This article considers the state of service and experiential learning initiatives in higher education, especially in Catholic universities. Concluding that the Catholic mission of service, education, moral values, world concerns, and ecumenism can be integrated into student experience, the essay offers a model of service ethnography. Service…

If strengthening children's moral and spiritual selves is the most important challenge facing youth-serving organizations in the United States today, three things are required to respond: a clear road map of where to go and how to get there, a critical mass of champions prepared to lead the way, and candid readiness assessments and strategies for…

This paper presents findings from a recent study investigating young children's (aged 10-11) conceptions of Jesus in England. The overall picture revealed by the study is that whilst there was a general assent amongst pupils in our sample towards an ethical and humanistic conception of the historical Jesus, there was less of a consensus about…

Papers for the 2006 Religious Education Association Conference explored the power of stories--the Qur'an stories of Islam, the power of traditional Korean folk stories to shape values, how story informs Christian baptism, and a discussion of the Confucian stories that continue to shape many cultures in Asia. Other papers challenged the power of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson experienced the natural world as a sort of school. He thought that the school of nature offered both challenging instructors and an unlimited number of lessons. What are these lessons, for Emerson, and who are these teachers? How can the education that nature offers be discovered? To talk of the education of nature is, like…

According to surveys, most of the people in the world say that religion is very important in their lives. Many would say that without it, their lives would be meaningless. It is tempting just to take them at their word, to declare that nothing more is to be said-- and to tiptoe away. Who would want to interfere with whatever it is that gives their…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the influences of spirituality on decisions made by African American women principals at the elementary school level in schools where children of color and poverty exist in significant numbers and to gain an understanding of how African moral virtues were evidenced in the day to day professional…

The goals of higher education often entail the development of students' character. Rarely, however, are these character development goals connected to the unique design and delivery of distance education programs. Additionally, the research literature that explores the character development aspects of distance education is sparse. Thus the purpose…

Campus ministry contributes to the development of mission and Catholic identity at Catholic colleges and universities through student programming and pastoral care, and also through service to the institution itself. It is important to recognize that while campus ministry is not solely responsible for the outward expressions of Catholic identity,…

In this short essay I respond to Kevin Gary's generous review of my book "Reclaiming Goodness" by considering his two main concerns, that I tend to conflate spirituality and morality and that I am not sufficiently sensitive to tensions between spirituality and critical thinking. I respond by noting that Gary has not taken adequate account of the…

A key challenge for education is to encourage children to act responsibly. If "spiritual literacy" does not involve an autonomous, rational soul capable of "reading and writing the world as God intended", it must refer to ethical (and perhaps religious) capacity in relation to contingent actions in a context free of moral absolutes. In relation to…

This article describes a project called "Kids Speaking Up for Kids: Advocacy by Children, for Children". The project was simple in scope. The authors sought to collect stories of child advocacy--ways in which children were working on behalf of other children. They also sought to collect and profile children's voices and vision and so…

This article addresses how Christians can read wisely and well as citizens of both God's kingdom and an increasingly secular society. I suggest that focussing on reading as a transaction between reader and text rather than on the morality of texts or the maturity of readers can provide a biblical approach for Christian educators seeking to invest…

According to a study of student religiosity conducted by the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), 80 percent of students express a strong interest in spirituality. They are not only spiritual, but they are also religious. Over half of all students attend religious services at least once per month. Indeed, according to the UCLA study, eight…

This article addresses teachers' understanding of spiritual development in public and religious schools in Boston and Chicago. It examines how teachers define spiritual development in different educational contexts and looks at the way they relate spirituality to a number of factors including community, identity, and character. The data from the…