According to literature, the classic "paideia" ideal, that is, the ideal of the well-rounded, fully educated, rational human being, has survived to this day, despite many historical and socio-cultural influences that impacted on it through the millennia. In the process, it has to a considerable extent retained its rationalistic bias, but…

A hermeneutic-communicative model of religious education is proposed which is grounded in a Christian anthropology. The human person is presented as a 'fragile hermeneutical space'--consisting of a radical openness to reality, an essential indeterminateness and an ability to transcend his or her own reality. This means that people have an inbuilt…

This article reports findings from a sacred text scholarship project in Religious Education/Religion and Worldviews (RE/RW) lessons. In the "Texts and Teachers" project secondary school teachers found that RE became more "meta" through a more scholarly treatment of texts, and led to "leap moments" with pupils who…

Disagreements about how Christianity should be taught in state-funded school RE have a long history. In this article we take England as a case study and examine the debates that have arisen about the legitimacy of a theologically based pedagogy following the publication of "Understanding Christianity," a resource inspired by recent…

Though personhood formation is often perceived as an important aim of Christian education, there is little clarity about how the concept can be understood from a Christian perspective. Furthermore, teachers lack the tools to nourish the development of students' personhood. In this article, we develop a framework that aims to fill these gaps. The…

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…

In light of ongoing debates about religious education as hermeneutical, this contribution proposes a 'hermeneutical-communicative' (HCM) paradigm for RE through the development of a twofold reflection: (a) a critical (re-)evaluation of the theological and anthropological foundations for RE in light of (b) a context marked by religious and…

This article is part of broader research on "The Interrelationship of Theology and Praxis in the Context of Sustainable Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue"1 in which we explore two essential concepts: sustainability and interreligious dialogue. We have narrowed this broader topic to study how facilitation of students' spirituality…

Empirical research in Jewish education has found almost exclusive use of "transmission" pedagogy among Jewish studies teachers. This study hoped to fill out the empirical landscape by studying Jewish studies teachers who prioritize student-driven interpretation. It followed six Jewish studies teachers in four different Jewish elementary…

Historically, Blacks have out of necessity prioritized survival in educating their younger generations for existence in the racially hostile and divided context of the U.S. This education and religious education has occurred formally and informally in homes, schools, community organizations, and in congregations. This paper examines three aspects…

This article investigates Greek-Cypriot primary school teachers' challenges to enact critical hermeneutics in religious education (RE) within a confessional context. Critical hermeneutics combines elements from critical and hermeneutical theories, emphasising the importance of grounding the conceptualisation of religious and secular truth-claims…

This article addresses students' need for robust relationships to counteract the epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, and depression pervading contemporary undergraduate life, and proposes that Catholic colleges and universities can find in Catholic theological anthropology a warrant for recognizing relationship-building as central to their mission.…

This article considers the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority's (ACARA) plan for Civics and Citizenship, assessing the role of religions therein. Through a dialectical hermeneutic, ACARA is brought into a mutually critical conversation with the work of curriculum theorist Dwayne Huebner. Both of their distinct visions are…

In the project "Learning for Life" we developed a hermeneutical--communicative model for worldview education that answers the European challenges of worldview diversity and worldview illiteracy. We implemented the model in a participatory action research project at nine schools for primary education in the Netherlands and monitored the…

This article draws upon the findings of a study at Liverpool Hope University (LHU) into the transformative nature of International Service-Learning (ISL) experiences for student participants. This research is concerned with the implications of these findings for professional practice, in particular how ISL is constructed in Higher Education policy…