Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Applied research project (D. Min.)--School of Theology and Missions, Oral Roberts University, 2007. / Includes abstract and vita. Translated from Korean. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-194).

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-48).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2006. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-173).

Includes bibliography. / A vacuum has arisen for many teachers of Religious Education in South Africa with the demise of Christian National Education as a guiding rationale for the teaching of the subject. Many teachers have come to question CNE's emphasis on the transmission of content and the importance of the teacher. The child, many believe, has not been given his or her proper due. Teachers have also realised the inadequacy of CNE as a means of addressing the multi-faith nature of RE classes. The debate concerning the future of RE has centred around the need to meet the demands of educational rather than religious considerations. It has also been focused on the rationale behind the teaching of the subject. The question of appropriate methodologies has, by and large, been ignored. The imperative of devising an RE that is sound educationally as well as one that is able to address the needs of all the shades of belief that are found in most RE classes has made the work of the developmentalist James Fowler particularly apposite. He has constructed a stage model that, he believes, describes the progression of faith or meaning through which individuals travel. During all the stages the modes of meaning-making follow a predictable pattern. These modes are universal in their application and are independent of the content of the belief system in which they are grounded, whether this be religious or non-religious. The teacher using such a model is therefore able to engage everyone in an RE class.

This thesis is the description, defense and critique of a course developed to teach gospel principles to 7- through 9-year-old children. The development process through which the course went, its formative evaluations and summative evaluation are described. The summative evaluation employed the pretest-posttest control group design. Thirty children, ages 7 through 9, were in the evaluation. After the pretest, 15 of the children were taught the 19-lesson course by their parents during a 23-day period. A statistical comparison of the mean pretest-posttest gain scores for the experimental group could significantly more accurately identify examples and non examples of fatih, agency, and repentance (.1 level). A sub-group of the experimental group, who went through the course as per instructions, had a mean gain score that was significant at the .005 level when compared with the control group.

In this critical evaluation of the National Policy on Religion and Education (Republic of South Africa 2003) , I will invite a multiplicity of voices and opinions from various disciplines and discourses - a Bakhtinian carnival of heteroglossic play . As opposed to the official feast, one might say that carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchal rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalised and completed (Bakhtin 1984:10). In this time of postmodern carnival, official 'Truth' is constantly questioned and treated with suspicion and replaced by new and unofficial truths (Scott 1986; Hiebert 2003). God (if not religion) has been proclaimed dead and yet at the same time seems to be more alive than ever. This is a time when 'all the conventional norms and protocols are suspended, as the common life is invaded by a great wave of riotous antinomianism which makes everywhere for bizarre mésalliances' (Scott 1986:6). And the presiding spirit of blasphemy finds its quintessential expression in the ritual of the mock crowning and subsequent decrowning of the carnival king - who is the very antithesis of a real king, since he is in fact often a slave or a jester. In short, everything is topsy-turvy, and the disarray thus engenders an uproarious kind of laughter (Scott 1986:6). In his presidential address to the American Academy of Religion in 1986 titled 'The house of intellect in an age of carnival: some hermeneutical reflections', Scott (1986:7) explores the impact of the "multiplicity and fragmentation and diversity" facing 'the house of intellect', and identifies the challenge of not resorting to the safety of 'any sort of reductionism, [but] how to understand and interpret the multitudinous messages and voices that press in upon us, each clamouring for attention and for pride of place'. After acknowledging the polyphony surrounding Religionswissenschaft on the one hand and on the other hand rejecting any hermeneutical attempts at a 'totalistic' synthesis, Scott proposes moving among the different 'modalities' of interanimation between [the various] modes of discourse' (Ricoeur quoted by Scott 1986:11). Scott (1986:15) closes his address by appealing for continued conversations and dialogue among discourses and 'scatterings' of truth (1986:15) as a hermeneutical method that would take the plurality and heteroglossia of this time in history seriously. This thesis is an attempt - a personal but also a scholarly and academically responsible attempt - to plot many of the voices and contexts that would help to evaluate the specific understanding of the role of the study of religion in the broader contexts of citizenship in a postmodern age where nationalities, nation states and allegiances are constantly in flux and complex. This thesis is also submitted as proof of the validity of my own voice as one of many voices in and surrounding the house of intellect in an age of carnival. / Religious Studies and Arabic) / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies and Arabic)

This study investigates the effect of access to a visual outline of the text structure of a Talmudic passage on comprehension of that passage. A system for defining the text structure of Talmudic passages was designed by merging and simplifying earlier text structure systems described for Talmudic passages, following principles taken from research on text structure. Comprehension of two passages were compared for students who did traditional reading of a Talmudic passage (the passages had punctuation added, and a list of difficult words and their meanings was appended) (the control condition), and students who read the passage with these same materials as well as with an outline of the text structure of that passage (the experimental condition). Seventy-two 10th and 11th graders participated. After a brief training on text structure, students were randomly assigned to the control or experimental condition for Passage 1. All students took a comprehension exam on Passage 1. In the next session, all students who read Passage 1 in the control condition read Passage 2 in the experimental condition, and all students who read Passage 2 in the experimental condition read Passage 2 in the control condition. Students then took a comprehension exam for Passage 2. The text structure outline improved students’ ability to comprehend Passage 2, but no benefits were seen on Passage 1. The results provide evidence that awareness of the text structure of a Talmudic passage helps readers when the passage is concrete and somewhat well organized.

Carmel College, a Jewish Day School, was established to provide Jewish education for the children of the Durban Jewish community. Inasmuch as the school has always had a small contingent of non-Jewish students, a decision was made in 1994 to fill the school to capacity with non-Jewish students. Although, Carmel is in essence, a multi-cultural school in that it has a nearly fifty per cent non-Jewish population, implementing a multi-cultural education programme would be counter-productive to the goals of Jewish education. In that Orthodox Judaism is not assimilatory, it can be conjectured that Jewish education is incompatible with multi-cultural education. This study investigates the attitudes of the Jewish community towards the educational transition taking place in Carmel College, as a result of the change in the student population ratio. The study commenced with a generative phase which comprised of a review of relevant literature, document analysis, semi-structured interviews and a situational analysis. Issues that emerged from this phase of the research became the focus of further investigation using questionnaires. Findings have revealed the dilemma of managing a Jewish school in a multicultural environment. Whilst parents believe in the importance of Jewish education many are unaware of its unique and separate nature. The filling of the school with non-Jewish students has raised important issues. The findings indicated that Jewish studies teachers feel inhibited in their classes and are unable to deal with sensitive issues. The increased enrolment of non-Jewish students has not only created greater potential for assimilation but undertones of cultural dissension within the student body were also evident. As there is little provision made for multi-culturalism, non-Jewish students are recipients of a curriculum which lacks relevance and is foreign to their needs. If Carmel is to continue to provide Jewish education for its community it will have to re-structure the curriculum in order to provide a more intense Judaica programme for Jewish students and at the same time cater more effectively for non-Jewish students. To this end, parents and other stakeholders will have to be enlightened about the purpose of Jewish education and the need for change. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, 1996.