Creating a safe place: SRE teaching as an act of security and identity formation in government schools in Australia

This study seeks to analyse the components that contribute to Special Religious Education (SRE) classes in government schools in Australia being considered as a ‘safe place’ and the ways in which they facilitate an understanding of the students’ own religious and cultural identity. Our research focuses on one of the small faiths, Judaism, as a case study through observation of the Jewish SRE/SRI classes in the two largest Jewish population centres, Sydney and Melbourne. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 90 participants, and classroom observations were undertaken in both cities. This paper draws on Kymlicka’s concept of the rights of minority groups in a liberal society and discusses the distinction between thin and thick multiculturalism. Our findings show that the Jewish SRE teachers implemented Jackson’s interpretive approach, ensuring that the students’ educational experience is meaningful. As a result, they are able to develop their unique identity capital, which is important in a multifaith society to ensure ‘thick’ multiculturalism. Our argument is that students need to have an understanding of their own particularistic identity, as well as learning to respect other religions.     

Converting to belong: immigration,education and nationalisation among young ‘Russian’ immigrant women

The paper examines religious conversion to Judaism among young ‘Russian’ immigrant girls in Israel. Looking into the process of conversion in religious boarding schools for girls only (Ulpana) and in the broader context of the Israeli nation‐state, we examine the strategies the educators contrive in inculcating religiosity among the girls, how they legitimise and facilitate their self‐transformation, and mobilise them to desire a religious subjectivity. At the same time, we study the experiences of the Russian girls in the Ulpana, and the meanings they assign to their conversion as depicted in the personal stories they narrated to us. The paper reveals how the Ulpana operates as a major nationalisation agent that cultivates a path for the girls to belong to the national religious camp, thus assuring their affiliation to Israeli‐Jewish society at large.     

The case of the Jewish High School in Berlin: a denominational school dealing with diversity

The following contribution deals with the conception of Jewish schools in Germany. With regard to the British debate about state funding for religious schools, current developments in the Jewish educational system in Germany will be presented. After this, the constitutional framework for the establishment of denominational schools in Germany will be analysed. The second and major part of the article deals, as a case study, with the Jewish High School in Berlin, which is the only Jewish secondary school in contemporary Germany. In an empirical qualitative approach, the desires and expectations of the pupils in their religious education take centre stage. Before moving to the empirical study, an overview of the history of the Jewish High School, its re‐establishment in 1993 and a profile of the pupils and the school will be provided, in order to understand the special character of this school. The conclusion in the last part raises the question of new directions emerging from a Jewish school which has pupils who are heterogeneous culturally, religiously and socially and which does not react with a strategy of cultural preservation, but with a policy of inter‐religious dialogue.     

School self‐evaluation and the role of a critical friend

School self‐evaluation is receiving increasing attention in England, partly as a result of changes in the Ofsted inspection framework giving greater prominence to what schools can do to speak for themselves. The relationship between internal self‐evaluation and external inspection was a theme in a high profile policy speech made by the Schools Standards Minister, David Miliband, at the North of England Conference in January 2004. As part of a ‘new relationship with schools’ heralded in the speech, Miliband articulated critical friendship in terms of a ‘school improvement partner’. This article draws upon a number of research projects to critique these proposals, especially in respect of the role of a critical friend in school self‐evaluation. Issues discussed include different models of self and external evaluation, the importance of context, and the various ways in which a critical friend can support school self‐evaluation.     

Choosing a faith school in Leicester: admissions criteria,diversity and choice

ABSTRACT

Religion in Britain is in overall decline and ‘no religion’ is growing, but one-third of schools in the State sector in England and Wales are ‘schools with a religious designation’ (‘faith schools’). Historically, these were Protestant and Catholic Church schools, but new faith schools have been established by Churches and other faiths. Governments of all parties have encouraged this development, chiefly on the grounds of increased parental choice and improved quality.

The research presented here provides evidence about the operation of faith schools in the English city of Leicester in 2016, particularly from the perspective of those choosing a school. The main objectives are (1) to indicate the diversity of faith schools, (2) to show how they present themselves to those looking for a school: their admission requirements and level of educational attainment and (3) to reflect on the claim that faith schooling offers more and better choice and quality. Leicester is selected for its size and diversity; it is small enough to study with the resources available to us and is one of the most multi-ethnic and multifaith urban areas in England. Research was carried out between February and July 2016 and offers a snapshot from that year.     

Whose confession? Which tradition? (A preliminary critique of Penny Thompson, 2004)

What does Penny Thompson really want? Reading her article in BJRE 26 (1) proved a baffling experience: it clearly wanted to say something, and to say it passionately, yet signally failed to do so. It fails largely because it lacks an argument; there seems also to be conceptual muddle at its heart. A fuller critique will need to attend to Thompson’s reading of religious education’s history, particularly to her use of evidence—but that is a story for another night. Consequently, this brief critique has at its core four questions to elicit clarity where at present there is none: First, does Penny Thompson want so to revision religious education in community schools that she and other aspirants to ‘Christian confessional religious education’ may freely work to convert young people to ‘Christianity’ and to nurture them in a Christian tradition? Second, in what sense, or senses, does Thompson want readers to understand her phrase, ‘the truth of the Christian faith?’ Third, in whose confession and in which tradition does Thompson want this Christian confessional religious education to be rooted? Fourth, is Penny Thompson willing to allow Christian teachers to present alternative understandings of Christianity, critical of her (implied) view? These questions are preceded by reflection on the form of her article’s argument and on its use of ‘confess’ and its cognates.     

Philosophy and Empirical Evidence: Achieving Vision Through Research

Ben-Avie and Comer describe how Jewish day schools and the Yale Child Study Center’s School Development Program (SDP) share a common agenda regarding the aim of education. The foundational science of education is child development, advocates James P. Comer in such seminal works as School Power (1980) and Waiting For A Miracle (1998). SDP, the educational change initiative founded by Comer, informed the design of the current study, which is an empirical exploration of how the climate of relationships in Jewish day schools impede or promote the process through which children forge a relationship to the Jewish people.     

Regarding art and regarding future teachers regarding art

The 2011 Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector presented Ireland with an opportunity to rethink the issue of patronage in Irish primary schools, as well as to consider how ‘religious education’ might be approached in such schools in the future. This paper suggests that, for the first time since 1831, Ireland had an opportunity to provide ‘state schooling’ for all children, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. The paper proposes educating all children in the state in non-denominational secular settings, leaving faith formation to the private domain of parents and communities. Although the concept of ‘secularism’ has negative connotations for those who belong to a religious community, this paper suggests that it provides a framework for inclusive and egalitarian education, offering children and young people the opportunity to learn alongside their peers, irrespective of religious backgrounds.     

Violence in Schools: Perspectives (and hope) from Galtung and Buber

Research into violence in schools has been growing steadily at an international level, and has shown high degrees of violence at various different levels. Given the seriousness of the problem, finding ways of responding to this issue in schools becomes an imperative for educationists. In this article, we engage with this problem by defending the view that whilst violence might be endemic in schools, there are also real possibilities for working towards different ways of being in relationship in schools. Firstly, we discuss Galtung’s understanding of violence and peace, paying particular attention to his concepts of structural and cultural violence, peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding. Secondly, we connect Galtung’s notions of peacemaking to Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, in order to make a case for an ‘epistemological shift’ which might enable individuals and communities to achieve ‘peace’. Finally, we direct our argument to the education context and put forward some concrete proposals for peacemaking in schools.     

Discrimination, ethnic identity, and academic outcomes of mexican immigrant children: the importance of school context

This study examined ethnic identity, perceptions of discrimination, and academic attitudes and performance of primarily first‐ and second‐generation Mexican immigrant children living in a predominantly White community (N = 204, 19 schools, mean age = 9 years). The study also examined schools’ promotion of multiculturalism and teachers’ attitudes about the value of diversity in predicting immigrant youth’s attitudes and experiences. Results indicated that Latino immigrant children in this White community held positive and important ethnic identities and perceived low overall rates of discrimination. As expected, however, school and teacher characteristics were important in predicting children’s perceptions of discrimination and ethnic identity, and moderated whether perceptions of discrimination and ethnic identity were related to attitudes about school and academic performance.     

‘Cruel Optimism’ and Contemporary Australian Critical Theory in Educational Research

Abstract

‘Cruel optimism’ is a term coined by Lauren Berlant. In conceptualizing this term, Berlant draws on the resources of critical theory to interrogate people’s desires for things they think may improve their lot, but actually act as obstacles to flourishing. This notion may be useful for analysing the current state of education in Australia, and the desire to believe that My School, and the associated data it provides, will enable schools to address social inequalities. For Berlant, the promise of such technologies is problematic because it diverts our attention from important ethical, social and political questions, some of which are highlighted in the contributions to this special issue. Using ‘cruel optimism’ as a point of departure, I interrogate how the notion of critical theory has been conceptualized in educational research by briefly looking at scholarship within and outside education relating to critical theory. Following on from this, I consider how what I am terming critical theory is put to work in each of the articles that make up this special issue on My School.     

Finding the ‘Enunciative Space’ for Teacher Leadership and Teacher Learning in Schools

Drawing on a collaborative Australian Research Council funded project entitled the ‘Teachers’ Learning Project’, the author takes issue with the rhetoric of the ‘learning society’ and, in particular, he interrogates the notion of the learning teacher in a number of schools. He provides a critical examination of the direction of teachers’ work under current technicist reconstruals of it. He draws on case studies to show how some schools have been able to position themselves as moral learning communities which have created vibrant indigenous cultures of learning about themselves, their community and their work in a context of a commitment to democratic and participatory citizenship.     

Good School/Bad School: paradox and fabrication

This paper, drawn from an ESRC‐funded research project, deploys data from one secondary school to raise some general issues about the development of disciplinary technologies of surveillance and uses of performativity in education. It is argued that the use of Total Quality Management, School Development Planning and Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education) Inspections, individually and collectively produce an intensification of teachers’ work, submit teachers more directly to the ‘gaze’ of policy, and encourage schools and teachers to ‘fabricate’ themselves for the purposes of evaluation and comparison. The paper is premised on the argument that schools cannot be represented adequately within research (or evaluation) by simple stories or single essentialising tags; ‘good/bad’, ‘successful/failing’ ‐‐ they are inherently paradoxical institutions.     

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.     

The New School

This paper traces the changing status of the school as a counter culture in the anthropological and historical literature, in particular from the moment when compulsory mass schooling assumed the function of ideological state apparatus in the post‐revolutionary 19^th century West. It then focuses attention on what may be called the New School, which could be said to represent an evolved, postmodern embodiment of the social archetype of the school as interruption of the status quo. It emerged in the form of schools initially associated with Romanticism and with socialist libertarian or ‘anarchist’ impulses, and moved, if temporarily, into the educational mainstream in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the left sector of the Progressive Education movement, proliferated in the 1960s and 70s in various school reform movements, and is a constant presence today in the theory and practice of those schools that identify themselves as ‘democratic’. It is based on principles of adult–child dialogue and direct democratic practice. Examples that we have of the New School tend to be characterised by material and activity environments that value variety, emergence, choice, emotional safety, self‐initiation and self‐organisation; that are multi‐sensorial and polysymbolic; and that are organised on the principles associated with mastery learning, social learning theory and play theory—that is, moderate complexity and optimal cognitive arousal as exemplary conditions for learning.     

The ‘spirit of education’ in Indonesian Pesantren

This paper employs Foucauldian theory to consider Islamic boarding school experiences in Indonesia. For some pupils ‘the spirit of education’ – a dimension of pleasure – comes to be highly valued, creating a lifelong passion for the pursuit of knowledge. Two school principals (both pesantren [Islamic boarding school] graduates themselves) articulated strong commitment to the ‘spirit of education’. Yet their respective boarding schools were very poor, not only by western standards but compared with Indonesian public schools, and conditions were austere. The embodiment of pesantren discourse as high academic achievement is illustrated by the example of Khadija – a young female pesantren graduate now studying at doctoral level in the United Kingdom. Explaining the embodied production of the ‘spirit of education’ demands looking at charismatic pedagogy, strict rules, austere conditions and sparse provision of learning resources as regimes of truth and power–knowledge relations that inhere in pesantren as lived experiences of pupils.     

Intercultural learning in graduate studies at an Israeli college of education: Attitudes toward multiculturalism among Jewish and Arab students

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the factors which affect attitudes towards multiculturalism among Jewish and Arab graduate students who experience intercultural learning in an Israeli-Jewish academic college of education. In Israeli society, it is in higher education institutions where young people from different ethnic groups first encounter the ‘others’. This is due to the structure of the Israeli elementary and secondary education system, which is divided into Jewish and Arab segregated sub-systems. In contrast, the country’s higher education institutions are open to everyone. The research population was composed of first and second year graduate students, all of whom were practicing teachers or involved in other educational work. Participants completed questionnaires and a smaller sample was also interviewed. All of the students are practicing teachers or involved in other educational work. Everyone perceived the college’s socio-cultural climate as an open and multicultural one in both years of study. However, these positive feelings characterized Jewish students to a larger extent than Arab students, while the socio-cultural aspect as well as the quality of the academic experience had a positive impact on multicultural attitudes primarily among Arab students. Thus, a multicultural climate is not enough to effect a positive change in entrenched attitudes toward multiculturalism. Multicultural education policy should also be reinforced through a formal academic curriculum, so as to set an example for ongoing social change which will further encourage graduate students—majority and minority alike—to implement their multicultural positive experiences in their own schools in the future.     

Existential being as transformative learning

In some ways, ‘a culture of the modern consulting room’ may be seen as having been initiated by Freud and followers. Here, social hierarchy, unconscious motivation and the authority of analyst may all be seen as manifestations of professional practice. With the contributions of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, May, Adler, Rogers and others of the existential and humanistic schools, it is argued that ‘transformative learning’ serves as a vehicle to ‘being’. It is not that the classroom becomes a consulting room. Rather, it is suggested that the change and transformation of ‘self’ and ‘being’ (‘Dasein’) are accompaniments of deep, relational learning. As such, they rightly occupy the activities of both classroom and consulting room. Far from being an abstract or irrelevant notion, the ‘existential classroom’ diverges radically from any lack of focus or neglect of ‘subjectivity’. Neither is it a ‘place apart’, as Freud would have it. The learning relationship itself furnishes a model of conviction for all who see; an expression of trust, symbol for community, and the way to Kierkegaard’s notion of self‐defining freedom.     

Science and religion on the blackboard: exploring schoolmasters’ beliefs and practices in Senegal

This article treats the various forms of adjustment between scientific and religious discourses at school. It aims to analyse the beliefs and practices of schoolmasters and to explore how the oppositions between the ‘dominant’ discourses of Western science and those of religion are addressed in secondary education in Senegal. The analysis leans on the Actor-Network-Theory and the concept of ‘apparatus’ from Foucault. The article shows that, in the secular Republic of Senegal, contradictory messages on some sensitive issues are conveyed to pupils, in the classroom, by the official schoolmaster himself. The schoolmasters, whatever their religion, teach for religion in public schools (in a devotional sense); they do not teach about religion (in an academic sense). An ‘enrolment’ work is in progress in the official schools whereby pupils adhere to the ‘true’ religious discourse, challenged by the ‘true’ scientific discourse. The schoolmasters do not want to exclude the official curriculum but wish to teach religious knowledge. The State cannot limit each discourse to its own sphere of relevance and fails to impose its criteria on some actors who prefer those offered by their own religious networks. A Senegalese ‘national religious apparatus’ produces effects on schoolmasters’ educational practices and curriculum.     

The Relationship between the Concepts of ‘Pastoral Care’ and ‘Authority’

Abstract

The term ‘pastor’ clearly has a religious origin and is thought of in connection with providing spiritual sustenance. Such provision must be seen in relation to some concept of authority since the pastor's job could otherwise not be done.

It is likely that the connotation of a pastor in the religious sense has been carried over to the schools, especially when it is considered that schools are traditionally structures of authority.

What is necessary is to insist upon the conceptual link between ‘pastoral care’ and ‘authority’ explicitly, so as to judge the final appropriateness of ‘pastoral care’ in schools.