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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

This study aimed to map how much space is given to the five world religions in two textbooks used to teach history 1b at high school in Sweden, as well as how these are presented based on Jackson's theoretical perspective of representation. Part of the questions discussed had a descriptive nature and were used to investigated how much space was given to religions in the study material. With a deductive approach, Jackson's model describing concepts of religious tradition, group, individual, bounded systems of belief and personal and flexible model was used to see similarities and differences in how different religions were presented in the textbooks. Through a qualitative content analysis, the material was analyzed based on the categories controlling and developing, which had been derived from the coded material based on an inductive working method. The results show that there is little variation in the context in which the religions are presented, and that there is an imbalance in how much space is given to them. Comparing the results against the background of Jackson's theoretical perspective of representation, the results further shows that it is only Christianity that is presented based on all of Jackson’s three levels (religious tradition, group and individual). The overall picture of how the five largest world religions are presented in the material therefore, cannot be understood based on a personal flexible model for teaching.

Thesis advisor: Thomas H. Groome / The central proposal of this dissertation is that recovering the sacramentalprinciple and sacramentality—as a deep structure to all of life—is essential to Christian life, and thus to Catholic education for faith. The sacramental worldview takes seriously the material and historical reality of finite creaturely existence as the place of encounter with Holy Mystery. The seeds of an approach to cultivating this worldview lie in the ancient church practice of mystagogy. Chapter One surveys the epistemological and anthropological facets of the modern and postmodern contexts which posit a desacramentalized cosmos. Many find themselves confined to the limit and flatness of an instrumental, rationalistic, and data driven day to day existence within a commodity culture. This engenders a resistance to the depth of a sacramental cosmos undergirded by the love of the Creator. Furthermore, sacramental ritual and communal worship are no longer a primary place of formation or celebration for fewer and fewer people. Chapter Two traces the historical contours of the sacramental principle as a deep structure to Catholic Christian faith in particular, and indeed, to all of reality. This is placed in conversation with Charles Taylor’s philosophical diagnosis of the secular age and the sacramental theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet. It is into a “world already spoken” by the Logos that the symbolic order acts as a set of building blocks to construct our reality and is therefore the way in which we experience God’s self-communication in God’s transcendence. Chapter Three explores the anthropology and epistemological category of experience in the work of Karl Rahner. Rahner helps us to understand that experience is a necessary epistemological category—constitutive of human knowing. Second, experience is existentiell, meaning that all experience is active and lived, grounded in freedom. Chapter Four maintains that mystagogy was an essential interpretive frame of reference for discerning Christian mystery in the ancient church. The exploration of origins leads to a four-movement model—recollection, recognition, reorientation, and relation—that emerges as a constitutive pattern in early mystagogy. Chapter Five is constructive employing the work of John Dewey, Maxine Greene, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Thomas Groome who emphasize the importance the epistemological category of experience in education. Moreover, the four-movement pattern mentioned above is discernible in the spectacular resurrection narrative of the Road to Emmaus and a model for education in faith, prefigured by Jesus’ earthly pedagogy. Consequently, I propose a more extended, broader sense of a mystagogical approach for contemporary praxis to enable the reclamation of an essential sacramental imagination for our time. The telos of these four movements of mystagogy is to enable an anagnorisis—a re-cognition and response to the presence of Holy Mystery within everyday experience. Finally, Chapter Six engages the implications of the foregoing. Mystagogy is an indexical praxis which invites us to be life-long apprentices to becoming alert to God’s hidden presence in our lived experience. It is the rehearsal of a disposition that understands reality as saturated by grace, and learning to accept it as both gift and obligation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

This study documents a critical evaluation of the religious education curriculum used in Uganda's secondary schools. The study focused on goals and objectives, methods, content, and public perception of religious education instruction. The evaluation was based on a qualitative investigation that employed three methods to collect data: document analysis, classroom observation, and interviews. The investigation was guided by a series of research questions that included the following: What are the overall goals and objectives of religious education instruction? What are the attitudes from the community regarding religious education? What are the roles of religious leaders during implementation of this curriculum? How does the curriculum prepare students for the pluralistic nature of the society? What qualifications and training do the teachers have? What are the politics involved in curriculum implementation? What is the philosophy of religious education instruction as defined by policy makers and how is it implemented?

The exodus of young people from traditional churches is well established and this project is a handbook to guide more meaningful engagement with young adolescents. Based in ministry experience and research, the handbook addresses parents, religious educators, youth ministers, and pastors who seek to enhance young adolescents’ faith formation. By affirming and encouraging them through this time of changing bodies, minds, and emotions, early adolescent faith formation can introduce Catholic Christian beliefs and values in a context that matters to the youth: their own struggle to become the persons God created them to be. The handbook makes practical suggestions for effective ways to build inter generational relationships.

As a result of the increasing interest of the Saudi government in developing its people by education, it has begun in its projects and vision statements to promote a culture of dialogue; hence educators are now expected to make dialogue a routine practice in their work, particularly in the religious education curricula at Saudi universities. The present research makes both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to understanding the Saudi understanding of the concept of dialogue and in relation to one particular context through studying understandings of dialogue and its practices in an Islamic community. Theoretical understandings of dialogue include a consideration of the writings of Buber, Bakhtin, and Freire, and how understandings of dialogue are refracted differently when understood within the context of an ongoing tradition of inquiry, through the writings of MacIntyre and specifically Islamic traditions of inquiry, as investigated by Asad. Within the Islamic tradition, the significance of dialogue is analysed through the works of al-Ghazali. This study also investigated the practices of dialogue in religious education courses at a university and their relation to Saudi educational policy, the aims of establishing a center for national dialogue, and the current understanding and present practices of dialogue within the Saudi community and between university teachers and their students. The empirical research applied a case study methodology and took a sociocultural approach: data were collected via interviews, classroom observations and textual analysis. The findings indicate that, while Islam and the Saudi government are obviously interested in dialogue – with some restrictions – those concerned are unclear about the concept of dialogue and its practicing. This implies that the Saudi people need enough spaces to practice dialogue. The findings illustrate the value of higher education, its teachers, classrooms and activities which need to be improved in order to increase opportunities to practice dialogue.

Ever since its promulgation, in the late 1960s, the curriculum document entitled The Melbourne Religious Education Guidelines for Primary Students in the Archdiocese of Melbourne has attracted strong criticism from various members of the Roman Catholic community. This adverse criticism has prompted me to undertake an evaluation of the 1984 edition of this document. To enable me to analyze the document, both theologically and educationally, I have constructed classifications of theologies and education models. These classifications have been used to identify the dominant theological basis of the suggested curriculum and the religious education model used in its implementation. My analysis established that the theological basis of the document was Propositional, tempered by some of the characteristics of Heilsgeschichte theology. The content of the program contained both secular and religious material but, since they were not integrated, they gave the impression of two separate syllabi, used independently of each other. The methodology commenced with the students' experience but proceeded to the transmission of doctrinal religious knowledge. The language used in the expression of aims and goals contained characteristics of Heilsgeschichte theology and the Kerygmatic model of religious education. It was, therefore, seen to be in tension with the teaching methodology which emphasized transmission of doctrine, thus causing internal tensions and inconsistencies.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (Ed.d.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995. / Includes tables. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Philip A. Fey. Dissertation Committee: Kathleen A. Loughlin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 296-304).