is associated with more out-going relational activity. This work provides unique insights into the factors that may be associated with teacher collaboration in successful charter schools serving traditionally underserved populations, and suggests ideas for schools wishing to support teacher collaboration and innovation.     

Working through Resistance to Resistance in Anti‐racist Teacher Education

This paper grapples with the idea that challenging racism in teacher education opens the landscape of racial melancholia by psychoanalytically exploring the author's affective reaction to white teacher candidates’ resistance. Drawing on critical multicultural education classes at a university in a mid‐Western rural state in the US, the author, an Asian American teacher educator contends that she must negotiate the loss of idealised objects during critical race dialogues for her to better serve containing function in supporting teacher candidates’ encounters with race work. While the author cannot see what it is that has been lost, the powerful emotions that at times display aggressive impulses signal toward wounded subjectivity and her desire to hold onto intrinsically ambivalent lost objects. Following Freud's assertion that the unconscious desire can be mediated only through efforts to symbolise and Bion's assertion that the containing mind involves active process, the author attempts to investigate what racial melancholia may represent for herself as a teacher educator. In the final section, the author interprets the manifestations of racial melancholia as an effect of racialised society and concludes that while the conscious meaning cannot exceed the unconscious, by working through the state of racial melancholia, she is able to create new meanings for her affective responses and make better sense of teacher candidates’ resistance and their anxiety.     

Teacher Educators: hidden professionals?

The pace of change in today's society means that there is an ongoing need for teachers to learn, have new knowledge and use new pedagogical approaches to meet the needs of their pupils. For many teachers, this requires redefining their identity as teachers and what ‘teaching’ means in 21st century learning environments. These changes also require teachers to be supported in learning to ‘teach’ in different ways that are relevant to their own individual needs and to the contexts in which they work throughout their career. In this article, it is argued that a more integrated and collaborative approach to teacher education is needed with better understanding of those who take up the roles of teacher educator across a teacher's career. With a particular emphasis on ‘teacher educators’ working in school to support teachers' career-long professional learning it is argued that currently many do not recognise themselves as teacher educators nor are they recognised by those they work with as teacher educators. Drawing on an empirical study carried out with mentors in schools in Scotland, it is suggested that these teacher educators may be ‘unrecognised’ and remain ‘hidden professionals’ because of the identities they construct for themselves, the values and priorities that they or others attach to their roles or because of the institutional structures and cultures in which they work. It is concluded that it will be difficult to recognise and value these ‘hidden teacher educators’ and the distinctive contribution they can make to teachers' career-long professional learning without further clarification by them and others of the roles and responsibilities they hold.     

俞庆棠民众教育思想初探

俞庆棠是我国近现代教育史上一位有创造性的爱国主义教育家,一生致力于对教育发展和民族复兴的探索之中。在深入调查研究的基础上大胆指出中国教育的病症,并广泛借鉴中外教育中的有益成分,创立了独具特色的民众教育体系。俞庆棠根据民众教育的实际,创新教育内容、教育方法与形式,对改善民众生活、提高民众素质和促进社会发展产生了深远的影响,同时对现代社会教育的发展也具有丰富的借鉴价值。     

Contextual religious education and the actuality of religions

Contextual religious educators tend to view discrete religious traditions as artificially constructed systems disconnected from the ordinary experiences of children. This article sets out the case for the continued representation of religions as substantial social facts in religious education classrooms. Accepting Robert Jackson’s critique of essentialist readings of religion, it argues that the most appropriate alternative is not the nominal reduction of discrete religious traditions to the atomistic level of the individual spiritual lives of adherents, but a realistic identification of such traditions as actual socio‐cultural realities. It suggests two criteria for such identification: the collective intentionality of adherents and the presence of prototypical features within their lifeworlds.     

Teaching through assessment: reconsidering the transfer problem through a convergence of technology and assessment in early childhood teacher education

This article considers the impact of the ‘transfer problem’ from a personal perspective. Drawing on experiences in teacher educator as preservice teacher, a practicing educator and later a preservice educator the author examines how she has seen and experienced the transfer problem and the potential for teacher education to enact a separation between theory and practice. The convergence of technology and assessment is presented to argue a case for a pedagogical approach used by the author referred to as ‘teaching through assessment’. The approach is theorised drawing on concepts from cultural-historical theory including, leading activity, learning activity and reflection to describe the potential for technology to appropriate a range of forms and functions that make it suitable for reconsidering how the transfer problem might be approached in teacher education classrooms.     

BOOK REVIEW

Scientific and religious ways of thinking are central to an individual’s cognitive and cultural ways of making sense of the world. This paper explores what foundational concepts pre‐service primary teachers are employing when they teach science. The study measured the attitudes to science and religion of 92 pre‐service primary teachers. The categories traditionally used to describe the ways individuals’ relate science and religion were found to be inadequate when attempting to reflect the attitudes’ of the respondents. An alternative, phenonomenologically based diagnostic framework was then proposed, constructed as a two‐dimensional scale on which participant’s attitude to science/religion was assessed as either “epistemic” or “pragmatic”. Analysis of interviews with a representative sample of eight of the teachers showed that individual religio‐scientific frameworks could be linked to distinct differences in approach to the teaching of science. The impact of identifying the religio‐scientific framework of pre‐service teachers on the design of future educational programmes was then discussed.     

郭雪波小说中的魔幻与现实

郭雪波小说中的魔幻与作者的故土情结和族裔身份密不可分。科尔沁沙地的自然地理、蒙古族原始宗教文化、东蒙地区丰富的巫术鬼神风俗等,为其小说铺垫了魔幻文化底色;个体民族文化在现代化、全球化语境中不断消解带给作者的忧患意识与惶惑感,草原生态恶化的现实,是魔幻叙事的指向,作者的拯救意识中暗含着欲望批判、找回民族神性信仰的努力;魔幻是民族文化与现代文学的共生,它汲取现代中国文学中的隐性巫文化表达传统,同时这种魔幻风格对中国主流现实主义文学创作有一种反哺作用。     

Parental Explanatory Models of Child’s Intellectual Disability: a Q Methodology Study

This study with families caring for an individual with an intellectual disability in a mid-sized Indian city explored the diverse explanatory models that parents constructed of causes, preferred treatment approaches and perceived social effects of their child’s intellectual disability. Seventeen mothers and three fathers rank ordered 48 disability related statements and participated in a qualitative interview. The intercorrelations and factor analysis of participant sorts helped to generate three parental explanatory models which were named religious resilience, in search of treatment and social change, and it is a burden to bear. The three models extracted 23%, 20% and 9% variance respectively. Interpretations based on factor arrays, consensus and differentiating statements, and qualitative interviews indicated that the first explanatory model utilised religion and spirituality to positively frame their child’s intellectual disability. The second explanatory model rejected religious notions and did not dwell on the cause of disability, but rather focused on optimal rehabilitation of individuals with an intellectual disability. The third model was characterised by maladaptive religious attributions and rehabilitation approaches.     

‘Walking into a dark room’—the initial impressions of learner‐educators in further education and training

This paper takes as its focus the initial impressions of education and the role of the educator among those entering the ‘profession’ of ‘FE educator’. The research is carried out with those currently working as educators undertaking recognised teaching qualifications through part‐time, in‐service training at either C&G Stage 1 & 2 Combined or PGCE/Cert. Ed. level, at a large college of FE. The conflicting notions of the role of the educator in FE held by researchers in the sector are initially discussed and later compared with the views of the new learner‐educators. The research itself, which is the initial part of a larger study, focuses on the identification of preconceptions of the role of the educator held by educators new to the FE environment and their emotional responses to being in the position of educator. It is carried out through the construction of image‐based rebuses by individual learner‐educators responding to a series of statements and a subsequent oral deconstruction of the rebus during recorded semi‐structured discussions focusing on their views of their specific role(s) and their more general impressions of the educators' role in FE. The investigation identifies a number of key common strands among the opinions expressed by those involved in the study and looks at the impact that the role has on new educators at both a personal and professional level and the potential effect that this may have on the future development of the profession itself.     

历时文本中宗教词汇翻译比较——以《汤姆叔叔的小屋》三个汉译本为例

《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中的宗教情结是小说的显著特征。以小说不同时期的三个汉译本为例,采用描述性与解释性相结合的方法,对比分析小说中宗教词汇的翻译。结果表明:宗教词汇的理解与解释深受译者特定的历史阶段和自我视域的影响,是译者发挥主观能动性从而和原作者以原作为中心的动态阐释过程。     

THE CHURCH AND THE COLLEGE STUDENT

Katharine Drexel was an important educator who taught profound lessons to the Roman Catholic Church and American society about the responsibility of privilege and the irresponsibility of prejudice. As a professed nun dedicated to the education of Black and Native Americans, she taught both intentionally and by example. Religious educators, seeking to educate for peace and justice, often point to Katharine's life work as an example of the application of Catholic social teaching. This article argues that Katharine's educational import in regards to Catholic social teaching goes much deeper than the concrete examples of her life's work. By studying Katharine's life, religious educators can illustrate the foundational attitudes and habits necessary for the principle of social justice to take root. This will be articulated in terms of underlying emphases found in aspects of Katharine's story: emphasis on totality, on clarity of vision and purpose, on evangelization, on family ethical formation, on moral education, and on Eucharistic spirituality. A corresponding action for religious educators will be suggested.     

The recruitment of religious as teachers: a case study from 1960s Australia

Historical expositions on the teaching religious in Catholic schools can be seen as constituting models aimed at promoting reflection on the possibility that teaching can be influenced by discourses of ‘vocation’ and ‘the giving of service’, every bit as much as it can be by ‘industrial’ and ‘labour’ perspectives. This paper is offered as one contribution to opening up debate on the matter. It provides an overview of the work of the teaching religious in the English‐speaking world from the middle of the 1850s to the latter half of the twentieth century. Particular practices adopted by the Church aimed at recruiting young males and females to join the ranks of the teaching religious are then outlined. Finally, a film entitled Profession in Christ, which was produced by the (Irish) Christian Brothers Order in Australia in the early 1960s for use by their special ‘recruiting agents’ as they traveled around Catholic schools ‘questing’ for recruits, is analysed.     

Developing different identity trajectories: lessons from the Chinese teachers

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate how three Chinese teachers developed their teacher identities in a reform context. Drawing upon data from a larger social historical study, the work-life narratives of the three teachers at different stages of their careers were used as case studies to showcase three types of teacher identity development trajectories, namely, learning to be both professional educator and subject teaching expert，learning to be subject teaching expert, and navigating to balance between educator and subject teacher. This study also investigated the factors that influence identity development trajectories of teachers and develops a conceptual framework for understanding teacher identity development in China. The framework shows that Chinese teachers’ exertion of their individual agency is embedded in the institutional context. Meanwhile, interpersonal relationships can work as a buffer to alleviate the tension between the institution and individual teachers. The study also shows the ways in which Chinese teachers’ exert their agency when developing their identities. The findings have significant implications for teacher education in terms of how to develop positive teacher identity over the course of a teacher’s career.