The study reported on in this article examined students’ perceptions in three faith-based secondary schools in New Zealand to identify those aspects of the Christian school experience that they perceived as having the greatest impact on their faith formation.
This systematic review derives from the introductory chapter of a PhD thesis, highlighting challenges associated with implementing Inclusive Education [IE] in Australian Christian Schools. It frames the relationship between a teacher’s religious beliefs and attitudes towards IE in two groups of Evangelical Christian schools in New South Wales. The review provides an orientation for a study, introducing the need to explore religious belief as a variable that may impact a teacher’s attitude towards IE. It outlines the need to explore how religious belief may influence a teacher’s intention to include students with disabilities. A problem statement outlining challenges for implementing IE in Australian Christian schools is presented before exploring the pedagogical and theological context of inclusive beliefs in Australian Christian schools. The empirical study findings stemming from this review will be published in a future edition of the journal.
This paper reports on the final stage of a mixed methods research study in which the full population of teachers from Adventist Schools Australia (ASA), the third largest school system in Australia, were invited to contribute to an online survey. During the final stage of this study, ten focus group discussions were conducted, and the participants represented teachers from ASA schools in every state and territory in Australia. Teachers in these focus group discussions provided commentary about their experiences during the international COVID-19 pandemic. They were asked to share perceptions of how lockdowns changed learning and relationships within their school and how they viewed the future of education and teaching, post-COVID. Results of the focus group transcript analyses revealed a mixed reaction to life as a teacher returning to a physical classroom after the COVID-19 lockdowns. Multiple changes were noted in their schools and classrooms. While teachers were happy to return to face-to-face teaching and the company of their colleagues and the students, they expressed the need for more resources and professional learning in the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), alongside concerns about the wellbeing of students, themselves and their colleagues. Now, several years after the COVID-19 lockdowns, the results of this study are offered for consideration by teachers, school administrators and policymakers in the ASA system. The results may also be relevant to those within and outside Australia who experienced the ramifications of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic while also planning how to mitigate the pandemic’s ongoing influence on teachers and student learning.
This paper examines the role of creative practice in enhancing humanities education. Through an examination of three programs at Avondale University, the authors highlight how creative practice can foster critical thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional skills development in students. This paper contends that traditional approachesto humanities education often overlook the process-based learning central to creative practice and suggests that incorporating creative activities into humanities education can significantly contribute to students’ emotional, intellectual, and professional growth, enabling them to adapt more readily to the demands of evolving social and professional environments.
Given general criticism of protracted mission and vision statements (MVSs), this study focused on investigating the word count of MVSs from a sample of Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church organisations and institutions around the globe. As part of a summative evaluation, the numerical data from the SDA sample are compared with data from other faith-based as well as secular counterparts and also, notably, with data from ‘recognised’ MVS exemplars. The findings may challenge some administrators to give more careful attention to effectively communicating the purpose and aspirational statements of their establishments, differentiating between the two text types and, more importantly, the length format in which these are expressed.
This literature review investigated potential problems associated with the uncritical implementation of a Positive Education approach to student wellbeing in the context of Anglican (or other Christian) schools. Six themes were considered in turn, drawing on a wide range of literature from the fields of education, philosophy, psychology, sociology and theology. These themes are as follows: 1. Distinctives of Anglican education in Australia; 2. Holistic education and the good life; 3. Understanding student wellbeing and flourishing; 4. The need for student wellbeing programs in schools; 5. Student wellbeing, Positive Psychology and Positive Education; 6. Is Positive Education compatible with a Christian worldview. The paper concludes that Positive Education programs, including PERMA and the VIA Character Strengths, ought to be critically considered and carefully adapted before implementation in Anglican or other Christian schools.
This research study examined concerns about financial policy compliance and internal control mentioned in General Conference Auditing Service audit reports at four Seventh-day Adventist schools in Thailand. It focused on how to resolve recurring violations of denominational financial policies and improve control of accounting and administrative functions. A total of 32 in-depth interviews of external and internal stakeholders were conducted to search for practical ways to deal with common compliance and internal control problems. A key finding was a need to share policy compliance and management letters with school boards and financial staff, respectively, to facilitate rapid resolution of problems. Local contexts should be considered when implementing policies and internal controls. Given significant variations in laws and customs, higher organizations should study how to thoughtfully apply good governance principles in local situations.
Service practice is reasonably well recognised in education, especially Christian education which seeks to emulate the example of Jesus. However, service-learning has emerged as a transformative educational practice that provides a framework and curriculum producing transformative positive outcomes for students that equip them for their role as future democratic citizens, and further as representatives of Jesus.
Singapore Bible College (SBC) recognises that the mere purchasing of any education technology tools is not sufficient to pervade its use. Implementation strategies based on sound principles of barriers to technology integration were formulated, implemented, and measured to gauge its effectiveness. Its final goal is that the use of Panopto technology is fully leveraged to benefit the teaching and learning community within SBC.
We live in a time where the Christian church and our Christian faith have been pushed to society's peripherals. Operating in environments that are increasingly secular, where consumerism abounds, it can be easy to define Christian schooling in almost oppositional terms. There is another way. What if those of us involved in Christian schooling were to reimagine Christian education through a shared missional lens grounded in the foundation of the Missio Dei (God's Mission)? The potential of the missional lens for Christian schooling is considerable. It grounds the Christian school movement, and the identity of the teacher, in the larger biblical narrative. Additionally, with each generation invited to engage in mission in a way that is contextual, it allows for a multiplicity of ways to participate in the outworking of God's mission within the context and setting in which each school has been placed.
The metaverse, an immersive virtual reality space where users interact with other users, has become a legitimate consideration for organizations as they strategize for the long term. Education is one industry, among many others, which has joined the metaverse with the hope of engaging students in a new way. Given the reach of the metaverse, Christian education and other faith-based educational institutions have the opportunity to interact and learn in a new way on a global scale. The purpose of this reflection is to offer a starting point for Christian educators and organizations to discuss this new endeavour of the future of education.
This research explores how students within a Christian school experience pedagogy and how they perceive this experience to influence them, in terms of empowerment or disempowerment.
The purpose of this study was to design a series of workshop events for new or novice supervisors of higher degree by research candidates using input from the novice supervisors, experienced supervisors and a panel of experts. A mixed methodology was adopted where the novice and experienced supervisors completed a Likert-style questionnaire and participated in semi-structured focus groups and interviews. Data from experts was collected from a hosted panel. The novice supervisors were most concerned about managing the supervision process and dealing with candidate issues, giving feedback, working with different methodologies they may not be familiar with, and supervising in areas outside their field of expertise. The experienced supervisors added that the workshops should include advice about relationships and the wellbeing of candidates. The outcomes of the study were pragmatic because they fed into the content of the workshops, thereby training novice supervisors with aspects of supervision they felt they needed, along with aspects recommended by experienced supervisors. This study suggests that, when institutions are designing training events for higher degree by research supervisors, key stakeholders, including the potential learners (novice supervisors), should be systematically consulted. This form of teaching in a Christian institution includes all the basics of recognised good supervision but adds the elements of Christian care and support.
