St John Bosco, popularly known as Don Bosco, was an educator of the nineteenth century. His educational system, the "Preventive method," is his best-known endeavour among the numerous ground-breaking efforts at forming the youth of his time. This method of educating young people was radical considering the time and his contemporary…

"Maria Montessori's Philosophy" shows how Montessori's commitment to "follow the child" can be understood as a philosophical method for answering the great philosophical questions that confront human beings. Patrick Frierson discusses historical influences on Montessori's philosophical views, focusing on showing how her…

Hindu sacred scriptures are a rich interweave of cosmological revelation that is embedded in melopoeia (melodic poetry) and sung in designated meters during rituals, liturgical services, festivals, and personal prayers. Revelation is conveyed through enigmatic dialogues, debates, parables, anecdotes, legends, and narratives. These occur between…

In a time of intellectual and emotional overload in education, this paper offers room for breathing through a pedagogy of emptiness from a Daoist perspective. It begins by introducing the concept of Daoist emptiness through three intertwining features--generative, transcendent, and inclusive--important for rethinking pedagogy. It then moves to…

Online and blended learning (OBL) overemphasize the process of creating artifacts, producing strategies, or otherwise utilizing a "making" orientation in education. As an alternative to this making-orientation, we offer a model for relational course design founded in the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber. We examine an…

The concept of Tao occupies a core position in Taoism and even the entire Chinese classical philosophy. For philosophical Taoism, 'Tao' is the ultimate reality. Therefore, exploring Taoist epistemology, its role in governance, education and self-cultivation is necessary. The only way that can be approached beyond human ability to fathom 'Tao' is…

Much knowledge production, both academic and non-academic, is driven by a need to simplify the world in order to enable people to navigate the complexities of everyday life. Such simplifications not only risk offering less reliable representations of the world, they can also turn into disruptive and harmful images of the world. In this article,…

Liberal arts courses sometimes face the question of whether core texts can actually 'educate character' or 'care for the soul' in the Socratic sense. The "Bhagavadgita" addresses these issues from a Hindu perspective. But at the same time, the educational function of a religious core text changes decisively when transposed into a liberal…

Higher education professionals often are tasked with providing evidence to stakeholders that programs, services, and practices implemented on their campuses contribute to student success. Furthermore, in the absence of a solid base of evidence related to effective practices, higher education researchers and practitioners are left questioning what…

Dialogues between ecological wisdom across the East and the West contribute to generating unorthodox education, improving cross-cultural ecopedagogical praxis, and reinforcing education for sustainable development (ESD). In this article, Chinese Daoism and Norwegian Naessian ecosophy are compared and integrated to form an intercultural…

This lesson plan will illustrate how Taiwan can be used as a case study in an undergraduate human geography, population geography, or demography course. Incorporating Taiwan within the curriculum can equip students with a deep understanding of demographic concepts, specifically as it relates to the demographic trends in Taiwan. Through in-depth…

In this paper, the central findings of a research project into religious literacy are presented. This project sought to answer the question as to whether or not religious literacy can be a way forward for religious education (RE). Starting with the idea of 'literacy', dominant approaches religious literacy in the literature are examined. An…

The term "freethinking" originated in the 17th century to describe inquiry into beliefs which were accepted unquestioningly. Feminists such as Mary Wolstonecraft, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, and novelists such as Mark Twain and Zora Neal Hurston are among the many who dared to simultaneously challenge religious dogma,…

This article focuses on ancient Daoist wisdom, together with its associated principle of "yin-yang," and their contemporary significance in terms of how they might be applied within today's classrooms as foundations for a harmonious world. It does so by illustrating the significance of Daoism and "yin-yang" from both historical…

To identify the dominant cultural models among parents transmitting faith to their children, we find few methodological guidelines to guide coding and analysis of semi-structured interviews. We thus developed a three-phase procedure for our research team. Phase-one follows Campbell et al. by unitizing on meanings rather than words/pages, including…