Schools Of Faith

Provides an accessible overview of the debates, issues and practicalities of faith-based education. It sets out the challenges and opportunities of different approaches to faith schools and addresses the choices faced by parents.

American Evangelicals have long considered Africa a welcoming place for joining faith with social action, but their work overseas is often ambivalently received. Even among East African Christians who share missionaries' religious beliefs, understandings vary over the promises and pitfalls of American Evangelical involvement in public life and schools. In this first-hand account, Amy Stambach examines missionary involvement in East Africa from the perspectives of both Americans and East Africans. While Evangelicals frame their work in terms of spreading Christianity, critics see it as destroying traditional culture. Challenging assumptions on both sides, this work reveals a complex and ever-evolving exchange between Christian college campuses in the U.S., where missionaries train, and schools in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Providing real insight into the lives of school children in East Africa, this book charts a new course for understanding the goals on both sides and the global connections forged in the name of faith.

Faith-based Identity and Curriculum in Catholic Schools examines the relationship between faith-based education and whole curriculum at a time when neoliberal ideologies and market values are having a disproportionate influence on national education policies. Topics addressed include: current challenges and dilemmas faced by Catholic Education leadership; Catholic social teaching and its implications for whole curriculum; the opinions of teachers in Queensland Catholic schools regarding faith-based school identity with particular reference to whole curriculum; an associated comparison of these opinions teachers with those of their USA peers; school identity and Catholic social teaching in Ontario Catholic schools; an action research approach to the integration of Catholic social teaching in Queensland Catholic schools; longitudinal study of the views of pre-service teachers at a Catholic university regarding the purposes and characteristics of Catholic schools. Bringing together professionals and academics from across the world, Faith-based Identity and Curriculum in Catholic Schools will inspire Catholic and other faith-based educators to appreciate the importance and potential of the integration of faith-based perspectives such as countercultural Catholic social teaching across the school curriculum in an educationally appropriate manner.

Inspiring Faith in Schools addresses the privileging of secularism that appears to affect RE in countries influenced by modern western thought. The authors argue that a more engaging form of RE would emerge if religious life were to inhabit centre stage. Currently religious faith is made to hover in the wings awaiting the call to face the inquisitorial challenge of the modern day enquirer. The consequent relationship between pupil and the Divine as the purpose of study is then already intrinsically irreligious, as indicated in the Book of Job by putting God in the dock, whereas it is the pupil who should be (cross-)examining his or her life. What are the ways of exciting and engaging the young so that they begin to entertain the possibility of religious life as a genuine option for themselves? Leading scholars in philosophy and theology from the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA come together to address these questions together with RE experts. Marius Felderhof writes an Afterword summing up the challenges faced by such a re-visioning of RE.

Religious schooling in Canada has been a controversial subject since the secularization of the public school system, but there has been little scholarship on Islamic education. In this ethnographic study of four full-time Islamic schools, Jasmin Zine explores the social, pedagogical, and ideological functions of these alternative, and religiously-based educational institutions. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork and interviews with forty-nine participants, Canadian Islamic Schools provides significant insight into the role and function that Islamic schools have in Diasporic, Canadian, educational, and gender-related contexts. Discussing issues of cultural preservation, multiculturalism, secularization, and assimiliation, Zine considers pertinent topics such as the Eurocentricism of Canada's public schools and the social reproduction of Islamic identity. She further examines the politics of piety, veiling, and gender segregation paying particular attention to the ways in which gendered identities are constructed within the practices of Islamic schools and how these narratives shape and inform the negotiation of gender roles among both boys and girls. A fascinating and informative study of religious-based education, Canadian Islamic Schools is essential reading for educators, sociologists, as well as those interested in Immigration and Diaspora Studies.

Inspiring Faith in Schools addresses the privileging of secularism that appears to affect RE in countries influenced by modern western thought. The authors argue that a more engaging form of RE would emerge if religious life were to inhabit centre stage. Currently religious faith is made to hover in the wings awaiting the call to face the inquisitorial challenge of the modern day enquirer. The consequent relationship between pupil and the Divine as the purpose of study is then already intrinsically irreligious, as indicated in the Book of Job by putting God in the dock, whereas it is the pupil who should be (cross-)examining his or her life. What are the ways of exciting and engaging the young so that they begin to entertain the possibility of religious life as a genuine option for themselves? Leading scholars in philosophy and theology from the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA come together to address these questions together with RE experts. Marius Felderhof writes an Afterword summing up the challenges faced by such a re-visioning of RE.

This is the account of a qualitative research project investigating the experiences of teachers in English church schools implementing the new pedagogical approach What If Learning. The findings of the project are significant for all those involved in church school education and point towards new ways of thinking about Christian faith and learning.

- Do faith schools have a place in a plural society? - Which types of school contribute most effectively to a plural society? This fascinating monograph seeks to answer these questions and more by exploring the fit between personal, spiritual and academic goals in contemporary educational experience and individual school cultures. Jo Cairns, a well-respected authority on faith schools, argues that educational ideology in plural societies has to find a way of recognizing and responding to the 'predicament' of pluralism as it is experienced by individuals and communities. This provocative and challenging book will undoubtedly stimulate debate among educationists across the world.