For millions of American Jews, the words "Jewish education" most likely conjure images of days spent in synagogue classrooms decoding Hebrew, reciting prayers, learning holiday customs, and reading about biblical figures. This is the past, but (we hope) not the future of congregational education. This form of part-time, mostly…

This article's point of departure is that the nature and merits of both action research and communities of practice are contested: for example, Martyn Hammersley has argued that action research may be a contradiction in terms and that communities of practice may mean the end of educational research as a discrete discipline. In response to his…

The aim of this paper is to provide a positive case for increasing the role and importance of religious morality within the subject of religious education in British schools. The argument is structured in the following way. First, attention is given to the diminished role accorded to moral education within religious education that followed the…

Religious exclusivism, or the idea that only one religion can be true, fuels hatred and conflict in the modern world. Certain objections to religious pluralism, together with associated defences of exclusivism are flawed. I defend a moderate religious pluralism, according to which the truth of one religion does not automatically imply the falsity…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." In the last section of his article, Levisohn claims that when considering the field of teaching rabbinic literature, "the menu of orientations holds the potential to raise the level of pedagogic…

This paper presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." Levisohn has made a significant contribution to the scholarship of teaching in his article proposing that the teaching of rabbinic literature is most successfully accomplished when teachers think about…

In this article, the author talks about Jon A. Levisohn's article that develops a menu of orientations for the teaching of rabbinic literature. The author suggests that Jon A. Levisohn's article should be required reading for all Jewish educators who are interested in curriculum and teaching. The essay is a vehicle for introducing a way of looking…

John R. Staver's article calling for a constructivist epistemology to maneuver between the disparate ways of knowing between science and religion prompts this response. This paper acknowledges Staver's scholarly analysis of the issue. Scientific and religious conflicts do present prominent challenges because these are profound but often-monolithic…

In the secular age religious education and citizenship education could and should be fruitfully combined. That is the present authors' view on current developments in schools aiming at the strengthening and the flourishing of students' personal religious identity. Presupposition is that religious identity needs to be interpreted as an integral…

This essay reviews the Applications section of the "International Handbook of Jewish Education" published in 2011. Because of the variety of contexts in which Jewish education research can be applied, this section comprises a large number of diverse chapters that are not all explicitly theoretically or thematically linked. The scope of this…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." As someone who is experimenting not only with how to teach rabbinic texts but with which texts to select in virtually every course the author teaches for American undergraduate as well as graduate…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." While the "menu" Levisohn describes in his groundbreaking work on orientations to the teaching of rabbinic texts will almost certainly be refined over time, even as it stands this article should be of…

Reflective engagement in reciprocal community partnerships holds tremendous potential for guiding members of congregations through the process of "re-acculturation." One of the "best practices" named in research about community-engaged learning for undergraduates is "re-acculturation"--an ongoing process of critical reflection about one's own…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." As a discipline, the teaching of rabbinic literature is still in its early stages of development. Levisohn's menu of orientations and reflections about its usefulness are welcome additions to the…

This essay describes a web site evaluation project which served as the final assignment for an undergraduate "Introduction to Religion" course. The essay discusses lessons learned from the design and implementation of this web-based research assignment over three consecutive semesters. It includes insights from an instructor and a reference…