This article examines how two Finnish religious education (RE) teachers, one in Islamic and one in Lutheran RE, seek to construct openness when dealing with religious truth claims and religious commitment, the key areas in which indoctrination might take place. It also observes how these constructions work in the classroom and explains them in the…

Professional ideals arise from personal worldviews and specify teachers' professional identities. This study aimed to explore how faith is present in the professional ideals of Christian teachers. The professional ideals of 107 Dutch teachers from conservative Protestant primary and secondary schools were explored using an open-ended…

This article examines social practices within classroom discourse in two different Finnish religious educational contexts. The article critically observes the construction of certain positions and identities as part of the school discourse and the inclusive vs exclusive practices of language. The research material consists of classroom…

Drawing on perspectives from sociocultural theory, this article investigates how Christian denominations are represented in Norwegian textbooks of religious education and by young believers. The main finding is that textbooks and young adherents present religion in substantially different ways. While textbooks relate religion to global and…

This paper explores comparatively and historically why Nordic and Continental welfare and education regimes differ in the degree of comprehensiveness of their primary and lower secondary school systems. It analyses how school reforms, reform attempts and coalitions in the post-war decades were shaped by different cleavage structures in Norway and…

This article reflects on the place of RE in a pillarised education context, taking into account the fact of religious diversity and pluralisation among the school population on the one hand, and the freedom of religion and education of faith-based schools on the other. Particular attention will be given to Belgium and the Netherlands, which do not…

This volume brings together the work of a wide range of scholars to explore the long and complex history of the relationships between churches and education. Christianity has always been involved in education, from the very earliest teaching of those about to be baptised, to present-day churches' involvement in schools and higher education.…

The increasingly pronounced distinction between educational institutions that retain their ecclesial identity and those that jettison religious commitments reflects a bifurcated educational landscape in which institutions are characterized either as a "church-related" or a "Christian college and university." This development…

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.…

To what extent does the adoption of consociational power-sharing affect the design and implementation of education reforms? This article maps this territory through rich and detailed interviews collected in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in 2012-2013. Insights from these interviews are corroborated by…

The work of the Australian mission in the southern part of Korea during the first half of the twentieth century has been a relatively undeveloped subject in scholarly research. By focusing on the educational work of the mission between 1910 and 1941, this article provides an overview of how the missionaries interacted with the Japanese colonial…

Religion in public schools has long been a controversial issue. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that teachers and administrators cannot lead prayers in public schools, and a decision in 2000 barred school districts from sponsoring student-led prayers at football games. At the same time, the court has held that students retain a First…

In this article, we examine how narratives of religious traditions are used as resources in religious education (RE) and compare practices from Evangelic Lutheran religious education (LRE) and Islamic religious education (IRE) in Finnish public schools. The sacredness of narratives from holy books entails that there can be contestations over their…

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess the connection between religious affect (as a measure of Christian commitment) and global happiness (as a measure of personal well being) among a sample of 6,194 young churchgoers in Australia between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a…

Drawing on social and cultural perspectives of literacy, conceptualizations of religious literacies, and Gee's notion of Discourses, I develop a framework for exploring 16 Latter-day Saint and Methodist youths' religious literacies as social and cultural practice. This work grows out of the increasingly important role that religion plays…