This article reports on an investigation into the retention of secondary religious education teachers trained at one institution over a ten-year period. The initial hypothesis was that many of these teachers would no longer be teaching, or would no longer be teaching religious education. However, the authors found that a high percentage of…

Educators seek to nurture in the hearts and minds of students a sense of moral thinking, action and behaviour. What these constitute is dependent on one's perspective, or worldview. Moral thinking and action emerge from worldviews or visions of life--religious or secular. In the history of common or public schools educators have linked moral…

Catholic elementary education in the US is undergoing a radical transformation in terms of its mechanisms of financial support and governance structures. This article explores the dynamics, dating back to the 1950s, that have precipitated these changes, provides a description of the new funding and governance models, and provides a limited…

Questions about the relationship between religion and politics are discussed with particular focus on the consequences for religious education. Norway is taken as an example of a country where increasing cultural diversity challenges traditional politics of religion. In the present climate of conflicting views on the role of religion in politics,…

The aim of the present study was to build on John Greer's systematic set of studies concerned with teenage beliefs and values conducted among samples of sixth form students attending County and Protestant voluntary schools in Northern Ireland in 1968, 1978 and 1988. The present study replicated the earlier surveys for a further time in 1998. The…

What kind of perceptions of God do children have? Do they believe in God? Does change take place over time and is there a connection with changes in society? These questions are answered on the basis of texts and surveys involving children between 8 and 12 years of age in Sweden during 2002 and similar material from the years 1969, 1979 and…

The management of curriculum change in religious education is of interest to all who are concerned with a continuing pursuit of excellence in this curriculum area. Utilising a grounded theory approach, this paper describes some findings concerning the management of curriculum change in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia. It reports…

Geoff Teece has recently (in "BJRE", 27, 2005, pp. 29-40) come to the defence of modern religious education and contended that many of the criticisms brought against it are based on mistaken interpretations. More particularly, Teece accuses Andrew Wright of misinterpreting the position of Professor John Hick and of failing to appreciate the…

This paper reports on research on the attitudes of a differentiated sample of students to Catholic schools in general and religious education in particular. Core Catholic youth are described, following Fulton "et al." (2000: "Young Catholics at the New Millennium", Dublin, University College Press), as individuals who have an existing connection…

A nine-country survey of the life orientations, values and institutional trust of 8948 young people at the upper end of the secondary school age range was set up at the University of Wurzburg in the year 2000. Key findings demonstrate that these young people value personal autonomy and are orientated to success in their professional lives and that…

This paper proposes a new instrument designed to distinguish among three ways in which young adolescents respond to familiar passages from the New Testament, defined as literal acceptance, symbolic acceptance and rejection modes. The reliability and validity of this instrument, styled the Loman Index of Biblical Interpretation, was established on…

This article offers a German response to John Hull's recent article on "religious education in Germany and England" (in "BJRE", volume 27, issue 1). The author claims that recent developments have brought religious education in both countries much closer together than in the past and that the differences between the respective systems should be…

Whilst religious education in the present may be seen to assume new roles and be perceived to be more about process than content, questions about content and the ways in which "faiths" are represented cannot ultimately be avoided. This article focuses on recent Agreed Syllabuses with particular reference to the place they give to Christianity and…

This study addresses issues surrounding the recruitment and training of black African religious education teachers within the context of the government's intention to make the teaching profession more representative of the wider community. In relation to this there is a strong emphasis in the Teacher Training Agency's "Qualifying to Teach" on…

This article is based upon data deriving from a questionnaire circulated to all local education authorities in England in Spring 2003. The questionnaire was sent to the chairperson of every Standing Advisory Committee for Religious Education, the statutory body responsible for religious education at a local level. During the past decade there has…