Narthical religious learning: redefining religious education in terms of pilgrimage

Religious education at school should be more than just the acquisition of knowledge. It should not only provide cognitive facts on how religious people act according to their moral and religious convictions, but also on how learners can gain as much profit as possible from these facts in order to build their own identity as religious ‘tourists’. Good religious education challenges them also to become ‘pilgrims’ and to allow the ‘slow questions’ of religion to enter into their own life, in all their vulnerability and provisionality. This paper discusses the recent orientation towards religious experience in religious didactics in Western Europe and makes out a case for a mystagogical‐communicative or ‘narthical’ approach to religious learning. This argument is presented against the background of individualisation, pluralisation and detraditionalisation of religion, which is the typical context for young people in their search for meaning today.     

Modes of learning in religious education

This article is a contribution to the discussion of learning processes in religious education (RE) classrooms. Sociocultural theories of learning, understood here as tool-mediated processes, are used in an analysis of three RE classroom conversations. The analysis focuses on the language tools that are used in conversations; how the tools mediate; the dynamics they create between pupils and teachers; and how new language tools are created and enrolled. The following three modes of learning are found: distancing, dynamic and expansive. These modes are collectively enacted by teachers and students in the context of the classroom. The article therefore argues that RE classrooms can best be understood as social practices, rather than sums of individual cognition. Empirically, religion is in the making in RE – in the shape of bits, pieces and processes. In the material, however, RE is an educational practice, not a religious practice.     

Whole‐class interactive teaching and learning in religious education: transcripts from four primary classrooms

The UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) documents for religious education indicate two distinct areas for study that may be characterised as teaching about the main faith traditions and tackling puzzling problems. This paper presents a detailed analysis of whole‐class interactive teaching and learning in one session in each of four classrooms. The analysis will present two sessions with younger pupils and two with older pupils. The sessions analysed will reflect the QCA distinctions. The mode of analysis employed focuses at the level of utterance on categories of utterance derived from studies of classroom talk in relation to learning intentions. In discussion we will describe the topography of the lessons and address two key issues, the distinctive features to these religious education sessions and the distinctions between types of lesson.     

思政课教学中教与学的辨证法

本文以社会主义核心价值观为引领,运用唯物辩证法对思政课的教与学进行客观分析:用普遍联系的观点看待师生关系;用发展的观点正视学生的不足;用矛盾的观点看待学生学习的反复。正确处理课程与教材的三组逻辑关系:教材编写的逻辑、教学设计的逻辑与学生思维发展的逻辑的辨证关系,帮助学生全面发展,自觉践行社会主义核心价值观。     

Cultural and religious experiences: do they define teaching and learning for pre‐service teachers prior to teacher education?

This study examines the interaction between indigenous culture and modern religious practices of teaching and learning, and how this contributes towards shaping the preconceptions of teaching, learning, a teacher's role(s), students as learners, and knowledge of three secondary school pre‐service teachers who were just commencing their teacher education program at the only university educating teachers for post‐primary and post‐vocational educational institutions in Papua New Guinea. Data were obtained through a semi‐structured interview questionnaire. Data analysis revealed a dialectical and a mutually constitutive relationship between cultural and religious practices of teaching and learning. This made a significant contribution towards the construction of the three secondary school pre‐service teachers' preconceptions. These practices defined and fashioned the perceptions of teaching and learning the three pre‐service teachers held prior to becoming students of teaching.     

The use of teaching materials in religious education in Sweden: a quantitative analysis of Swedish religious education teachers’ reported use of teaching materials in RE classrooms

Abstract

Recent studies show that religious education (RE) and various media outlets serve as increasingly important arenas for religious socialisation among Swedish youths. At the same time, it has been shown that media material, for example in the form of various news media, often make their way into RE classrooms to be used as materials alongside the more traditional textbooks. However, little quantitative research has been conducted in order to map RE teachers’ selection and use of materials in their classrooms, and what factors are involved in this selection. A nationally representative survey among 1292 RE teachers was conducted, and the results clearly show that textbooks are the most popular form of material, followed by pictures, sacred texts, documentaries, television news and news articles. Out of the relevant background variables, it was primarily school form, age, gender and religiosity that seemed to influence the teachers’ choices of material. The author concludes that familiarity with a certain form of material through personal experiences is a likely explanation for many of the correlations found and that further research is needed in order to explore the potential complexities that arise in the juxtaposition of classroom and media logics.     

Living and learning in the presence of the other: defining religious education inclusively

Recent developments in praxis and theory of religious education point to the growing interest in inclusive forms of didactics. Interreligious learning invites children and young people to deal constructively with religious diversity in the classroom. In this paper, philosophical and theological arguments for inclusive religious education are presented and widened for a learning environment in which people with and without special needs learn in each other’s presence. The experience of radical otherness, of difference and vulnerability of fellow learners, is the starting point to reframe religious didactics, religious pedagogy and theology. It is also the culmination point: radical inclusive religious education ends up with the experience of learning as ‘receiving the gift of friendship’ (Hans Reinders). This framework is helpful to plan different sorts of learning arrangements and to conceive of different sorts of learning relationships, even outside the religious education classroom.     

Faculty learning communities: improving teaching in higher education

Faculty learning communities (FLCs) are collaborative collegial groups of faculty and other teaching staff who are interested in and committed to the improvement of their teaching to accommodate a diverse student population through group discourse, reflection and goal setting. In this article, we describe our FLC experiences that were supported by a federal grant to ensure accessible learning environments on our campus. The project, Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology (EnACT), sought to introduce faculty at a medium‐sized state university to a pedagogical framework to provide universal access to the curriculum for all students and to encourage faculty to adopt accessible technologies. We describe the recruitment process, the FLC meeting structure, our intended outcomes and the challenges we faced in meeting them.     

The use of ICT in teaching religious education in primary school

Education and Information Technologies - The purpose of the present study is to investigate students’ understanding of Religious instruction and more specifically the understanding of the...     

Engineering flexible teaching and learning in engineering education

The key challenges for achieving flexibility in flexible mode programmes in engineering and technology include: the integration of the explicit and implicit content in potentially disparate and isolated study modules across the whole programme curriculum; ensuring the validity and consistency of policies for granting students advanced standing based on recognition for prior learning and workplace experience; developing learning materials and experiences that cater for a wide and diverse audience, while at the same time offering relevance to the individual student in their own context; creating innovative communication environments that bring remote students into both the directed and the discursive discussion that are an important part of the learning process; and the financial and resourcing sustainability of the development, maintenance and delivery of high quality flexible mode engineering and technology study programmes.     

英语教学中的文化教育

在英语教学中,人们对语言与文化关系的错误理解主要表现在两点,一是认为外语教学的主要目的是语言知识的教学;另一点认为目前的教学内容使文化教学难以进行.本文结合对这两个问题的讨论,探讨交际性语言教学中,处理好文化与语言关系的必要性和可能性,并提出一些建议.     

Significant learning in catholic religious education: the case of Temuco (Chile)

ABSTRACT

The object of this article is to reveal the teaching strategies used by teachers for religious education in Temuco, Chile. The paradigm used was qualitative and the design was a single interpretative case study. The data were collected by semi-structured interviews with pupils and religious education (RE) teachers. The results show convergences of successful strategies, such as the use of conversations to form opinions related with the pupils’ everyday interests. We conclude that significant learning for catholic religious education in schools (CRES) includes teaching strategies associated with individual and collective reflections and conversations on topical social issues. Thus, religious education may enable us to advance towards a pluralist approach to the teaching of religion.     

Talking back: teaching and learning through autobiographies in multicultural education

This research essay is intended to situate the curriculum in my multicultural education courses – of talking back through autobiographical inquiry – within real schools, a site where curriculum theorists rarely situate their work. The literature by curriculum theorists that precedes my study generally has focused on how pre-service teachers in multicultural education courses are changed (or not) as a result of course readings, discussions, and critical autobiographical reflection, all of which happen within the confines of the university classroom. My research essay extends the work of curriculum theorists on autobiography in education by focusing on the ways in which pre-service teachers use autobiographical inquiry to reflect on the impact of the context of real public schools and K-12 students on their constructions of themselves as teachers. In my extension of this work, I draw on bell hooks’ notion of “talking back” as an overarching framework in analyzing the autobiographical reflections of pre-service teachers.     

Thinking styles: teaching and learning styles in graduate education students

This study investigated the relationship between two intellectual styles approaches: Sternberg’s thinking styles of teachers and Felder and Silverman’s learning styles. Ninety‐five graduate students majoring in special education, reading, educational leadership and curriculum, and elementary education completed the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (TSTI) and the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (ILS). Several thinking styles from Sternberg’s theory of self‐government were highly to moderately correlated with Felder’s learning styles. The TSTI did not differentiate between master’s and doctoral students, but the ILS did so. Participants differed in their thinking styles in teaching and in their learning styles, based on their educational major.