At a Shabbat lunch in Madrid not long ago, the conversation turned to the question of boiling eggs. One of the guests mentioned that a Dutch rabbi he knew had heard that in order to make it more likely that boiled eggs be kosher, you should add an egg to the pot if the number you began with was even. According to the laws of Kashruth, Jews may not…

This article presents a qualitative study of five monolingual teachers' understandings of the linguistic repertoires of their multilingual students. These teachers deliver the Saskatchewan provincial curricula in English to Hutterite colony students who are users of three languages: (a) spoken Hutterisch as a home and community language, (b)…

This qualitative interview study investigated Japanese understandings of spirituality, religion, and The Divine. Thirteen native Japanese living in central Ohio (6 male, 7 female) answered open-ended questions about spiritual or religious activities they engaged in, motivations for engaging in them, what constitutes sacredness, why humanity and…

Elise Boulding wrote academically to help to create and influence the field of peace education, and lived a life that exemplified it. Her life integrated theory and practice and exemplified peace "praxis" as the "craft and skills of doing peace" and "the integration of thought and action". For Boulding, peace education occurred at all levels,…

The "new school system" described in the Schools White Paper (DfE, 2010) presents religious organisations with two interesting opportunities. The first is an opportunity to play a significantly enhanced role in the management of faith-based schools. The second is an opportunity to rethink quite radically the content of their curricula.…

In April 2010, a series of proposed changes to the Ontario sex education curriculum for publicly-funded institutions within the province was announced. Within three days of that announcement, then premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, put a hold on the proposed changes, stating that consideration of the multicultural and religiously diverse needs…

This article presents the experiences of three women who have chosen to move from secular, assimilated lives to lives characterized by the distinctive dress and practice associated with observant Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Orthodox Christianity, respectively. All three relied upon informal, peer, and distance learning strategies for their…

The study reported in this article concerns the beginnings of higher education for women in the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) enclave in Israel. Haredi Jews are a self-secluded fundamentalist group committed to particularly strict interpretation of Jewish religious law. In recent years, they have been compelled by poverty and other factors to allow…

This study describes the use of literacy--including the written word--in the maintenance and practice of Lukumí, a Diasporic African spiritual tradition. While Lukumí is decidedly orally transmitted, the written word is still a critical part of its contemporary practice. Relying on data collected during participant observation of ceremonies and…

Objective: In a rural area of the US state of Texas, in April 2008, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) responded to evidence of widespread child abuse in an isolated religious compound by removing 463 individuals into state custody. This mass child protection intervention is the largest such action that has ever occurred…

This article provides strategies that are recommended to elementary school teachers to help students in the U.S. understand Islam and its followers. It discusses the importance of cultural and historical studies in making students aware of the value of Islam to its followers. Three strategies described herein are: the concept of similarities, the…

This article focuses on two women educator activists based in Birmingham, UK, in the first decades of the twentieth century: Geraldine Southall Cadbury (1865-1941) and Margaret Ann Backhouse (1887-1977). Motivated by a common belief in education as a force for progressive social change Cadbury and Backhouse were both Quakers who shared similar…

This article is set in the context of multicultural 21st-century Australia, whose diversity is marked by religious plurality as well as varied ethnic groupings. The article reports on a study of professional learning in three Australian faith-based schools (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) that investigated the role such schools might play in the…

The article reports the findings of a qualitative study of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh teachers of religious education and the relationship between their biographies, professional beliefs and use of personal life knowledge in English, secondary school classrooms. This relationship was explored through a study of five beginning teachers and provided…

This article takes as its starting point concerns about community separation that arose in 2001, following outbreaks of violence in English urban centres, and again in 2014, following the so-called "Trojan Horse" case. Despite a series of reports which have highlighted the need to address "separation", promote "meaningful…