FUNDAMENTALISM AS A CHALLENGE FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

“. . . human experience is shaped, molded, and in a sense constituted by cultural and linguistic forms. There are numberless thoughts we cannot think, sentiments we cannot have, and realities we cannot perceive unless we learn to use the appropriate symbol systems ... to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system of a given religion.” — George Lindbeck ^{1 1}George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), 34.

“My child is not learning anything. All they do in there is play.” — disgruntled parent after observing a preschool church school class.

     

SEEING WHAT IS NOT THERE YET: SOPHIA LYON FAHS,ENTELECHY, AND THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

This article offers a brief theological biography of Sophia Lyon Fahs, a religious educator whose life and work unfolded during the first seven decades of the Religious Education Association and reflected many of the identity-bearing modalities that continue to give shape and continuity to the organization. In 1972, Boardman Kathan, the General Secretary of the Religious Education Association, described Fahs as “one of the truly great pioneers of religious education in the 20th century, in the company of Harrison Elliott, Frank McMurry and George Albert Coe.” ^{2 2} Boardman Kathan, “A Pioneer Religious Educator: Sophia Lyon Fahs at 95, an interview,” UU World (February 1, 1972). Fahs anticipated many theological challenges to religious education that were ahead of her time. ^{3 3} Within the text of this article all quotes appear as they were originally written. No attempt has been made by the author to alter the quotes for the purpose of rendering them gender inclusive. Radically inclusive in all aspects of her theology and philosophy, it is evident that Sophia Lyon Fahs was following the literary style of her time and in no way intended gender exclusivity.

     

THE BLURRING OF CHILDHOOD AND THE MEDIA

Time is not lost, I deem, in bewailing and mourning our fate when answering tears stand ready in the listener's eye.

Prometheus Bound ^{1 1} Lynch's 1970 work, Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular, explores in three “acts” two pivotal questions that run throughout most of his works: “What is the place of the secular in a totally religious world?” and “What is the place of the sacred in an overwhelmingly secular world?” (p. 15). On page 49 he refers particularly to Images of Hope with these words: “In an earlier book, on hope, I tried to sketch a path of approximation to innocence for the mentally ill. There it was a matter of taking away from the sick the burden of finding a one, nonexistent right way in all situations, an inscrutable way of the will of God, that would come from outside our own wishes and would condition all of these wishes. There is no greater torment than this kind of endless, external search for innocence. We must restore the primacy of man as a wishing being who, as long as he is within reality, creates the right thing by the absolute unconditionality of his own wishing. This wish does not have to go out of itself.” Ironically, he wanted Christ and Prometheus entitled “In Search of Innocence” (p. 36). Presumably, the editors prevailed.

     

The best of both worlds: a critical pedagogy of place∗

Taking the position that “critical pedagogy” and “place‐based education” are mutually supportive educational traditions, this author argues for a conscious synthesis that blends the two discourses into a critical pedagogy of place. An analysis of critical pedagogy is presented that emphasizes the spatial aspects of social experience. This examination also asserts the general absence of ecological thinking demonstrated in critical social analysis concerned exclusively with human relationships. Next, a discussion of ecological place‐based education is offered. Finally, a critical pedagogy of place is defined. This pedagogy seeks the twin objectives of decolonization and “reinhabitation” through synthesizing critical and place‐based approaches. A critical pedagogy of place challenges all educators to reflect on the relationship between the kind of education they pursue and the kind of places we inhabit and leave behind for future generations.

“Place + people = politics.”—Williams (2001 Williams, T. 2001. Red: Passion and patience in the desert, New York: Pantheon Books.  [Google Scholar], p. 3)     

A Breadth‐First Introductory Curriculum in Computing

This article identifies strengths and weaknesses in the introductory course sequence in computing, ^{1 1}Read as “computer science,” “computer science and engineering”, or any similar title. View all notes and proposes an alternative sequence using a “breadth‐first” approach. This approach integrates theoretical material, includes scheduled laboratory work, and covers a broad range of subject matter in the discipline of computing. We also summarize our early experience teaching the first course in this sequence.

     

A SYSTEMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS RELATIVE TO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

“The accent in cultural history is on close examin‐ ation — of texts, of pictures, and of actions — and an open‐mindedness to what those examinations will reveal, rather than on elaboration of new master narratives.”

Lynn Hunt (Ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), p. 22.

“[Films] are a legitimate way ... of representing, interpreting, thinking about and making meaning from the traces of the past ... that seriously deals with the relationship of past and present.”

Robert A. Rosenstone (Ed.), Revisioning History (Princeton, N.J., 1995), p. 3.

One of postmodernism's major lines of development collapses the boundaries and hierarchical distinctions between elite or academic culture and popular culture, giving us new opportunities to cross boundaries separating history from literature and the arts, the “academic” from the “popular”, the archival from the imaginative. I embrace the freedom that postmodernism offers to entertain new ideas, play different kinds of language games, challenge established “ways of seeing”.

I propose here that we extend the range of what we regard as historical “source” to include film, and that film be accepted by historians of education as a legitimate form of textual representation and important evidentiary “source” for our exploration and interpre‐ tation of culture and of education. What follows is an attempt at integrating film into the historiography of education. For illustrative purposes, I've chosen Peter Weir's “Dead Poets Society” ("DPS”, 1989) for my text. I don't presume to give “the” meaning of “DPS” for understanding recent American educational history, but to suggest some of its possible meanings, which, given the problematic nature of “meaning” in our postmodern epoch, is about all we can hope for, but which may be enough to continue the conversation about movies after the movie is over.     

LINKÖPING: 33RD MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE COMMITTEE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

The 33rd Meeting of the Council of Europe Committee for Higher Education and Research (CHER) was held in Linköping (Sweden) from 12 to 14 May 1976. The main points of discussion were the following: - the position of modern language lectors abroad;

- the setting up of advisory committees for medical and pharmaceutical edu.cation;

- multi-media distant study systems;

- admission to tertiary education (early selection at secondary-school level, attitudes of students and parents as a result of new admission rules, role of working life experience in admission, consequences for higher education resulting from new admission rules);

- financial aid to students;

- education in science and technology and research careers (attitudes to the study of science and technology, ageing of the research population);

- teacher education (creation of an association for teacher education in Europe, current trends);

- situation of and trends in tertiary education;

- progress report of the Secretariat . (special project mobility, equivalence of diplomas, curriculum re- o form and development);

- CHER programme of work for 1977 and 1978.

     

Discplacing identity – placing aesthetics: early childhood literacy in a globalized world

ABSTRACT

‘How to give brain and body to the multiple pack that we already are or are becoming: how, in other words, are we to make sensible (auditory, visually and affectively) the time before “I think” and “We think” that we cannot plan, control or know, but simply experiment with, which is the “time of the city” and nothing else?’ (Rajchman, 2010 Rajchman, J. (2010). Perceptions of the city. In Helena Mattsson & Sven-Olov Wallenstein (Eds.), Deleuze och mångfaldens veck [Deleuze and the fold of multiplicity] (pp. 21–40). Stockholm: Axl Books. [Google Scholar], p. 39)

These powerful words constitute the starting point for this article that argues that, within the context of early childhood literacy in a globalized and ‘multicultural’ world, we need to experiment with new ways of understanding identity and language through amalgamating early childhood pedagogy and didactics with aesthetics. Such an endeavour needs to take place beyond ‘the indignity of speaking for the other’ (Deleuze, 2004 Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert islands and other texts 1953–1974. Edited by d. Lapoujade. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). [Google Scholar], p. 208) and beyond the constructed categories that have been attributed to children in the name of one or another minority group. Through vivid examples and theoretical movements taking place within the research project ‘The Magic of Language’ we propose to shift focus – from the identifying and categorizing of individuals, as well as from the epistemological violence performed in the name of recognition and linguistic representation – to aesthetic experimentation and to the place of experiments. A ‘time of the city’ is also a ‘time of the place’ and in this article we are arguing for the importance of aesthetic experimenting with that place.     

A Nontraditional Teacher's Experience after Student Teaching: Implications for Early Childhood Teacher Education

Introducing critical pedagogies into undergraduate early childhood teacher education programs may enable working class teachers who work with working class children to better examine assumptions of developmentally and culturally appropriate practices. This study focuses on a Latino assistant teacher who, after having returned from a semester of student teaching, attempted to cultivate an ethos of professional interaction among his peers. His ability to name, challenge and ultimately reject inappropriate ideologies and practices (Bartolomé, 2004 Bartolomé, L. I. 2004. Critical pedagogy and teacher education: Radicalizing perspective teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1): 97–122.  [Google Scholar]) are coupled with his concern for his children and his community. Illustrating Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence's definitions of “quality” and “meaning making,” (2001) this study also considers ways in which administrators and teacher educators can respond to and support teachers who return to their jobs after their student-teaching experiences.     

CONSTRUCTIVISM AND EDUCATION: MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Constructivism is a popular concept in contemporary teacher education programs. However, a genuine concern arises with the concept's application because many teachers and teacher educators claim that knowledge is constructed, without appreciating the epistemological and pedagogical implications such a claim entails. This article employs Phillips' (1995) Phillips, D. C. 1995. The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher, 24(7): 5–12. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] analytic framework that divides the pedagogical applications of constructivism into three distinct categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Reviewing the constructivist epistemologies of Dewey and Vygotsky also enables the exploration of how constructivism might inform both our understanding of the impediments students confront when learning new knowledge and our understanding of general constructivist pedagogical practices. The primary objective in this article is to provide teacher educators and teachers with a richer understanding of constructivism—its limitations and its strengths—while offering concrete pedagogical strategies for its classroom application.     

Signature pedagogies in support of teachers’ professional learning

Signature pedagogies [Shulman, L. 2005 Shulman, L. 2005. “Signature Pedagogies in the Professions.” Daedalus 134 (3): 52–59. doi: 10.1162/0011526054622015[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. “Signature pedagogies in the professions.” Daedalus 134 (3): 52–59.] are a focus of teacher educators seeking to improve teaching and teacher education. The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary common language of signature pedagogies for teacher professional development (PD). In all, 24 papers from the study of physical education PD projects with clearly articulated pedagogical objectives and documentation on achieving those objectives were included in the analysis. In total 479 teachers and 48 facilitators across the US and Europe were interviewed and/or surveyed. Three discrete PD signature pedagogies holding potential to enhance teacher growth and learning within the context of PD were identified: critical dialogue (process of acquiring knowledge through communicative interactions), public sharing of work (testing out practices in classrooms and share ideas with larger audiences), and communities of learners (collective learning around a shared concern or a passion). It is our hope in providing the beginnings of a common vocabulary for pedagogies of teacher professional learning we have encouraged additional steps toward developing signature pedagogies for learning across different PD settings and content areas.     

An Anthology of Voices: an Analysis of Trainee Drama Teachers’ Monologues

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on research undertaken into the processes through which student teachers begin to formulate an identity as a professional teacher. Using Fuller's investigations into the attitudes of trainee teachers towards their courses (1969) as a baseline, a discussion is established on the place of the student voice in contemporary initial teacher training programmes. In order to further investigate the potential importance of affording student teachers the opportunity to reflect on and express their thinking and feeling as they embark on their chosen career path, the concerns of a group of student drama teachers were recorded and interpreted. The vehicle for this exercise involved writing and subsequently performing reflective monologues. These were analysed by using The Listening Guide as composed by Gilligan et al. (2003 Gilligan, C., Spencer, R., Weinberg, M. K. and Bertsch, T. 2003. “On the Listening Guide: a voice-centered relational model”. In Qualitative Research in Psychology Edited by: Camic, P. M., Rhodes, J. E. and Yardley, L. 157–172.  [Google Scholar]). This paper illustrates how the methodology revealed distinct yet generally harmonious voices at work in the group in the first few weeks of their training year. Subsequent analysis suggests a model for the initial formation of a teaching identity built on aspects of self, role and character. Recognising the relative values and relationships between these factors for student teachers may, it is argued, provide greater security for them while affording their tutors insights which could help them to re‐shape initial teacher training programmes.     

English with day release classes

‘We may assert that thought is possible without language, but that the educator would be well advised to assume that it is not.’

(From Thought and Language, P. B. Ballard.)

‘A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.’

(From A Defence of Poetry, P. B. Shelley.)

‘A school's motto might well be: “To hell with thought! How do you feel?”’

(From Hearts not Heads in the School, A. S. Neill.)

     

THE CHESTER CASE

Broad (1999) Broad, B. 1999. “Facing our professional others: Border crossing in teacher education”. In Preparing a nation's teachers: Models for English and foreign language programs, Edited by: Franklin, P., Laurence, D. E. and Welles, E. B. 373–379. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.  [Google Scholar] observed that “troubled borders crisscross the geography of teacher preparation in English” (p. 373), calling for collaboration where preparation is a university responsibility (Gregorian, 2001 Gregorian, V. 2001. Teacher education must become colleges' central preoccupation. August172001. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp.B7–B8.  [Google Scholar]). This research documents a three-year complex case study that addressed the question: What happens when English, education, and high school faculty cross borders to prepare secondary English teachers to teach in urban schools? This study looked at faculty mentors and preservice teacher mentees as they collaborated on multi-leveled projects to improve teacher preparation of secondary English teachers. Interventions included collaborative seminars, collaborative mentoring, and individual mentoring of preservice English teachers by English, education, and high school faculty. Results indicate that interventions challenged biases of stakeholders, enhanced the quality of teacher preparation, and revised instructional practices of university English and education faculty and preservice teachers. Results indicate that mentees incorporated suggestions made by mentors that reinforced pedagogical content knowledge. Most mentees regarded content mentors favorably, noting that their focus of observation was different from those of clinical supervisors and cooperating teachers. English and education mentors assimilated changes in personal pedagogy based on observations and discussions with urban high school teachers. Such discussions also challenged personal beliefs about urban students and schools. Content mentors also adjusted syllabi to include materials used in high school curricula. The implication of this study is that “crossing borders” improves and alters how university faculty can better prepare preservice teachers.     

Pedagogy and Post-coloniality: Teaching “Education” online

The academic study of Education1 1. A capital E is used when Education refers to Education as an academic subject or discipline. A lower case e is used to refer to education as a process. View all notes (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of “contrapuntal reading” with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course directly confront the fact of their everyday involvement in their object of study, Education. How do the questions raised by post-colonial and other critical social writers “appear” from such a position? How does the fact of our involvement complicate our theoretical or scientific knowledge of these? By means of an episodic, narrative form of writing, this paper describes a life history pedagogy for teaching a compulsory “social issues” course online to New Zealand pre-service teacher education students. As data I draw on online conversations with and between students as they engage in the production of contextualized life history interview narratives.     

THE BEGINNING AND END OF YOUTH IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 1

Scholars like J.H. Van den Berg and P. Ariès ^{2 2}J.H. Van den Berg, Metabletica of leer der veranderingen (Nijkerk, 1956); P. Aries, L'enfant et la vie familiale sous I'ancien régime (Paris, 1960). — not professional historians by origin — introduced a dramatic innovation in historical approaches. Influenced by their pioneering research on children in the past, many modern psychologists, sociologists or historians don't consider childhood (or youth, old age, maternal love...) as a natural, universal, ageless and self‐evident “phenomenon “ anymore. For F. Musgrove, for example, the concept of youth as a separate age of man is fairly recent. This sociologist expresses his opinion in a radical way: “The adolescent as a distinct species is the creation of modern social attitudes and institutions. A creature neither child nor adult, he is a comparatively recent socio‐psycho/ogi‐cal invention, scarcely two centuries old. [...] The adolescent was invented at the same time as the steam engine. The principal architect of the latter was Watt in 1765, of the former Rousseau in 1762”. ^{3 3}F. Musgrove, Youth and the Social Order (London, 1968²) 13 ff. ("Making adolescents") and 33 ff. ("The invention of the adolescent").

Such statements are a simplification of historical reality. The view of A. Kriekemans is more balanced: depending on the cultural environment, the term “youth “ may cover a different period of life and may be more or less complicated, involving varying levels of conflict, having its own identity, its own way of living, its own status, and its own expectations. ^{4 4}A. Kriekemans, Geschiedenis van de jeugdpsychologie (Tielt‐Den Haag, 1967) p. 298. Let us apply these. words to Roman antiquity and examine the place of youth in the human life span as well as the circumstances which made possible its existence as a separate entity. Before starting the exposition itself, it should be noted that we are dealing with upper‐class youth (we know a/most nothing about youth in the lower classes) and with the young man (girls mostly married between the ages of 12 and 15 and there was no real interval between childhood and adulthood).

     

Individual Perseverance: A theory of home tutors’ management of schooling in isolated settings

This article reports a study of parents’ management of the education of primary school‐aged children in their care in remote and rural locations of Western Australia. It presents a theory of the ways in which these parents, in the role of home tutors, “manage” the schooling of their children in a distance education regime in isolated settings. The home tutors in this study were mothers in families isolated by physical distance from centres in Western Australia, which usually provide educational, medical, financial, and retail services. In this environment, at the time of data collection, schooling was supported by print, that is, “sets” of learning materials, and by a regular schedule of interactive lessons through Schools of the Air when atmospheric conditions permitted. The conditions of outback Western Australia “present some of the worst conditions for use of electronic equipment” (Tomlinson, Schooling in rural Western Australia: The ministerial review of schooling in rural Western Australia. Perth, Australia: Education Department of Western Australia, 1994 Tomlinson, D. 1994. Schooling in rural Western Australia: The ministerial review of schooling in rural Western Australia, Perth, , Australia: Education Department of Western Australia.  [Google Scholar], p. 91). Moreover, the nature of station life on isolated sheep or cattle properties (stations) is such that mothers frequently have multiple and sometimes conflicting roles (that is, cook, housekeeper, station hand, business partner, accountant, first aid officer, wife, mother, and teacher). This qualitative study was concerned with how parents “manage” their schoolroom work as “home tutors,” using grounded theory techniques for gathering and analysing data. The term “manage” comes from the theoretical framework of symbolic interaction (Blumer, Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969 Blumer, H. 1969. Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.  [Google Scholar]), and in this article refers specifically to the ways in which the home tutors juggle their multiple roles.     

Pedagogy as a discipline: emergence,sustainability and professionalisation

In recent years, the emergence of pedagogy in higher education as an increasingly professionalised endeavour has been observed by a number of writers. In this article, I argue that pedagogy is developing the characteristics of a discipline, with its own methodologies, sense of community, and power dynamics. Whilst in principle, I welcome the formation of a discipline of higher education pedagogy, I warn against the danger that pedagogy will become increasingly divorced from the classroom context. I also call for those working in this discipline to develop and promote critical pedagogies that seek to challenge existing ‘safe systems’ (Guilherme & Phipps (2004 Guilherme, M. and Phipps, A. 2004. “Introduction: why languages and intercultural communication are never just neutral”. In Critical pedagogy: political approaches to language and intercultural communication, Edited by: Phipps, A. and Guilherme, M. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.  [Google Scholar]) Critical pedagogy: political approaches to language and intercultural communication (Clevedon, Multilingual Matters)) in order to guard against pedagogy merely being a service unit, serving the whims of government, funding councils and institutions.     

The places of pedagogy: or,what we can do with culture through intersubjective experiences

Beginning by highlighting considerations of the intersections among social and ecological issues and the recent diversification of critical pedagogy, this paper suggests means by which approaches such as Gruenewald’s (2003 Gruenewald, D.A. 2003. The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4): 3–12. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) “critical pedagogy of place” can be expanded to accommodate a broader range of possible places of pedagogy. The paper is centrally concerned with what happens when we consider socio‐ecological learning, not as occuring via cognitive critique or embodied place‐based experience, but rather as taking place in between the thought and the sensed via a range of intersubjective experiences. It suggests that these intersubjective locations that comprise the “where” of the learning of the student can be particular physical places, but can also be in and of experiences of friendship, art, literature, irony, cultural difference, community. By expanding our possible repertoire of “pedagogical arts,” or the range of intersubjective places and spaces of pedagogy engaged, we are able to conceptualise and practise education in ways that enable a deeper connection to place but also opportunities for other modes and outcomes of student learning. In particular, the paper outlines the possibilities for learning and cultural formation enabled by spaces of collective youth engagement.     

Entre philanthropie et politique: La Société Générale des Prisons

If we consider the shape of the criminal field during the Third Republic, we observe quite a sophisticated architecture which is due to the creation of intermediary spaces such as the Conseil supérieur des prisons or the Société générale des prisons. As a laboratory for criminal law, the Société established itself as a kind of private and extra‐parliamentary commission, permanently in session. Consideration of these spaces will enable us to reflect upon the sociopolitical ways of elaborating law, the networks of social reform or public action and the different development “schemes” of the political aspects in the criminal domain. ^{1 1}Bruno Jobert, “L'Etat en action, l'apport des politiques publiques”, Revue Française de Science Politique XXXV (1985), pp. 654–682; Id., “Représentations sociales, controverses et débats dans la conduite des politiques publiques”, Revue Française de Science Politique, XLII (1992), pp. 219–234; Id., “Mode de médiation sociale et politiques publiques, le cas des politiques sociales”, L'Année sociologique, (1996), pp. 155–178.