<p> The purpose of this study was to determine how pastors of autonomous church congregations of 1,000 members or more describe the impact of biblical principles on their leadership in the areas of visionary leadership, communication, problem solving and decision making, personal/interpersonal skills, character/integrity, collaboration, creativity and sustained innovation, diversity, team building, and political intelligence. In this study, qualitative research methods that included interviewing pastors were used. Interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed, analyzed, and coded for the purposes of comparison to the Transformational Leadership Skills Inventory (TLSi). The study produced data that showed alignment to pastor leadership traits and transformational leadership skills as measured by the TLSi. Results from the study can be used for training and curriculum in transformational leadership for pastors, as a tool for selecting and monitoring pastors, and to create church action plans that align to transformational leadership principles. </p>

No description available.

In this descriptive phenomenological inquiry, I explored the experiences and meanings of five adult research participants who were raised in and later departed from evangelical fundamentalism in some measure. Life Review, a structured guided autobiographical group-based adult learning model designed to assist people in organizing life events, was utilized to explore the research participants' experiences and meanings of being raised in a religious fundamentalist orientation. As a result of participating in Life Review, the research participants generated thirty descriptive written narratives that served as the primary source of data for this inquiry. For the purpose of this inquiry, the research participants attended eight Life Review sessions. Sessions one and eight focused on group formation and closure, respectively. Sessions two through seven focused on assigned topics. In this regard, the research participants prepared six two-page single spaced narratives via a word processor describing their experiences and meanings specific to: 1) choosing to participate in this study, 2) major branching points in life, 3) family of origin, 4) parenting practices, 5) the effects of being raised in evangelical fundamentalism, and 6) the meaning of life. During Life Review sessions two through seven, the research participants read their respective narratives aloud to the other participants. A time limited reflective group discussion followed the reading of each narrative. A phenomenological data analysis model was applied to the research participant's narratives. The analysis of the data culminated in the emergence of themes that revealed the essence of the lived experience and meanings of being raised in and later departing from evangelical fundamentalism. The themes included the experience and meaning of: 1) unresolved pain, 2) unfulfilled longing, 3) coping strategies, 4) identity formation, 5) God and church, 6) being a Parent, 7) crippling fear, 8) engaging culture, 9) departing, and 10) finding home. These emergent themes described the essence of the research participants' life worlds specific to having been raised in and later departing from evangelical fundamentalism. The significance of the emergent findings and their relevance to evangelical fundamentalism, the psychology of religion, counseling psychology, and continued research were addressed, as were the limitations of the study.

This is a report of research that sets out to find the expressed views of child care and education students using storytelling as a teaching method to understand Confucian values in kindergarten-aged children in Hong Kong. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2008.

This study asks the question 'How does religion education racialise its subjects'. It examines discursive cultural practices, including pedagogical practices, through the lens of whiteness as a way of understanding how teaching and learning about a religious tradition other than white Christianity might act to reproduce white race dominance in secondary religious education curricula in the Australian context. The study draws on a number of key theoretical insights from the work of the French post structuralist Jacques Derrida including his critique of the metaphysics of presence, his reply in 'difference', and his general 'strategy' of deconstruction. The study argues that 'whiteness', as a racialised position of institutional power and privilege exists as an absent presence in religion education curricula and that its dominance and privilege is reproduced through its (regulated) invisibility. This argument is illustrated through an examination of some of the literature that informs the teaching and learning of religion education in schools, an examination of the history of public religion education in South Australia, and principally through an examination of the history of discursive cultural practices that occurred during the teaching of a unit of work on Buddhism under the SACE Stage 1 'Studies in Religion' Extended Subject Framework within four religion education classrooms in metropolitan Adelaide. The study is a multi-sited micro-ethnography in which some of the discursive cultural practices of white race dominance that circulate throughout broader white Australian society are examined across and within the specificities of four different religion education sites. A number of methodological considerations are involved in a study such as this. The problems of race identification between a researcher and participants, power differentials between a researcher and participants, particularly when many of those participants are school children, and the issue of representation is discussed. Written portraits of each of the class sites are given as a way of signalling the heterogeneity of the cultural field in which religion education occurs. A selection of narratives from teachers and students, and some of the storylines that circulated throughout each of the classrooms, is examined for the ways in which the invisibility of whiteness acts to limit and enable the ways in which teachers and students are able to engage with Buddhism and Buddhists as the object of their study. The study highlights that in spite of good intentions and good will, religion educators and students of religion are implicated in the maintenance of white race privilege through practices that are often re-articulations of a colonial past that continues to structure the world through strict binaries of opposition. The study argues that there is a need for religion educators to begin to 'see' the invisibility of whiteness in religion education. Following Miedema and Biesta I argue for the need for religion educators to ???take responsibility for an otherness that can never become fully present???, that can never be fully known and with whom dialogue can only ever be incomplete. I suggest that what is required for a more socially just religion education curriculum and more socially just religion practices is a willingness on the part of religion educators to open ourselves to the ???unforeseeable in-coming of the other??? (Miedema & Biesta). / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2005

Thesis (MEd (Religion Ed)) -- University of South Australia, 1992

This study asks the question 'How does religion education racialise its subjects'. It examines discursive cultural practices, including pedagogical practices, through the lens of whiteness as a way of understanding how teaching and learning about a religious tradition other than white Christianity might act to reproduce white race dominance in secondary religious education curricula in the Australian context. The study draws on a number of key theoretical insights from the work of the French post structuralist Jacques Derrida including his critique of the metaphysics of presence, his reply in 'difference', and his general 'strategy' of deconstruction. The study argues that 'whiteness', as a racialised position of institutional power and privilege exists as an absent presence in religion education curricula and that its dominance and privilege is reproduced through its (regulated) invisibility. This argument is illustrated through an examination of some of the literature that informs the teaching and learning of religion education in schools, an examination of the history of public religion education in South Australia, and principally through an examination of the history of discursive cultural practices that occurred during the teaching of a unit of work on Buddhism under the SACE Stage 1 'Studies in Religion' Extended Subject Framework within four religion education classrooms in metropolitan Adelaide. The study is a multi-sited micro-ethnography in which some of the discursive cultural practices of white race dominance that circulate throughout broader white Australian society are examined across and within the specificities of four different religion education sites. A number of methodological considerations are involved in a study such as this. The problems of race identification between a researcher and participants, power differentials between a researcher and participants, particularly when many of those participants are school children, and the issue of representation is discussed. Written portraits of each of the class sites are given as a way of signalling the heterogeneity of the cultural field in which religion education occurs. A selection of narratives from teachers and students, and some of the storylines that circulated throughout each of the classrooms, is examined for the ways in which the invisibility of whiteness acts to limit and enable the ways in which teachers and students are able to engage with Buddhism and Buddhists as the object of their study. The study highlights that in spite of good intentions and good will, religion educators and students of religion are implicated in the maintenance of white race privilege through practices that are often re-articulations of a colonial past that continues to structure the world through strict binaries of opposition. The study argues that there is a need for religion educators to begin to 'see' the invisibility of whiteness in religion education. Following Miedema and Biesta I argue for the need for religion educators to ???take responsibility for an otherness that can never become fully present???, that can never be fully known and with whom dialogue can only ever be incomplete. I suggest that what is required for a more socially just religion education curriculum and more socially just religion practices is a willingness on the part of religion educators to open ourselves to the ???unforeseeable in-coming of the other??? (Miedema & Biesta). / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2005

This study asks the question 'How does religion education racialise its subjects'. It examines discursive cultural practices, including pedagogical practices, through the lens of whiteness as a way of understanding how teaching and learning about a religious tradition other than white Christianity might act to reproduce white race dominance in secondary religious education curricula in the Australian context. The study draws on a number of key theoretical insights from the work of the French post structuralist Jacques Derrida including his critique of the metaphysics of presence, his reply in 'difference', and his general 'strategy' of deconstruction. The study argues that 'whiteness', as a racialised position of institutional power and privilege exists as an absent presence in religion education curricula and that its dominance and privilege is reproduced through its (regulated) invisibility. This argument is illustrated through an examination of some of the literature that informs the teaching and learning of religion education in schools, an examination of the history of public religion education in South Australia, and principally through an examination of the history of discursive cultural practices that occurred during the teaching of a unit of work on Buddhism under the SACE Stage 1 'Studies in Religion' Extended Subject Framework within four religion education classrooms in metropolitan Adelaide. The study is a multi-sited micro-ethnography in which some of the discursive cultural practices of white race dominance that circulate throughout broader white Australian society are examined across and within the specificities of four different religion education sites. A number of methodological considerations are involved in a study such as this. The problems of race identification between a researcher and participants, power differentials between a researcher and participants, particularly when many of those participants are school children, and the issue of representation is discussed. Written portraits of each of the class sites are given as a way of signalling the heterogeneity of the cultural field in which religion education occurs. A selection of narratives from teachers and students, and some of the storylines that circulated throughout each of the classrooms, is examined for the ways in which the invisibility of whiteness acts to limit and enable the ways in which teachers and students are able to engage with Buddhism and Buddhists as the object of their study. The study highlights that in spite of good intentions and good will, religion educators and students of religion are implicated in the maintenance of white race privilege through practices that are often re-articulations of a colonial past that continues to structure the world through strict binaries of opposition. The study argues that there is a need for religion educators to begin to 'see' the invisibility of whiteness in religion education. Following Miedema and Biesta I argue for the need for religion educators to ???take responsibility for an otherness that can never become fully present???, that can never be fully known and with whom dialogue can only ever be incomplete. I suggest that what is required for a more socially just religion education curriculum and more socially just religion practices is a willingness on the part of religion educators to open ourselves to the ???unforeseeable in-coming of the other??? (Miedema & Biesta). / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2005

Thesis (M.A.)--Cincinnati Christian University, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-106).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-287). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.