Religious Education, Spiritual Experience and Truth

Radford, Mike

doi:10.1080/0141620990210308

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Religious texts can provide this 'formal analogue of truth', as well as the conceptual framework within which religious experience can be discussed. Radford (1999Radford ( , 2007, on the other hand, is opposed to the demand for a 'formal analogue of truth'. He prefers to see religious/spiritual enquiry as akin to the kind of epistemological enquiry that takes place in art criticism.…”

Section: Religious Experiencementioning

confidence: 90%

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Religious experience as an aim of religious education

Court

2013

British Journal of Religious Education

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This article presents a model for religious education based on three central elements. First, it is argued that religious experience, or direct experience of the Divine, is an essential part of a full religious life, that religious experience is based in, enabled by and examined against, the body of knowledge in a given religion, and that religious experience is itself a form of knowing. Second, it is suggested that there be three sets of aims in religious education curriculum: knowledge aims, moral value aims and spiritual aims, the last of which encompasses religious experience, which religious education should aim to encourage and facilitate among students. Third, the teacher is presented as the central factor in such facilitation, and the pedagogical and personal characteristics of this ideal teacher are described.

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Section: Religious Experiencementioning

confidence: 90%

“…With Radford, I would agree that the truth of religious experience lies largely in its subjective meaning to the individual. According to Radford (1999), these subjective meanings reside not in texts but in the 'conceptual spaces' within and around individual experiences. This is not unlike the way people experience art.…”

Section: Religious Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Religious experience as an aim of religious education

Court

2013

British Journal of Religious Education

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“…These types of texts exemplify to the children that midrash should not necessarily be understood at face value. This aspect of the mini-course puts into practice the following suggestion about the teaching of ancient religious texts: religious education can make productive use of children's capacity for creative thought by drawing on their symbolic and metaphorical understandings for the formation of religious understandings (Ashton , 1993bRadford 1999). • The multi-layering, or complexity, of midrashic texts.…”

Section: Aims Of the Teaching Model: Teaching Some Aspects Of Midrashmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, Goldman (1964, 227) suggested that there is little in the Bible that can be understood by children. Current scholars of religious education have refuted this claim (Ashton , 1993bDaloz Parks 1991;Radford 1999). The Jewish educational tradition has included Bible and midrash study for primary school age children since ancient time (Asaf 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

A model for teaching midrash in the primary school: forming understandings of rabbinic interpretation of scripture

Sigel¹

2010

British Journal of Religious Education

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In Jewish primary schools, religious education is centred on the study of Torah. At Sinai, according to Jewish tradition, Moses received the Torah in two parts: a written tradition (Hebrew scripture) and an oral tradition. The oral tradition contained much scriptural interpretation known, in Hebrew, as midrash. Midrash continued to be taught and transmitted by the sages throughout the periods of the two temples. At some later stage, unknown editors, in Roman Palestine, recorded these oral interpretations in literary collections that also came to be known as midrash. The interpretations contained in these collections reflect the rabbinic understanding of the Torah, its norms and its values. They are presented as glosses to scripture, sometimes illuminating -and sometimes adding valuative or theological messages to -the Biblical text; all the while seeking to uncover the deeper meanings of scripture. Midrash is thus a rich genre of ancient religious literature with texts that foster a faithful affiliation with Jewish tradition and a sense of Jewish identity. Over the past seven centuries, midrash has been included in Bible lessons (for all age groups) through its use by Rashi (Rabbi Solomon Yizhaki, c. 1040-1105), a widely respected Bible commentator. His extensive use of midrash attests to the understanding that Torah literacy requires midrash literacy. But midrash texts are ancient, subtle and complex, and are, therefore, deserving of a dedicated pedagogy. Because of the distance of time since their writing and the ancient cultural, religious and literary contexts that characterise them, the modern reader needs to learn how to hear these texts speak. Like other genres of rabbinic literature such as the Talmud, midrash requires specific literacy training. This is why I designed a model for teaching midrash as a discrete subject. This paper is an outgrowth of an international research project in religious education undertaken by this author. The aim of the research was to apply and evaluate this author's model for midrash pedagogy. The rationale for this midrash teaching model stems from the argument that if young students are helped to find meaning in midrash they will acquire a deeper understanding of the traditional view of scripture (as understood by the rabbis) and traditional Jewish values. In the study, significant improvement in midrash knowledge was found with this midrash teaching model.

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“…Various attempts have been offered by way of definition and these I have sought to discuss elsewhere (Radford, 1996(Radford, , 1998(Radford, , 1999. In its broadest sense spiritual education may be seen to refer to those interrelated, non material aspects of human development, the moral, personal and maybe aesthetic dimensions, as well as some form of experience of the transcendent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Intelligence and Education

Radford

2003

International Journal of Children's Spirituality

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This paper explores the re-emergence of two understandings in relation to a current perspective on the nature of emotional intelligence. The first understanding is dualist in character, seeing the emotions as internal events subject to introspection. The second sees the emotions as sources of energy or tension that can be relieved in the process of articulation, in other words a kind of therapeutic dimension in a 'confessional' context. These two understandings together fonn the perspective that may be referred to as the 'introspective/confessional' hypothesis. Some of the traditional philosophical problems with this hypothesis are revisited and an alternative perspective of the emotions is offered. Thz~~ alternative perspective sees our emotional lives as developing within a social and cultural context, as essentially public and open to objectification, what might be tenned an 'objectivist/constructivist' hypothesis. Both hypotheses fonn the basis for discussion of our concept of emotional education. The conclusion is that the latter is a more practical and appropriate understanding for the purposes of education.

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Religious Education, Spiritual Experience and Truth

Cited by 10 publications

References 4 publications

Religious experience as an aim of religious education

Religious experience as an aim of religious education

A model for teaching midrash in the primary school: forming understandings of rabbinic interpretation of scripture

Emotional Intelligence and Education

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