This article seeks to engage the often-overlooked voices of mothers and daughters in the face of patriarchal dominance. Conversations between mothers and daughters are important spaces for the exploration of faith experiences and provide transformative power. Through these conversations, the practice of story-linking comes to life, enabling…

Working with normative considerations is an important part of empirical research in religious education (RE) and in the formation of practical theologians, in general, and of religious educators in RE faculties/programs, in particular. What does sufficient reflection on normativity look like in teaching religious educators? From a practical…

This paper explores the function of teachers' witnessing of faith in worldview education in the context of diversity in the classroom. Pollefeyt described three teaching roles for hermeneutical-communicative worldview education: moderator, specialist, and witness. These roles aim to support students in their personal worldview identity…

That religious and theological education today largely neglects reading as a spiritual discipline is a profound pedagogical oversight. The fallout contributes to the bifurcation of intellectual and spiritual formation in education. While the dominant mode of reading in the academy is beholden to the Weberian solitary, detached, and disenchanted…

Agency is a particular concern for ministry with adolescent girls because they rarely see themselves as subjects of their own lives. Human agency is often emphasized in churches as a way to explain human sinful action. As a population treated as objects by society, it is important for young women to embrace and exercise their agency in order to be…

Religious learning within the currents of global cultural flows necessitates risky movements into "terra incognita"--be they unknown internal landscapes of the mind and heart in religious knowing, or external territories of culture, ideas, and the politics of identification. Drawing on insights gained from three seminary-sponsored…

This article considers Religious Education (RE) from the perspective of socialization theory. After clarifying the concept of socialization, an understanding of socialization processes, requiring the simultaneous development of both a personal and a social identity, is linked with RE. The development of both a personal and a social identity calls…

St. Augustine of Hippos' writing on education offers a fresh lens through which the conceptual framework of religious education in the Catholic school can be understood. Recent teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church on the distinctive nature of religious education and catechesis has challenged religious educators to find an alternative…

The Christian family is a deeply rooted theological way of being in the world with others. It is a functional domain from where initial and life-long lessons emerge. In rich ways, it helps foster human identity, development, ethical formation, autonomy, and communal responsibility amid a greater understanding of Christ's actualizing presence in…

This article describes a countercultural approach to autobiography in comparison with three dominant uses of autobiography in religious education. It defines countercultural autobiographies as stories from the underside of society meant as tools for education for justice and as invitations for transformative dialogue in institutional and societal…

The aim of this article is to propose a method for practical theology, the hermeneutical-praxis paradigm, based on discussions of three different methodological approaches to practical theology. This article suggests the hermeneutical-praxis paradigm, which bridges theory and practice, which connects church with society, which correlates theology…

This article uses analytic tools provided by Joseph Schwab to address a "practical" problem faced by many liberal religious educational institutions: the tension between historical-critical study of the Bible and an affective connection to it. This problem is painted in broad strokes; then two contemporary Bible scholars, Jeffrey Tigay and Yair…

The proliferation of the study of Jewish texts in settings of teachers' professional development poses a challenge for teacher educators. What is the study of these texts to provide for teachers? What would be ways for these texts to be studied in order to contribute to the education of teachers? This paper presents four conceptual approaches of…

Examines the extent to which Western consciousness of the content and process of knowing provide an adequate epistemic foundation for religious education. Places this question in a historical perspective and includes a discussion of contemporary theorists. Outlines various characteristics of religious epistemology and discusses these from a…

Contends than an important dimension of multicultural religious education is the development of cognitive, affective, and behavioral characteristics consistent with cultural pluralism. Presents alternative views to traditional Western epistemology, focusing on postmodern feminist theories of learning. (CFR)