The REA Annual Meeting 2023 theme is organized around the question, "Whose children are they?" as a way to explore diverse and intersecting ways that we take and/or assign responsibilities for children's religious education. In this essay, the Program Chair reflects on personal and scholarly experiences and questions that have framed and…

Scholarly definitions of student success have become increasingly transactional and thereby reflect a specific form of modern utilitarianism. In this paper, we use a theological map to explore the terrain of contemporary student success scholarship and practice in an effort to re-imagine how the Christian faith might animate a vision of student…

In "Religion and American Education," Warren Nord grapples with one of the most difficult aspects of teaching religion: how to help American students, whose religious literacy tends to be severely impoverished, understand religious experience. He writes that "The best substitute for firsthand personal religious experience is…

Paradoxes of inclusivity occur when attempts at inclusivity clash with the exclusive claims of some of the positions they seek to accommodate. In this article I identify and consider how such a paradox manifests in multi-faith religious education pedagogies--what I call the 'paradox of interreligious inclusivity' or 'PIRI', for short. After…

Background: During school lessons participants can face challenging pedagogical problems such as when science and religion topics interact. Potential types of pedagogical problem and what participants can do in response are unclear. Research designs exploring pedagogical problem solving should investigate teachers' thinking processes and include…

The study explores the potential of participative pedagogy as it solicits young people's perspectives and opens a space for dialogue to clarify how best they can benefit from religious education. Over 300 young students from a Catholic higher education institution in the Philippines have been interviewed to articulate their experiences,…

This article initiates a discussion on incorporating "religious literacy" into Saudi secondary education. It provides a preliminary understanding of the religious education context and emphasizes that religious literacy is not religious education. It examines the arguments for and against the incorporation of religious literacy in the…

Jenna Scaramanga and Michael Reiss, in their article, "Evolutionary Stasis: Creationism, Evolution and Climate Change in the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum," examine multiple editions of science materials produced by Accelerated Christian Education, ranging from the 1980s to the 2010s. They find that the materials offer a…

This paper delineates tensions that arguably are inherent to integrative Worldview Education in plural societies, due to the subject's dual commitment to imperatives of inclusion and change. The imperative of inclusion stems from the subject's mandate to integrate the whole plurality of pupils in society, whereas the imperative of change stems…

The protection and regulation of religious expression present complex challenges. Blasphemy laws, which criminalize acts deemed disrespectful to religious beliefs, have been abolished in England, allowing for broader freedom of expression. However, concerns and discussions about blasphemy persist. The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman (2023), has…

This paper is oriented around a discussion of the question as to whether religious education (RE) in the public sphere should be regarded as a place of disruption. That is, whether post-pandemic and in a time of climate and ecological crisis, religious education is understood to be serving as a mechanism for inducting children into the existing…

The assassination of Ignacio Ellacuría and seven others at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas (UCA) in San Salvador in 1989 has had a deep and profound impact on the world-wide Jesuit community and the Catholic Church. His philosophy and theology of liberation have been carefully studied, as has his vision and operation of the UCA…

There is an emerging need for redefining religious literacy for teachers in mainstream secondary schools in the United Kingdom (UK) where Religious Studies is part of the core curriculum. The research study draws upon careful observation and analysis of UK mainstream secondary school curricula about Islam and on the qualitative pieces of evidence…

The period of the coronavirus pandemic (SARS-CoV-2), which hit Poland in early March 2020, has become a great challenge for the whole education sector. The limitations in the functioning of schools, imposed on all teachers, including RE teachers, created the immediate need to adapt to new conditions and start remote teaching. Some of these…

Calls for reframing the subject matter of Religious Education in schools include the tricky question of how to select from a world of potentially interesting and relevant material. Pedagogues have long questioned the educational logic that takes so-called substantive knowledge as its starting point and imagines education to follow a linear path…