'Pedagogies of Religious Education' brings together in a single volume the most important and influential research and developmental work in R.E. undertaken in the past twenty-five years. For the first time, it provides trainee and practising teachers of RE in primary and secondary schools with an invaluable resource for acquiring an informed understanding of the range of styles of learning and teaching which are available to them.

This text offers a critical view of approaches to the treatment of different religions in contemporary education, in order to devise approaches to teaching and learning and to formulate policies and procedures that are fair and just to all.

Meditation and the Classroom inventively articulates how educators can use meditation to educate the whole student. Notably, a number of universities have initiated contemplative studies options and others have opened contemplative spaces. This represents an attempt to address the inner life. It is also a sign of a new era, one in which the United States is more spiritually diverse than ever before. Examples from university classrooms and statements by students indicate benefits include increased self-awareness, creativity, and compassion. The religious studies scholars who have contributed to this book often teach about meditation, but here they include reflections on how meditation has affected them and their teaching. Until recently, though, even many religious studies professors would find sharing meditation experiences, let alone teaching meditation techniques, a breach of disciplinary and academic protocols. The value of teaching meditation and teaching about meditation is discussed. Ethical issues such as pluralism, respect, qualifications, power and coercion, and avoiding actual or perceived proselytization are also examined. While methods for religious studies are emphasized, the book provides valuable guidance for all those interested in this endeavor.

In today’s pluralistic world, many cultures feel a shift in the relationship of people with religious traditions. A corresponding movement is a resurgence of interest in human spirituality. This Handbook presents the views of education scholars who engage these concepts every day, in a collection of essays reflecting the international state of the discipline. Out of these rises a vision for the emergence of a just and peaceful world.

Believers and teachers of faith regularly know the in-breaking of God's Spirit in their midst, when revelatory experiencing unexpectedly shifts habits of thinking, feeling, and doing toward more life-giving ways of being and becoming. When the moment is right, Spirit breathes new life into dry bones. Though religious educators have much practical wisdom about facilitating learning that is creative and transformative, sharper concepts, cases, and theory can help them do it more critically and assist learners to practice openness to wonder, surprise, and authenticity. The Grace of Playing explains how we can create the conditions for revelatory experiencing by understanding it in light of playing. The notion of playing "as if" can be powerfully reclaimed from ecclesial ambivalence, casual speech, and commercial interests that often lead playing to be associated with childishness, frivolity, or entertainment. This book theorizes adults playing for the sake of faith, drawing on D. W. Winnicott's psychoanalytic theory, a revision of Jurgen Moltmann's theology of play, biblical texts, medieval devotional practices, as well as art and aesthetics that help local faith communities engage in theological reflection. Communal forms of playing in/at God's new creation provide insights into pedagogies in which learners are creating and are created anew.

In Teaching and Christian Practices several university professors describe and reflect on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape and redirect their pedagogical strategies. Whether allowing spiritually formative reading to enhance a literature course, employing table fellowship and shared meals to reinforce concepts in a pre-nursing nutrition course, or using Christian hermeneutical practices to interpret data in an economics course, these teacher-authors envision ways of teaching and learning that are rooted in the rich tradition of Christian practices, as together they reconceive classrooms and laboratories as vital arenas for faith and spiritual growth.