In the first report in a three-part series on financial aid leveraging, Stephen Burd details how Baylor University used predatory inclusion practices in their financial aid policies by steering the families of low-income students to Parent PLUS loans to fill substantial financial aid gaps, potentially causing them significant financial distress.…

Past research has shown that intergroup contact can be a promising intervention to improve intergroup relations and that contact-based interventions might be most effective during adolescence. In postconflict Northern Ireland, widespread residential segregation and a largely separate school system limit opportunities for intergroup contact between…

This article argues that imperial identities embracing Britishness within Anglo-settler colonies significantly influenced provisions for religious education in Australia and New Zealand primary schools from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, corresponding with James Belich's chronology of recolonisation. The article begins with an…

Given that Indonesian people adhere to various religions and beliefs, respect for plurality is needed. Religious education can play an important role in developing respect for plurality. The goal of this study was to understand the role of religious education in developing respect for plurality in Indonesia. This research applied qualitative and…

This paper argues that Aboriginal children's engagement with education in the central Australian region of the Northern Territory in the mid-twentieth century can be understood as strategic engagements with formal western education systems and assimilation policies. It addresses a methodological problem stemming from a project that focuses on the…

Schooling for Northern Ireland children has over decades been in denominationally separate schools, until an integrated system was instigated by concerned parents in the late 1970s amidst growing political violence. By educating together Catholic and Protestant pupils and those of other religions or none, the hope was to contribute to peace in a…

United Methodist Church polity bars "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" from ordination and prohibits same-sex wedding celebrations in their churches or by their clergy. Recently, the consequences for disobeying church polity have increased in severity and the denomination is expected to split. This paper profiles three churches who…

Sociologist Max Weber identified Puritan constructions of virtuous time and the sin of sloth as having explanatory power for the origins of Puritan action and capitalist economies. This article expands upon Weber's thesis to examine how the sin of sloth was reinterpreted to encourage or prohibit psalm singing, singing schools, and later forms of…

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…

This study uses a basic qualitative design to explore faith-integrated study abroad programming at Protestant Christian affiliated institutions in the United States, with a particular focus on comparing programs in Majority and Minority worlds. Guided by postcolonial theory, and informed by critical lenses of globalization, we analyze curricular…

Since the founding of the United States, scholars and policymakers have argued that education should not merely train the minds of students, but also prepare them for active participation in a democratic republic. This dissertation, divided into three chapters, studies the leaders, schools, and content that shape students' character. While…

As emerging adult college students ponder their religious/spiritual beliefs and identities, those in religiously diverse countries (e.g. the USA) often encounter beliefs different from their own. These encounters can prompt new perspectives on their own beliefs and elicit responses from rejection to incorporation of the diverging belief, thus…

Song leading sections for children are available on a weekly basis in religious settings in Hong Kong, yet there has been limited amount of research drawn over this learning platform on developing children's social and emotional competence. This study aims to investigate the extent to which Song Leading sections in Hong Kong Protestant churches…

This paper examines debates over the nature, purpose, and reform of geographical education in schools in the eighteenth-century German-speaking territories. Attention is paid to contemporaries' concerns over the cognitive content of geography -- what geography was -- and, in greater detail, to their views concerning how the subject might be…

A recent global reconnaissance of Christian higher education found a number of key themes that shaped current developments, such as the pressing challenges of secularization and nationalization but also the advantages of privatization and massification. This article provides an update to this older analysis by taking a birds-eye view of trends…