Despite the numerous examples throughout history, the study of secular spirituality in art was mostly ignored until recently by contemporary writers, critics, historians, philosophers and educators. In my thesis, through the examination of selected images and writings, I determine how a differentiation between doctrinal and secular spirituality can be established. The importance of a rooted cosmopolitan outlook with respect to cross-cultural artistic manifestations is explored with the aim of synthesizing spiritual elements that transcend all cultures. The political, social and educational implications of ignoring spirituality are examined. A proposal to incorporate spirituality into education is introduced using art as a means to self-knowledge and understanding the implications of interconnectedness.

<p> Previously, improvisation has served as a term for describing a quality of the action taking place in classrooms between teachers and students. This project begins to theorize a way of understanding embodied literacies and scenes of learning through a lens of improvisation that enhances the description and better equips researchers to analyze this quality. This project synthesizes numerous research threads and theories from theater (Halpern, 1994, 2005; Johnstone, 1992; Spolin, 1999), anthropology (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, &amp; Cain, 2003), psychology (Sawyer, 2011b; Vygotsky, 1978), and literary theory (Bakhtin, 1981) in an effort to provide a theory of improvisation that could be deployed in future qualitative studies or serve as a way for literacy teachers to think about their classrooms. A theory of improvisation enables qualitative researchers in the field of education to acquire a more thorough understanding of the way literacies are an improvised process in scenes of learning. This project is necessary because no such theory yet exists. As part of theorizing literacy and improvisation, I draw upon scenes from my own teaching and from theatrical improvisation. I analyze these moments to illustrate various theoretical premises such as instances of "yes, and-ing" that carry a scene of learning forward. This theory building and analysis amount to a first iteration of improv theory.</p>

On its foundation in 1842, St. Francis Xavier's College, Liverpool was both the first Catholic secondary school for the middle classes and the first Jesuit day school in Britain. Served in its early years primarily by Jesuit masters from Stonyhurst, it inherited educational traditions dating back to the foundation of the English Jesuit college at Saint-Omer in Flanders in 1593. As the earliest British manifestation of the renaissance of Jesuit day schools throughout nineteenth century Europe, St. Francis Xavier's College developed initially along continental lines, imbibing the spirit of the centuries-old Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, revised in 1832. By 1875 a new era had begun to dawn as the needs of one of the largest commercial and industrial centres in the British Empire forced the Jesuits to examine critically the type of education being dispensed in their Liverpool college. Rapidly the curriculum was extended away from its traditional base rooted in the Classics to embrace scientific and technical training. As a result of this development St. Francis Xavier's was, by 1883, the largest school, boarding or day, run by the English Jesuits. Thereafter stress was increasingly to be laid on the pursuit of academic excellence, with public examinations as the chief criterion of success. Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources in England, France, Belgium and in Rome, the study sets out to show the way in which the college developed during its first sixty years; how those developments were viewed from -the headquarters of the Society of Jesus in Rome; and how the English Jesuits had to adapt to changing demands both from their Superior General in Rome and from economic and parental pressures at home. Finally, an attempt is made to demonstrate how the development of St. Francis Xavier's College influenced the foundation of a network of day schools run by the English Jesuits

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and explain the intimate connection that exists between liberal education and Catholic theology. This is done by analysing the changing patterns of interconnections in the historical and on-going relationship between both. The thesis comprises nine chapters. The first two chapters outline the general principles governing the study. The next two chapters deal with the history of the relationship between liberal education and Catholic theology, beginning with the early apologists via Augustine and culminating in Aquinas' scholastic synthesis. This part of the study describes the synthesis which took place from early Christianity until the fifteenth century. The second part of the thesis deals with the separation of liberal education and Catholic theology, which began during the Reformation, and is discussed in Chapters Five and Six. The consequences of this separation which led to the establishment of a secular system of liberal education, divorced from theology, during the Enlightenment, is analysed in Chapter Seven. The final two chapters of the thesis (Chapters Eight and Nine) deal with the 'Catholic Reaction' to the reformed rational system of liberal education, and the 'Rediscovery' of the comprehensive tradition of liberal education, brought about by the historic revival of Catholic scholarship, initiated by Pope Leo XIII.

No description available.

This study analyses the problems of moral education within Christian religious education in Kenya. It focuses on the displacement of African traditional education by the Western missionary ideology. The latter's influence on Christian religious education is deeply rooted in official commissions, reports and teaching programmes. A separation of moral education from Christian religious education in Kenya is suggested. The moral developmental approach of Piaget and Kohlberg is proposed as a basis for this separate moral education.

Taken from start of introduction : The purpose of this study is to analyse (1) the aims, objectives and assumptions of religious education in present-day Catholic and secular traditions, (2) to examine comparatively the similarities and dissimilarities of approach to religious education by each tradition and (3) to explore some of the issues relating to spiritual development as they arise in religious education in Catholic and secular traditions. It is the underlying thesis of this study that it is in comparing the approaches of each tradition to understanding religious education that it becomes possible to reach a fuller knowledge of what the concerns of religious education are, both in themselves, and also in the approaches and assumptions of the two traditions which are here examined.

In this thesis the writer outlines one form that an evolutionary-developmental paradigm of humankind might take. Beginning with the idealist position than an epistemology must precede an ontology, the author proceeds to describe the view that emerges when the respected authorities of empirical evidence and logic are joined by the eye that gives us a "scientia intuitiva," or a view "sub specie aeternitatis." From such an expanded view, a Wave Model of Consciousness-Being is formulated. The writer examines the implications of this model for values education theory as well as several other related topics.

No description available.

This thesis articulates the philosophy of The New School of Dawson College, an alternative pre-university Arts programme in a community college in Montreal. The roots of The New School's philosophy are examined and critiqued in the works of: Dewey, the existentialists, popular educational critics of the 1960s, Maslow, Rogers, the humanistic and "Values" educators, Kozol, Freire, Aronowitz, Giroux and feminist educational theorists. / The thesis focuses, however, on the dialectical relationship between theory and praxis in the development of educational philosophy. It describes the process by which various elements to be found in the works of these educational philosophers are tested by and integrated into the pedagogy of the school, contributing to its educational philosophy of Critical Humanism. / This thesis combines philosophical analysis with concrete examples of a praxis which is informed by and, in turn, informs educational theory.