The courts' role in educational disputes is much researched, but while the legal and socio-political implications of judicial decisions are often scrutinised, judges' pedagogical assumptions have generally been overlooked. This paper focuses on educational competency by considering judges' understandings of the pedagogical effect of religious…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss current policies and position statements related to religious music and teaching about religion and propose a four-part framework for stakeholders to incorporate or amend policy on religious music in the public schools. The framework is based off of an analysis of sixteen public school district…

This article examines the NAfME Position Statement on Sacred Music in Schools, which has not been significantly updated since it was first published in 1984. Using genealogical inquiry, the author examines the conditions surrounding the construction of this document in relation to the conditions in the present. Relationships between the history of…

This paper focuses on how undergraduate students on five public university campuses perceived and reacted to religious coercion. We identified three sources of coercion: (a) public proselytizers, (b) peers, and (c) academic faculty whose expression of beliefs was perceived as implicitly coercive by students who often connected religious beliefs to…

"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

The policies, priorities, and productivity of postsecondary admission offices are under a great deal of scrutiny. The current realities range from the pressures of tuition-driven institutions to deliver the majority of the university budget each fall, to more selective institutions wrestling with standards of which applicants to accept amid…

Over the last two decades, many colleges and universities strived to make their campuses more inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community. Many institutions incorporated sexual orientation into their anti-discrimination statements and policies, placing sexual identity in the same category as racial or gender identity as a protected class. Additionally, some…

In 1997 the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that school officials at West High School did not violate Rachel Bauchman's constitutional rights by including Christian religious music as part of its curriculum, or by staging school performances at religious sites. Three philosophical questions are investigated in this paper: whether the…

Implementation of religion policy in schools has provoked contradictions and contestations in South Africa and across the globe. Reports on costly and protracted court cases and legislative battles between schools and parents as well as between schools and departments of education over religion in schools have been increasing at an alarming rate.…

The 1997 Amendments of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that children placed in private schools by their parents are no longer afforded the right to special education services. However, IDEA does state that child find activities between public school representatives and private schools are to remain intact. This study…

The supreme court's ruling in "Christian Legal Society v. Martinez", its most important case to date on student associational activities, upheld a policy at a public law school in California that required recognized student organizations (or clubs) to admit "all-comers" even if they disagreed with organizational goals and…

In September 2011, Paul Phillips stepped out of his football team's field house and into a struggle over the separation of church and state. Like most teams, Paul's practiced after school. But one day he found that the coach had called in a local minister to conduct a weekly half-hour "team chapel" before practice. Paul, who does not believe in…

This paper uses a mixed narrative and quantitative analysis to examine how a graduate class of predominantly politically and religiously conservative (self-identified), elementary teachers in the South made discursive sense of gender and sexually diverse (GSD) young adult and children's literature in the context of concurrent, relevant national…

Since 9/11 the European Court of Human Rights (the European Court) has raised anew the question of the relationship between religion and public education. In its reasoning, the European Court has had to consider competing normative accounts of the secular, either to accept or deny claims to religious liberty within Europe's public education…

Millions of children in the United States are educated in the home. Millions more receive their education from private institutions. For parents, a common reason for seeking alternatives to public education is the desire to ensure that they receive instruction in accord with their religious beliefs. In many cases, these beliefs include exclusive…