Special Religious Education in Australia and its Value to Contemporary Society

Special Religious Education in Australia and its Value to Contemporary Society PDF Author: Zehavit Gross
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030679691
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This book explores the advantages of and challenges concerning Special Religious Education (SRE) in multicultural Australia and argues for the need for General Religious Education (GRE) as well. Through the lens of the most recent scholarship, and drawing on an in-depth qualitative study and specific case studies, the book examines the current debate on the role of religious education within government schools. It addresses key concepts of values education, spirituality, health and wellbeing, and cultural and religious identity. It analyses why it is important to retain SRE, together with GRE, as government policy. It explores highly relevant, controversial and contested issues regarding SRE, including the 30% of Australia’s population who declare themselves as having “no religion”, and brings fresh insights to the table. While secularization has increased in both the national and international spheres, there has also been an increase in fundamentalism within religious beliefs. Events such as the September 11 terror attacks and the more recent mass shootings by white supremacists and eco-fascists in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Pittsburgh and San Diego in the USA are reminders that religion is still a major actor in the twenty-first century. This poses new challenges for the relationship between church and state, and demonstrates the need to revisit the role of religious education within government schools. While the importance of GRE is generally acknowledged, SRE has increasingly come under attack by some researchers and teacher and parent bodies as being inappropriate and contradictory to the values of the postmodern world. On the other hand, the key stakeholders from all the faith traditions in Australia wish to retain the SRE classes in government schools. The book addresses this burning issue, and shows that it is relevant not only for Australia but also globally.

Special Religious Education in Australia and its Value to Contemporary Society

Special Religious Education in Australia and its Value to Contemporary Society PDF Author: Zehavit Gross
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030679691
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores the advantages of and challenges concerning Special Religious Education (SRE) in multicultural Australia and argues for the need for General Religious Education (GRE) as well. Through the lens of the most recent scholarship, and drawing on an in-depth qualitative study and specific case studies, the book examines the current debate on the role of religious education within government schools. It addresses key concepts of values education, spirituality, health and wellbeing, and cultural and religious identity. It analyses why it is important to retain SRE, together with GRE, as government policy. It explores highly relevant, controversial and contested issues regarding SRE, including the 30% of Australia’s population who declare themselves as having “no religion”, and brings fresh insights to the table. While secularization has increased in both the national and international spheres, there has also been an increase in fundamentalism within religious beliefs. Events such as the September 11 terror attacks and the more recent mass shootings by white supremacists and eco-fascists in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Pittsburgh and San Diego in the USA are reminders that religion is still a major actor in the twenty-first century. This poses new challenges for the relationship between church and state, and demonstrates the need to revisit the role of religious education within government schools. While the importance of GRE is generally acknowledged, SRE has increasingly come under attack by some researchers and teacher and parent bodies as being inappropriate and contradictory to the values of the postmodern world. On the other hand, the key stakeholders from all the faith traditions in Australia wish to retain the SRE classes in government schools. The book addresses this burning issue, and shows that it is relevant not only for Australia but also globally.

Study of Special Religious Education and Its Value to Contemporary Society

Study of Special Religious Education and Its Value to Contemporary Society PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Book Description
Australia is a dynamic contemporary society comprised of a diverse range of cultures, faiths and beliefs. While the number of Australians identifying with Christianity has been declining in recent decades, two in three Australians currently identify with a religion or have spiritual beliefs, with Christianity being the largest religion. Faith and belief continue to be an integral part of contemporary Australian society and therefore need to be supported in the public arena. Special Religious Education (SRE) provides an important opportunity to integrate religious education into the Australian educational system. This report outlines the importance of maintaining SRE while ensuring that programs are developed within a reflective and critical lens. Programs should also consider the Australian Government's nine key values and all the key recommendations from the 2015 government review. Implementing these recommendations will strengthen young people's personal identity and convey the importance of special religious education for their moral and ethical development. [Executive summary, ed]

Reimagining the Landscape of Religious Education

Reimagining the Landscape of Religious Education PDF Author: Zehavit Gross
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031201337
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This book brings together new thinking and research on religious education’s complex and evolving role in the multicultural, diverse postmodern era. It facilitates new realism and understanding of the current situation from empirical and reflective accounts relating to a variety of countries and political contexts, as well as providing innovative methodological approaches to the study of education and religion. In different contexts around the world, at different levels of education, and from different theoretical lenses, religious education occupies a contested space. The ongoing, changing nature of the world due to increasing secularization, rapid technological change, mass immigration, globalization processes, conflict and challenging security issues, from inter to intra state levels, and with shifting geopolitical power balances, generates the need to reconceptualize where religious education is positioned. It claims that religious education on its own can be an agent of moral, social and spiritual transformation are disputed. There is significant controversy about whether special religious education, that is in-faith education, still has a role within the post-modern world.

Living Well in a World Worth Living in for All

Living Well in a World Worth Living in for All PDF Author: Kristin Elaine Reimer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819718481
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description


Language and Spirit

Language and Spirit PDF Author: Robyn Moloney
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030930645
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
​This edited book explores stories of linguistic and spiritual identity in the urban and rural Australian landscape. It is an innovative mix of thirty six personal narratives and eleven research studies, which together offer accounts of the intersection of languages, religion and spirituality in people’s lives. Teachers of Indigenous languages speak of the critical connection between language revitalization, the spirituality of Country, and well-being. Both new and long-established diaspora individuals speak of the often complex but vital joint role of language and faith in belonging and heritage. The new dimension which the book brings to multilingualism is relevant to all complex global societies. Language and Spirit is ideal for both the general reader interested in community languages and interfaith issues, and academics in global intercultural studies and Applied Linguistics study wishing to gain a nuanced insight into the Language and Spirit intersection.

Secularisation in Australian Education since 1910

Secularisation in Australian Education since 1910 PDF Author: Clarissa Carden
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900450348X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description
Combining an overview of the interdisciplinary literature with original case studies, this volume examines Australian education through the lens of secularisation, from 1910 to the present, questioning the nature of “secular settlements” and the role of Christianity in Australian schools.

Curriculum Development in Religious Education

Curriculum Development in Religious Education PDF Author: Australian Association for Religious Education. National Conference
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Curriculum planning
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Religious Education in a Global-Local World

Religious Education in a Global-Local World PDF Author: Jenny Berglund
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319322893
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This book examines Religious Education (RE) in over ten countries, including Australia, Indonesia, Mali, Russia, UK, Ireland, USA, and Canada. Investigating RE from a global and multi-interdisciplinary perspective, it presents research on the diverse past, present, and possible future forms of RE. In doing so, it enhances public and professional understanding of the complex issues and debates surrounding RE in the wider world. The volume emphasizes a student-centred approach, viewing any kind of ‘RE’, or its absence, as a formative lived experience for pupils. It stresses a bottom-up, sociological and ethnographic/anthropological research-based approach to the study of RE, rather than the ‘top down’ approaches which often start from prescriptive legal, ideological or religious standpoints. The twelve chapters in this volume regard RE as an entity that has multiple and contested meanings and interpretations that are constantly negotiated. For some, ‘RE’ means religious nurturing, either tailored to parental views or meant to inculcate a uniform religiosity. For others, RE means learning about the many religious and non-religious world-views and secular ethics that exist, not promoting one religion or another. Some seek to avoid the ambiguous term ‘religious education’, replacing it with terms such as ‘education about religions and beliefs’ or ‘the religious dimension of intercultural education’.

Religious Education in a Pluralist Society

Religious Education in a Pluralist Society PDF Author: John Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131795808X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Religious education in liberal pluralist societies such as the UK, the USA, and Australian underwent radical change in the 1980s and 1990s, with a major shift towards multi-faith, educationally oriented programmes. This has meant significant modifications to both the content and the methodology of religious-education courses and to the way they are conceived of and taught in schools and universities. One important implication of this change for the teaching and study of religion today is the need for a philosophical dimension that deals with issues such as the truth status of religious statements and the moral acceptability of religious claims. This dimension is often insufficiently developed; this lack is made more critical by the multiple competing truth claims of various religions, giving rise to such contentious problems as the growth of fundamentalism, increasing religious intolerance and conflict, and differences of opinion on central moral problems such as birth control, abortion and euthanasia. This text attempts to provide the philosophical underpinning that the study and teaching of religion in modern societies requires.

Reflecting on Faith Schools

Reflecting on Faith Schools PDF Author: Helen Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317997611
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Profound changes in society, government policy and the political landscape, as well as cataclysmic events such as 9/11, have greatly altered perceptions of faith schools and their existence now causes more controversy than ever. Taking a reflective practice approach, this study by people working within faith schools and colleges explores the new hot issues surrounding the subject in a sophisticated way. Looking at the supposed secularisation of the West, the nature of the multi-cultural and multi-faith society, the role of women, the spiritual development of children and most of all, the form that the tolerance of religious diversity should take in liberal societies, this book encourages readers to re-examine their assumptions and to consider faith schools as a part of the future of the English schooling system, within a multi-cultural society. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of Children's Spirituality.