This article explores the relation between future-readiness and Islamic education from the perspectives of Islamic learning centers in Singapore. The main research objective is to examine how the concept of future-readiness and related terms are interpreted, framed, and facilitated in Islamic textbooks. Based on a content analysis of the textbooks…

This study explored the extent to which an educational debrief strategy informed by Carl Jung's psychological type theory -- that peoples' innate personalities influence the way they process information -- might contribute to the effectiveness of debriefing Christian experiential learning activities in a young adult ministry in Singapore. Drawing…

Purpose: This paper attempts to explore the transformations taken by madrasah, especially in preparing students both in religious and academic field. Besides, this paper aims to demonstrate measures taken by madrasah in instilling the religious and racial cohesion far from conservatism and extremism that has always been labeled to their students.…

This paper features a discussion of how educators can channel anthropological practices towards the enhancement of experiential learning (EL) teaching methods, particularly on the topic of religion across the Asia-Pacific. I argue that our capacity to achieve curricular objectives through EL calls for an attentiveness to the affinity between the…

This qualitative study, examining seven communities in the globalized Asia Pacific area, aimed to investigate Jewish community attitudes toward Hebrew, their heritage language (HL), as influenced by the social environment. The main finding was that the "complex ecology" of context influences attitudes to Hebrew. The article delineates…

This article explores the use of a constructivist pedagogical approach to cultivate reflective dispositions during small group Bible study. Conducted in a local church Bible class setting (n = 12), the instructional design emulated the reflective thinking process, while adopting collaborative knowledge-building as its pedagogical framework.…

Based on a one-year longitudinal experimental study with 3,782 kindergarten school children across 15 countries, this article examines the association between prayer and happiness. Results show that the post-test scores on the faces scale were higher for the participant group who had taken the prayer lessons vis-à-vis the comparison group.…

The educational reproduction of elite masculinity in postcolonial societies has not been properly studied. This is partly because the postcolonial masculinities of non-western elites are accomplished through the cultivation of naturalized practices signifying the body politic of the nation-state. In Singapore, same-sex elite schools of colonial…

This study describes adult learners' understanding in learning Islam using andragogy approach in which the study was conducted in Kampung Siglap Mosque and Al-Zuhri Higher Learning Institute. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) educate his companions of who are adults from the shackles of "jahiliyyah," spiritual and intellectual…

The term "Asian values" became popular in the political discourse in the 1980s and 1990s. The most vocal proponents of Asian values are Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Mahathir and their deputies and government officials, as well as post-Tiananmen Chinese leaders. Most notable of all these three strands of the Asian values debate…

Against a backdrop of the debates on religious education in public or state schools, we argue for the introduction of "spiritual ideals" into the public school curriculum. We distinguish our notion of spiritual ideals from "religious ideals" as conceptualised by De Ruyter and Merry. While we agree with De Ruyter and Merry that…

Since its independence in 1965, the Singapore government has been giving priority to preserve racial harmony and social stability. A wide range of policy initiatives, including conscription for national defence, ethnic integration policy for public housing, and the National Education (NE) programme in tandem with a strong emphasis on local history…

Muslims live in a "modern" world where subjects such as the English language, mathematics, sciences, and information and communication technology (ICT) are highly valued and enthusiastically transmitted in schools. How some Islamic schools attempt to equip their students with "modern knowledge" while remaining faithful to their…

This paper discusses the recent efforts by the Singapore government to construct a Muslim identity for the madrasahs in Singapore. By promoting a prescribed set of desired attributes for the Muslims and introducing new curriculum materials for the madrasahs, the government aspires to construct a Muslim identity that is compatible with the…

This paper discusses the issues and challenges involved in the teaching of religious knowledge in Singapore schools, where it is taught in a historical, descriptive and non-evaluative fashion, adopting the phenomenological approach. The government in Singapore hopes that the teaching of religious knowledge will help to inculcate moral values and…