Many approaches within subject didactics have in common that they highlight the importance of perspective taking, precisely describe the benefits of this skill and develop didactical scenarios in which this skill is crucial. Nevertheless, there is a diagnosed lack of a differentiated didactical model on how to teach perspective taking step by…

The theatrical heritage of Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the famous Czech teacher, religious thinker, and playwright, has been for a long time underestimated. There is little research on this topic. However, theatre played a very important role within the Pansophic school. The method of theatralisation was not new, but in the age of Comenius it…

Jane Card's previous work on the power of images in conveying particular interpretations and her advice about how to use visual material effectively in classrooms will be familiar to readers of "Teaching History." In this article she focuses specifically on the capacity of visual representations to convey a compelling message about the…

How do race and lived experiences of this construct impact student theological understandings? We embarked on a joint pedagogical venture spanning two continents about race and theology with groups of students whose encounters with race and its impacts on theology were markedly different--including students whose lives and education have been…

Clergy often begin their ministerial careers unprepared to handle issues of professional power, sexuality and intimacy, and interpersonal boundaries. In response, denominational bodies and theological schools are seeking together ways to enhance the teaching of "professional sexual ethics"--referring to the integration of professional ethics,…

How late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestant children supported and interacted with foreign missions is still a relatively undeveloped field of scholarly research. Missionary societies actively recruited children's money, energy and sensibilities for the missionary cause. Sunday school pedagogy and rhetoric focused on cultivating a…

This article presents an overview of how "Christian religious education" as a "polydoxical" discipline is being taught, based on a survey of 24 syllabi of graduate courses offered by scholars teaching in Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Catholic theological schools. The review offers an account of how the scholars frame the…

In this paper we respond to Staver's article (this issue) on an attempt to resolve the discord between science and religion. Most specifically, we comment on Staver's downplaying of difference between Catholics and Protestants in order to focus on the religion-science question. It is our experience that to be born into one or other of these…

This article discusses the increasing emphasis on using pictorial sources in teaching, learning and assessment in history and asserts that pedagogies for interpreting visual imagery need to be purposefully aligned in relation to the particular media or production contexts under study. Expecting students to be able to glean meaning from images…

In Islamic studies at universities today it has become difficult to disagree with Islam and still maintain one's credibility, safety, or ability to study in school. Academia has refused to question Islamic teachings, and has thus become a participant in promoting Islamic orthodoxy at the expense of academic integrity. The author's story begins at…

Starting his work as endowed Hendrik Pierson Professor for Christian Education at VU University Amsterdam in 1993 the author focused on the relationship of education, pedagogy, and religion. However, his attention was rather exclusively directed to Protestant schools. The argument was that in academia at that time, even in the faculties of…

Most students assume that a thriving society runs smoothly because people abide by the laws. But there are various informal, as well as formal, means of social control such as gossip, ridicule, and shame that function even in complex societies to achieve social control, or conformity to group norms. Good teaching ideas have the potential to lead…

Discusses the importance of teaching about and laying the groundwork for religious experience in religious education. Suggests that renewed interest in religious experience is legitimate because experience is the basic dimension in religion and is lacking in many people's lives today. Describes various approaches from the past. (DK)

The Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation attempts to join Freirean educational theory on contextual pedagogies with ancient Christian practices of the "ordo" toward the formation and theological education of Protestant Christian high school students. This article describes and reflects on the character and ultimately the success of this odd…

This paper considers the tension that can exist in the aims of religious education between the desire to encourage open-minded, critical thinking through exposure to diverse traditions, ideas and cultures and the encouragement, overt or otherwise, into uniformity whereby learners take on the values of a particular tradition, culture or ideology…