Charter schools, which are public schools of choice, are typically operated as not-for-profit organizations, essentially functioning as independent districts consisting of single schools, by private groups including parents either independently or occasionally in conjunction with public institutions such as universities. In return for being…

Multiple methods were used to examine children's awareness of connections between emotion and prayer. Four-, 6-, and 8-year-olds and adults (N = 100) predicted whether people would pray when feeling different emotions, explained why characters in different situations decided to pray, and predicted whether characters' emotions would change after…

"The Way ahead" report proposed that Church of England schools should be distinctively Christian and Anglican and recommended a number of practices that schools could adopt to exemplify their distinctiveness. However, the notion of distinctiveness is not well developed and has not been widely researched. An empirical investigation…

Two troublesome portraits of religious studies professors often exist in the minds of some students at any given time: the Guru, or wise spiritual teacher, and the Deceiver. These metaphors capture student perceptions of us that may be ill-informed and beyond our control. We will examine and compare how our own chosen metaphors for…

The debate over the state funding of Muslim schools in Britain often appears polarised, as those on opposing sides are portrayed as holding fundamentally conflicting values and desires. In this article I challenge this position by arguing that there are some common concerns shared by those on all sides of the debate, namely rights, social cohesion…

This paper challenges the overly positive image of the contribution made by religious education in England and Wales to the attainment of liberal educational aims that was recently presented in this journal, in the context of a review symposium on a "festschrift" celebrating the work and achievements of the influential British religious…

This article focuses on the continuing impact of recuperative masculinity politics in the schooling of economically advantaged boys (elite and middle class); yet, it also indicates resistance to this politics. An understanding that the gender order is unstable and that variants of hegemonic masculinity continue to morph in the context of…

With high rates of out-marriage and dwindling need for bilingual worship, Japanese-American churches face a critical question: "Why retain the Japanese part of our identity?" This article explores how one layperson (Naomi Takahashi Goto) draws from her experience as an artist, teacher, and mother to help her congregation answer this question.…

In Part I of this two-part series (published in the March 2009 issue), the author traced the evolution of the Brothers of the Christian Schools' (Christian Brothers in the United States) understanding of how they related to the lay people with whom they increasingly shared their apostolate of Catholic education. From a stance of wary distance in…

Islam has become an increasingly important topic in American society and education. This article will explore the rationale for teaching about religion in public schools, the role of Islam and Muslims in a multicultural society, and discuss numerous ways in which Islam can be incorporated into multicultural secondary school curricula.

Charter schools have been one of the most important dimensions of recent school reform measures in the United States. Currently, there are more than 5,000 charter schools spread across forty U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Though there have been numerous studies on the effects of charter schools, these have mostly been confined to…

Drawing primarily upon interview and observation data, the aims, admission policies, and curriculum of two "strong" Christian schools, one in the Netherlands and one in England, are compared and contrasted. Analysis of the beliefs and values of children, parents, and school leaders challenges assumptions about "strong"…

In 1998, Indonesia embarked on a journey to democracy. This journey involved the decentralization of education from 2002. The new school-based management (SBM) system required greater community and parental participation in schools--thereby, it was hoped, contributing to a deepening of democracy. Islamic schools ("madrasah") also adopted…

The Torah teacher faces a dilemma of how to teach complex, ancient, sacred texts to modern children. How can she convey the relationship between rabbinic commentary and Scripture? This article recounts the story--and the challenges--of one midrash mini-course that I taught an American class as part of a wider research project. The aim of the…

Until recently, little attention has been paid in the school classroom to creationism and almost none to intelligent design. However, creationism and possibly intelligent design appear to be on the increase and there are indications that there are more countries in which schools are becoming battle-grounds over them. I begin by examining whether…