'Pedagogies of Religious Education' brings together in a single volume the most important and influential research and developmental work in R.E. undertaken in the past twenty-five years. For the first time, it provides trainee and practising teachers of RE in primary and secondary schools with an invaluable resource for acquiring an informed understanding of the range of styles of learning and teaching which are available to them.
This text offers a critical view of approaches to the treatment of different religions in contemporary education, in order to devise approaches to teaching and learning and to formulate policies and procedures that are fair and just to all.
Meditation and the Classroom inventively articulates how educators can use meditation to educate the whole student. Notably, a number of universities have initiated contemplative studies options and others have opened contemplative spaces. This represents an attempt to address the inner life. It is also a sign of a new era, one in which the United States is more spiritually diverse than ever before. Examples from university classrooms and statements by students indicate benefits include increased self-awareness, creativity, and compassion. The religious studies scholars who have contributed to this book often teach about meditation, but here they include reflections on how meditation has affected them and their teaching. Until recently, though, even many religious studies professors would find sharing meditation experiences, let alone teaching meditation techniques, a breach of disciplinary and academic protocols. The value of teaching meditation and teaching about meditation is discussed. Ethical issues such as pluralism, respect, qualifications, power and coercion, and avoiding actual or perceived proselytization are also examined. While methods for religious studies are emphasized, the book provides valuable guidance for all those interested in this endeavor.
Critical Religious Education in Practice serves as an accessible handbook to help teachers put Critical Religious Education (CRE) into practice. The book offers straightforward guidance, unpicking some of the key difficulties that teachers encounter when implementing this high-profile pedagogical approach. In-depth explanations of CRE pedagogy, accompanied by detailed lesson plans and activities, will give teachers the confidence they need to inspire debate in the classroom, tackling issues as controversial as the authority of the Qur’an and the relationship between science and religion. The lesson plans and schemes of work exemplify CRE in practice and are aimed at empowering teachers to implement CRE pedagogy across their curriculum. Additional chapters cover essential issues such as differentiation, assessment, the importance of subject knowledge and tips for tackling tricky topics. The accompanying resources, including PowerPoint presentations and worksheets, are available via the book’s companion website. Key to developing a positive classroom culture and promoting constructive attitudes towards Religious Education, this text is essential reading for all practising and future teachers of Religious Education in secondary schools.
In today’s pluralistic world, many cultures feel a shift in the relationship of people with religious traditions. A corresponding movement is a resurgence of interest in human spirituality. This Handbook presents the views of education scholars who engage these concepts every day, in a collection of essays reflecting the international state of the discipline. Out of these rises a vision for the emergence of a just and peaceful world.
This book discusses the possibility of a holistic approach to religious education, taking into account religious and cultural diversity, different aspects of secularisation and different academic disciplines that inform the subject. Issues discussed are the view of children as spiritual and religious subjects, identity formation, the concept of child theology, the relationship between faith and morality, the meaning of spirituality, the notion of wonder as an inroad to learning, religion as culture, and the meaning of holism. A point of departure is taken in a typology of attitudes to religion in public education, and the line of reason ends in a search for viable metaphors for holistic religious education. Sturla Sagberg (born 1951) is professor of religious education and ethics at Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education in Trondhem, Norway. He has a doctoral degree in theology, and has for many decades taught and done research related to teacher training as well as to church education. He has published several books in Norwegian, of which the latest translates into Religion, Values and Formation: Children and the big questions in life. Many of his articles in books and journals are written in English.
This book unites and explores different approaches to understand and develop knowledge-based religious education. While the importance of methodological issues in RE is understood and acknowledged, the editors and contributors interrogate what kind of knowledge should be explored, how this knowledge is defined and what the consequences would be. Subsequently, the book focuses on the concept of powerful knowledge which transcends students' everyday experiences, and how it can be incorporated into the RE curriculum. Drawing together international research from RE teaching and learning, the book explores various paths to integrate a truly knowledge-based religious education. The book will appeal to students and scholars of religious education, sociology of education and the philosophy of religion.
For the first time, leading scholars in Religious Education and Citizenship Education reflect upon ‘the making of’ of their theoretical framework, in honour of Siebren Miedema. In this Liber Amicorum, in retrospect these scholars recognize, implicitly or more explicitly, ‘critical incidents’ and they honour ‘critical persons’ for the decisive voice each of them had in the articulation of the theoretical frame of reference the scholars developed in the field of pedagogy of religion(s) and citizenship education. Or, to use the words Siebren Miedema prefers, the field of religious citizenship education. The ‘eminence grise’ in the field of Pedagogy is brought together in this volume, like John Hull, Bob Jackson and Wolfram Weisse; scholars from the United States of America like Jack Seymour and Mary Elizabeth Moore; scholars from Latin America like Günther Dietz; scholars from the Netherlands like Cok Bakker, Chris Hermans, Henk Kuindersma, Alma Lanser, Wilna Meijer, Bram de Muynck and Doret de Ruyter; scholars from Western Europe like Hans-Günther Heimbrock and Friedrich Schweitzer; scholars from Eastern Europe like Fedor Kozyrev; scholars from up North like Geir Skeie; scholars from down South like Cornelia Roux and Marian De Souza. They all responded to the question of the editor, Ina ter Avest, to reflect upon the relationship between their biography and their developed theoretical framework. For everybody interested in the field of religious citizenship education, this volume offers a thorough introduction to their theories. We hope this comprehensive book will provoke readers to balance on the edge of different perspectives and to stimulate the development of their own line of thought on religious citizenship education.
Teaching Religion and Literature provides a practical engagement with the pedagogical possibilities of teaching religion courses using literature, teaching literature classes using religion, and teaching Religion and Literature as a discipline. Featuring chapters written by award winning teachers from a variety of institutional settings, the book gives anyone interested in providing interdisciplinary education a set of questions, resources, and tools that will deepen a classroom’s engagement with the field. Chapters are grounded in specific texts and religious questions but are oriented toward engaging general pedagogical issues that allow each chapter to improve any instructor’s engagement with interdisciplinary education. The book offers resources to instructors new to teaching Religion and Literature and provides definitions of what the field means from senior scholars in the field. Featuring a wide range of religious traditions, genres, and approaches, the book also provides an innovative glimpse at emerging possibilities for the sub-discipline.
