The paper presents a critical evaluation of the Literature of the Troubles Project which was aimed at using literature in an educational context to help cement the process of peace and reconciliation between Northern Ireland's divided communities. The Project, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, ran from September 2007 to August 2009. Its…

The study examined the reasoning skills of first year high school students after learning general science concepts through analogies. Two intact heterogeneous sections were randomly assigned to Analogy-Enhanced Instruction (AEI) group and Non Analogy-Enhanced (NAEI) group. Various analogies were incorporated in the lessons of the AEI group for…

This paper presents findings from interviews conducted in December 2011, with seven Shuar mothers of children in an intercultural bilingual school in the southern Amazon region of Ecuador. This study had two objectives: (1) to foreground the perspectives of Shuar parents towards intercultural bilingual education (IBE) as implemented in the Shuar…

Studies which examine how educational leadership in faith-based schools is understood and practised are few and far between in the research literature. This is surprising given the important role faith-based schools play within the Australian school system and the controversy that has often surrounded them. Taking into consideration the gap in the…

This article presents a longitudinal, qualitative case study of a student leadership program in a Catholic secondary school in Perth, Western Australia. Data were collected over a period of three years through multiple methods, including one-on-one interviewing, focus group interviewing, document searches, field notes, and researcher reflective…

This article examines school sector differences in student performance Years 3, 5, and 7 in numeracy, reading, writing, spelling and grammar using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and the national testing program (NAPLAN). At each of the 3 Year levels, there are sizable school sector differences with students from…

Fisher's spiritual well-being (SWB) questionnaires assessed students' levels of relationship in four domains, namely with themselves, others, the environment and with a Transcendent Other (commonly called God). Students also reported the extent to which different entities helped them develop relationships in the four domains of SWB. However,…

Depending on the area of academic concentration, formal education beyond the secondary school level may present Catholic-educated individuals with a steady stream of perspectives, theories, and worldviews on a variety of sociocultural issues, including sexuality, that are different from those of the Catholic Church. Increasingly, liberal attitudes…

Church documents recognize that the Catholic teacher's faith, mediated through a teacher's commitment, is one of the crucial factors that guarantees the success of the Catholic school (Congregation for Catholic Education, 1977, 1982, 2007). A number of researchers support this view with their findings (Ciriello, 1987; Tarr, 1992; Tiernan, 2000).…

The challenges facing Catholic higher education today offer the Church an opportunity to rethink the conceptual framework within which it operates. The educational vision found in the relevant writings of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI offer possibilities for an educational project centered on the role…

Previous findings suggest that religion has a specific impact on attentional processes. Here we show that religion also affects action control. Experiment 1 compared Dutch Calvinists and Dutch atheists, matched for age, sex, intelligence, education, and cultural and socio-economic background, and Experiment 2 compared Italian Catholics with…

This article reviews the challenges provided by a plural condition toward doing religious education in the Philippines. The problem of Philippine religious education hinges on the fact that the growing plural condition in the educational system remains until now "un-discussed"; or integrated in many schools. Not much is heard about…

The manner in which a person views the universe originates from her/his culture. If someone should be asked of the predominant element found in every culture that has for centuries given people their perspective of the universe, certainly, the answer would be, Religion! The responsibility of generating and preserving the elements of one's…

This article uses three value constructs, Catholic social thought (CST), feminist political economy (FPE) and ecological economics (Eco-Econ) to critique current mainstream economics. Insights from these values open a way to seeing and creating a just, sustainable future. Within this value framework we propose the integration of these themes in…

One of the many challenges that English Catholic secondary schools face in an increasingly secular and plural society is to maintain the Catholicity of their schools. The celebration of Mass in school may function as a means of maintaining the memory of the Catholic faith tradition. In this article the experience of Mass in school is examined…