AbstractReligious education is the bearer and mediator of the identity and values of Catholic schools and enables students to learn the faith and thus lay the foundations for evangelization. It has therefore been valued and upheld by the Catholic diocese for many years. This article examines this identity portrayed in three textbooks for Catholic elementary school in Hong Kong and discusses the sacred and social order portrayed therein. While maintaining the Catholic faith as the main axis, the textbooks took into account the fact that most students were non-believers and provided students with an appropriate outlook and attitude towards life based on the teachings of Jesus. The textbooks took the perspective of gratitude for blessings and instructed children to be good children of Heavenly Father, to trust in God wholeheartedly, and to love Jesus Christ and others. Prayers were capitalized in all three versions. The new textbooks introduced students to other religions in a respectful and inclusive way. With an emphasis on exploring issues that students encounter in life and development, topics not previously covered within the teachings of the Catholic Church were included. Efforts were made to incorporate Catholic knowledge and characters or thoughts from traditional Chinese culture to strengthen students’ Chinese identity and enhance the local characteristics of Catholicism. These findings can enrich our understanding of the ways in which the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong maintains a Catholic school identity with local adaptations amidst demographic, social and political changes.

AbstractThis paper, which was originally a keynote address, offers an analysis of the crisis in retention, and recruitment of teachers of Religious Education (RE). A reflexive assessment is offered to the political lament ‘where have all the RE teachers gone?’ The author, drawing on over three decades of experience and involvement with religious education both in school and higher education, ponders on the complexity of responding to the attrition rates where skilled RE teachers leave the profession at a much faster rate than new entrants are trained. It concludes by calling for unity of purpose amongst the wider RE community in England.

This article examines the teaching of creation in a year six and a year three Religious Education (RE) class in schools in the south of England with a focus on the type and role of teacher questioning in relation to classroom discussions. The nature of knowledge, curriculum content and the relationship between RE and other subjects is currently under scrutiny and there is an ongoing debate about the negative effects of presenting science and religion as epistemically siloed. This paper presents an analysis of the way two teachers in two primary schools used questions to frame the relationship between science and religion where the aim was to minimise the polarisation of religion and science. Using Bernstein’s idea of the pedagogic device and the related notions of frame, classification and the unthinkable the analysis suggests that teachers employed both visible and invisible pedagogies that limited the diversity of ideas that were considered legitimate in discussions, and which therefore influenced the nature of pupil questions and responses. We suggest that despite attempts by both teachers to diminish the strong boundaries between different types of knowledge their use of questions serves to reinforce them.

AbstractThis paper explores the influence of the home on sustaining churchgoing among young Baptists in Canada. Data provided by 126 young Baptists between the ages of 12 and 18 years attending a week-long youth mission and service programme demonstrated that neither personal factors (age and sex) nor psychological factors (extraversion, sensing, thinking, and emotionality) were statistically significant after taking parental church attendance into account. Moreover, these data confirmed fathers' attendance as a statistically significant factor augmenting the effect of mothers’ attendance. The implications of these findings are discussed for pastoral practice. Within the current social context, churches concerned with recruiting and retaining young members may need to concentrate on nurturing and resourcing Christian households (including fathers as well as mothers) in supporting the religious faith and practices of their children. The support and example of both mothers and fathers is important for boys and for girls across the teenage years.

AbstractThis paper provides theorisation about a novel concept for education: an integrative philosophy of knowledge (IPK). This is proposed for school curricula to relate multiple subjects to big questions of personal and existential importance. Critical contemporary issues such as climate change education require multiple subject contributions but there is little clarity in the English education guidance on this drawing together, beyond the encouragement to do so in priority areas. Leading British thinkers have engaged the idea of the unity of knowledge, not without difficulty and criticism. The paper identifies reasons for a practical approach to consilience in school curricula. In addition to preliminary theorisation, in methodological ‘harmony’, this paper adds tentative empirical findings from a related research project that provides quantitative indications that such multi-subject connection is likely not happening. The findings are not definitive, but the perceptions of three groups of beginning and experienced teachers (secondary Religious Education (RE), secondary science and primary teachers) indicate that school curricula do not reflect an integrative approach to climate change education, and sex and relationships education, despite policy priority. A significant national survey could not detect many signs of connection. The paper speculates that RE could have a key epistemic role for the curriculum as a whole in this regard.