Religious identity choices in English secondary schools (original) (raw)
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2013
The increasing diversity of societies is one of the most important educational issues of the globalised era. However, while some attention has been paid to the schooling experiences of racial, ethnic and immigrant minorities in Western societies, little research has been conducted with religious adolescents. This thesis explores the complexities of religious adolescents' experiences of English secondary schools. As an exploratory study, I employed an emergent research design carrying out loosely-structured, group and single interviews at eleven places of worship to investigate the schooling experiences of 99 adolescent Christians, Jews and Muslims. In order to interpret their reported experiences, I applied a theoretical model based on the Students' Multiple World Framework in conjunction with concepts of religious identity negotiation and construction. The interview data show how Christians, Jews and Muslims negotiate their religious identities in the context of the numerous challenges presented by secondary schools in a religiously plural and largely secular society. In classroom worlds participants perceived their religious traditions to be distorted, inaccurately or unfairly represented. In peer worlds participants reported that they could experience prejudice, and criticism of their beliefs. Christians, Jews and Muslims reported two principal management strategies in the face of these challenges, either: declaring their religious identity openly, or by masking it in public. The findings of this study are highly relevant to debates about the role of religion in education, including those concerning faith and Church schools and the nature and purpose of the curriculum subject Religious Education.
Religious Education, 2007
This study examines religious identity development of pupils at Dutch schools for secondary education (mean age 16.4). With the help of a theoretical conceptualization of 'religious identity development' empirical research is carried out. Main question is whether differences in terms of religious commitment and exploration between pupils of the four participating schools can be explained by religious denominations of pupils and the importance of world view for the pupils' parents. It is concluded that school in general has no significant main effect on religious commitments and explorations of pupils. Religious backgrounds of pupils should be taken into account. Because pupils themselves do indicate that school has influence on the way they look at life, further research is needed in which specific school aspects (like the way pupils evaluate religious education) should also be taken into account .
2014
As a response to the changing composition of society in globalization age, religious education has changed it paradigm to accommodate needs of multicultural society, and it has invited many critics and discussions among scholars. Through the notion of learning from and learning about religions, this study intends to portray how identities of Shi'ite students are being constructed in their lifestyle, vision of gender, socialisation, and seeking the coherence of RE with home culture using qualitative approach. The study suggested that through RE Shi'ite students are gradually changing their identity as their achievement identity. They tend to explore more lifestyle with modest modification while keep commit to their value of belief. It shows a small gap between RE tradition at school and students tradition at home in conception, in which they have to be more selective to the contents presented in RE at school fore share it with family
What is 'religious identity' and how may schooling impact upon it? In this paper, I present an elementary theory of religious identity construction and negotiation, drawing upon the theoretical framework that emerged from extensive fieldwork as part of a study of adolescent Christians, Jews and Muslims in England undertaken for my DPhil at the University of Oxford. I suggest that a conception of religious identity negotiation and construction based upon sociological and anthropological theories has much potential for educators and educational researchers. This is because to understand the impact of schooling on religious identity construction, a theory must be sensitive to social context, structural factors and power-relations -and how such phenomena may be interpreted and acted upon by individuals. In the course of this argument, I refer to important empirical and theoretical studies in comparable areas of inquiry.
British Journal of Religious Education
This paper explores the experiences of secondary school students from religious backgrounds in Religious Education (RE). A total of 16 loosely structured, group, pair and individual interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 34 school-age members of four religious communities: one Jewish and three Christian. The findings make a useful contribution to ongoing debates concerning pedagogy and practice in secondary RE. Members of the religious communities consulted often found their tradition stereotyped and simplified in RE lessons. Respondents also found that at times they were expected to be, or felt the need to be, spokespeople or representatives of their religion. However, experiences of religious intolerance and prejudice, or the fear of it, were common. This led to some students being reluctant to reveal or discuss their religious identity in lessons. Keywords: religious education; student experience; Christianity; Judaism
Acts of terrorism, moral panics, and negative stereotypes contribute to racialised and islamophobic ascriptions of Muslimness in Western contexts. In educational institutions such representations occur in the curriculum, in conflict between peers, and in prejudiced and discriminatory behaviour of teachers. For adolescents identified, or self-identifying as Muslims in schools, these challenges have been interpreted as cues that prompt identification processes, such as identity declaration, internal seeking, and religification.
Religion and Identity: The Role of Ideological, Social, and Spiritual Contexts
Existing research demonstrates a positive relation between religion and identity among adolescents. A conceptual framework is presented suggesting that religion provides a distinct setting for identity exploration and commitment through offering ideological, social, and spiritual contexts. It is then suggested that the religious context promotes a sense of identity that transcends the self and promotes a concern for the social good and that religious institutions provide unique settings for adolescent identity formation. In addition to the potential developmental benefits of religion, negative consequences on identity development are considered. Finally, recommendations for empirical study are suggested. Currently within the social sciences there seems to be a revival of interest in religion and spirituality. From its inception, the field has had a conflicting relation with these transcendent domains. G. Stanley Hall (1904) wrote about the normality and necessary qualities of religious conversion in adolescence, where two decades later, Freud (1928/1961) referred to "religion as a universal obsessional neurosis" (p. 43) and "a mere illusion, derived from human wishes," (p. 31). Although subdisciplines such as psychology of religion and religious education have developed a substantial body of work, many other areas of psychology, especially developmental psychology, have until recently left religion and spirituality relatively unexplored (Benson, Roehlkepartain, & Rude, this issue; Donelson, 1999; Weaver et al., 1998). This special issue , along with an emerging body of developmental research and publications, suggests that on the cusp of the 21st century, religion and spirituality are recognized as viable domains of study (Benson