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Student Priorities for Topics, Pedagogies, and Outcomes in Senior Secondary Religious Education : An Australian Perspective
Sultmann, William Francis Lamb, Janeen Therese Ivers, Peter James Craig, Mark
Sultmann, William Francis
Lamb, Janeen Therese
Ivers, Peter James
Craig, Mark
Abstract
This paper reports on one part of a larger longitudinal empirical study (2021–2023) that responds to the call for Religious Education (RE) to address religious plurality in the context of senior Catholic schooling within an Australian Archdiocese where students represent multiple faith traditions or no traditions. The research focuses on the level of satisfaction by students across Topics, Pedagogies, and Outcomes within a new and innovative senior school curriculum, Religion Meaning and Life (RML) based on national RE guidelines. Participants included 276 students across 17 schools who completed an online survey with 32 of these students participating in focus group interviews. Data analysis of quantitative data was both descriptive and inferential, and qualitative data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Topics of most interest were Ethics and Other World Religions; pedagogies entailing dialogue and use of media and technologies were rated highly; and learning outcomes entailed awareness of school mission, the religious dimension of the school, and pastoral care. Inferential statistical analyses confirm four core topics, pedagogies, and outcomes as significant to levels of satisfaction and in combination accounted for 42% of the variance of satisfaction with RML. Theoretical propositions for what matters most in senior secondary RE were advanced through four integrating principles (educational, formative, social, communitarian) and practice implications that preference Catholic tradition, and reference religious plurality.
Keywords
Australia, Catholic, religious education, students, senior secondary, curriculum innovation
Date
2024
Type
Journal article
Journal
Book
Volume
15
Issue
9
Page Range
1-11
Article Number
ACU Department
La Salle Academy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
School of Theology
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
School of Theology
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open
Notes
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).