Since the enactment of the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act in New Zealand in 1975, leadership in Catholic schools has become increasingly complex. Under the legislation Catholic schools are required to develop and maintain their "Special Character." The Director of Religious Studies (DRS) has become the position with a key…

Children and young people have the inalienable right to be part of a learning community. Nobody can learn on his/her own. Education is always a communal enterprise. In this article the concept of the "spiritual learning community" is developed as a contemporary answer to the socioeducational issues raised by Martin Buber and John Dewey…

This article discusses what kinds of religious education led to the improvement of women's status and the realization of higher education for women in modern Japan, by reconsidering the educational views of Jinzo Naruse (1859-1919), both a pioneer of Japanese women's education and a promoter of the Concordia movement (1912-1941), within…

This review examines seven scholarly, high quality publications on Jewish religious education that have appeared in the past decade and that are also accessible for various forms of readers. The books in question represent the best in the academic study of Jewish education, and they share the virtue of being engaging and useful resources for a…

This article attempts to demonstrate similarities between the socioeconomic, cultural, and religious contexts of 18th-century England and 21st-century Canada. Revisiting the Sunday School movement in 18th-century England provides insights for the development of renewed Sunday School models in the current Canadian context of transnational…

This article reviews the history of public religious education in the United States with an eye to its learning outcomes, contexts, and approaches. That history suggests that public religious education is still needed today but that informal learning contexts may be more appropriate than public schools. Recent trends in learning habits are then…

This article provides an outline historical-educational analysis of the King James Bible from its 1611 publication through to its four-hundredth anniversary commemoration in 2011. With particular focus on England, the article traces the educational impact of the King James Bible and charts, in the country of its origin, its progressive decline in…

In popular understanding, the late Middle Ages has been viewed as a time of relative religious ignorance for both laity and clergy. Recent scholarship is indicating a more knowledgeable and vigorous faith experience in this time period. This article examines the major educational ministry renewal of the church in England following the Fourth…

This article uses the lens of critical discourse analysis to examine the religious education efforts of the Newfoundland School Society (NSS), the main provider of religious education in Newfoundland in the 19th century. Although its focus was initially this colony, the NSS quickly broadened its reach to the whole British empire, making it one of…

This article explores interreligious education from the perspective of John Dewey's educational philosophy. Keenly aware that twentieth-century individuals and societies would have an expanding plurality of experiences, Dewey proposed a democratic educational philosophy able to account for life in a pluralistic world. Three interconnected themes…

The aim of this article is to present a unique corpus of film-recorded classroom observations of sixth-grade classes (age 12-13) in the Swedish cities of Gothenburg, Partille and Trollhättan in the late 1960s. The material documents how RE could be taught in Swedish schools in line with the curriculum of Lgr 62 which internationally was an early…

This paper presents data gathered in interviews with 29 informants in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan, China--an administrative region with Theravada Buddhist religious identity. The data highlight tensions between the traditional faith-based education provided by Theravada Buddhist temple schools and secular state education. The…

In England and Wales, religious education (RE) in non-faith schools has gradually changed from Christian education to the study of many religions and philosophies. However, the core values of RE have continued to be related to concerns about social cohesion and the building of shared values. The article briefly discusses changes in RE since 1944…

The Canadian province of Alberta is a jurisdiction where religious pluralism is fostered within the public school system. This article is a case study of that phenomenon that briefly reviews the genesis, denouement, and resurrection of Protestant education in Alberta's public schools. Warranted by Alberta's 1988 "alternative school" legislation,…

This historical study focuses on how John Dewey's theory of education as socialization and Mordecai Kaplan's theory of Judaism as a civilization together served as an ideological base and pedagogical framework for the creation of "progressive," "reconstructed" American Jewish school programs in the early 20th century (1910s-1930s). In the main,…