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Editors, Management Group, Editorial Advisers

Editors:
Dr. John Shortt
Dr. David I. Smith

Management Group:
Rupert Kaye (Association of Christian Teachers)
Dr. Andrew Marfleet
David Morton (The Stapleford Centre)
Andrew Palfreyman (Association of Christian Teachers) 
Dr. John Shortt
Dr. David I. Smith (Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning)
Phil Whitehead (The Stapleford Centre)

Editorial Advisers:
Professor Harro Van Brummelen - Trinity Western University, Canada
Dr. Allan Harkness - Asia Graduate School of Theology, Singapore
Dr. Susan Hasseler - Calvin College, USA
Professor Brian V. Hill - Murdoch University, Australia
Rev. Dr. William K. Kay - University of Wales, Wales
Dr. D. Barry Lumsden - University of Alabama, USA
Samson Makhado - Association of Christian Schools International, South Africa
Dr. Mark Pike - University of Leeds, England
Dr. Signe Sandsmark - Norwegian Lutheran Mission, Norway
Dr. Pablo J. Santana Bonilla - University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Dr. Elmer J. Thiessen - Medicine Hat College, Canada
Professor Michael S. Totterdell - Manchester Metropolitan University, England
Professor Keith Watson - University of Reading, England

NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

To read the JECB Information and Instructions for Contributors click here.

To read the JECB Bibliographical Citation Guide (the ‘house style guide’) click here.

To read the JECB Peer Review Policy click here.

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Perry L. Glanzer, Todd Ream & Tony Talbert
Why Both Classical and Modern Character Education Are Not Enough: Lessons from The Emperor’s Club
(pp.103-112)

IN THIS PAPER, we argue that a Christian analysis of The Emperor’s Club, a recent movie about a classics teacher at an American prep school, provides insight into why teaching virtue within a distorted historical narrative and tradition can be destructive for both the teacher and the student. It reveals the limits of teaching character within both a classical worldview bound by fate and a modern worldview that exalts individual control. Moreover, for Christian educators who need to place our teaching in our own narrative while also being aware of the corrupting aspects of other narratives, an Augustinian critique of the film reminds us of the need for grace-filled teaching.

Keywords: The Emperor’s Club, character education, narrative, Augustine, grace.

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Tim Pearson
Balancing Tolerance, Autonomy and a Framework for Social Cohesion
(pp.113-128)

JOHN HULL’S LIBERAL model of religious education offers a diagnosis of the aspects of religion that are sources of intolerance, and a programme for their deconstruction and removal. He sanctions a certain level of intervention in the religious development of students in order to fulfil the central liberal objective of producing harmony in diversity. This article argues that there are problems with the legitimacy of this programme of intervention because there are fundamental flaws in the theory of knowledge through which Hull’s system is justified. These flaws lead to an unnecessary restriction of both student autonomy and the autonomous self-understanding of religious traditions. However, it is possible to replace Hull’s qualified modernism with a more adequate and more postmodern epistemology without losing what is valuable in its liberal objectives. Andrew Wright’s critical realist theory accepts the contingent nature of rationality and its ramifications, provides a potentially unifying system for social cohesion, and returns to students and religious traditions alike appropriate forms of autonomy.

Keywords: liberal, modernism, religious education, critical realism, normal rationality, tolerance, autonomy, social harmony.

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Kathy A. Mills
The Culture of the Christian School
(pp.129-142)

IN DISCUSSIONS OF educational administration theory, school culture has emerged as a contentious construct characterized by polarized positions. The underlying tensions are between conflicting structuralist and post-structuralist perspectives. These have led to views of Christian school culture and school organization as being either, on the one hand, static, positivist, hierarchical, individualistic and capitalistic or, on the other, dynamic, coherentist, communally interdependent, service oriented and Christ-centered. All schools demonstrate an ethos or organizational culture by default if not by design. It is therefore imperative for Christian school administrators, educators, and the community to consciously define the aspects of school culture that reflect the shared biblical values of the Christian school community.

Keywords: school culture, positivism, coherence theory, hierarchy, communal interdependence, values.

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Nigel W. Oakley
A Summary Grammar for Christian Prepolitical Education
(pp.143-155)

THIS ARTICLE LOOKS at how Christians should be educated for prepolitical involvement in civil society. It does this by proposing a ‘summary grammar’ based on a reading of three theologians who have influenced Christian political thought (Augustine of Hippo, Gustavo Gutiérrez and Dietrich Bonhoeffer). The summary grammar is expressed in the form of three inter-related tensions on which all prepolitical education must rest if it is to be properly Christian. The first tension concerns the nature of God’s kingdom; the second relates to the idea that that the church should be in the world but not of it; and the third is based on how the church relates to that world. I then look at how this prepolitical education could have helped the recent debate over war with Iraq.

Keywords: discipleship, eschatology, prepolitical education, prophetic and embodied, summary grammar, world (in but not of).

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David I. Smith
Contours of Religion, Scholarship and Higher Education: A Review Essay
(pp.157-170)

THIS ARTICLE SUMMARIZES and comments on issues raised in Religion, Scholarship and Higher Education: Perspectives, Models and Future Prospects, a book which is the product of the Lilly Seminar on Religion and Higher Education. The first two sections of the book deal with faith in relation to the nature of the academy and to disciplinary inquiry. The article focuses mainly on the third section, entitled ‘Religious Perspectives on Teaching: Reflections on Practice’. The essays in this section, with one notable exception, fail to adequately tackle pedagogical questions concerning how students are taught and how their identities are shaped in schools and colleges. There is a noticeable drift in most of the essays in this section of the book away from the questions of teaching that provide the ostensible framework and back towards issues having primarily to do with disciplinary scholarship. This process appears to be aided and abetted by a tendency to think of teaching as basically a process of telling. These essays also fail to make reference to any existing work about pedagogy or from the discipline of education. Why this is important is because the relationship between religion and higher education cannot be adequately understood without more disciplined attention to distinctively pedagogical concerns. Reluctance to delve into pedagogy and questions of student formation is ultimately a reluctance to pursue the book’s stated theme all the way to its conclusion.

Keywords: faith-learning integration, pedagogy, student formation, disciplinary scholarship.

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