980 research outputs found
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The Ethos of the Church of Ireland Primary School: The Student Voice
No full textThis study aimed to investigate the explicit ethos of the Church of Ireland (Anglican) primary school in the Republic of Ireland, and to gain insight into ethos as a lived experience among the students.
The explicit ethos of the school was explored, as presented through the voices of the State, the Church of Ireland, and the school patrons. After considering the ethos of Anglican primary schools in England, a model of prescribed ethos for Church of Ireland primary schools was proposed. The model says the individual school has certainty about its Christian identity, it promotes inclusion, encourages parish-school links, values school assembly and religious education, and regards core Christian values as important to the school community.
The empirical research was conducted through pupil surveys in October 2019; it investigated the lived experience of the ethos of the Church of Ireland primary school as voiced by its students, and explored a number of factors that affected student attitudes. The research employed three key instruments: adapted Lankshear Student Voice Scales (Lankshear, 2017), The Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (Francis, 1978a; 1978b), and the Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale (Liddle & Carter, 2010). Each research instrument was found to be reliable and valid in this new context.
It was concluded that students had positive attitudes towards the ethos of their schools, demonstrated positive levels of psychological wellbeing, and had positive attitudes toward Christianity; implying the Church of Ireland primary schools were working well in terms of student experiences of ethos and wellbeing, and were Christian in ethos.
The study demonstrated the potential for listening to the student voice in relation to school ethos, and their voice being included in articulated school ethos statements. It has also added a new study to the international field of research into Anglican primary school ethos
Psychological type and images of God
No full textThis study was designed to test the construct validity of the Index of Positive Images of God as assessing the theological conceptualisation of a salvific God of Mercy construed in relational terms by examining the location of the construct within the framework of psychological type theory. Extrapolation from psychological type theory hypothesised a significant association with the judging process but independence from the orientations, the attitudes, and the perceiving process. Data provided by 602 participants drawn from an online community concerned with Celtic Christianity confirmed a significant correlation with the feeling function of the judging process (r = .23, p <.001) and an additional smaller significant correlation with the intuitive function of the perceiving process (r = .08, p < .05). The data provide general support for the construct validity of the Index of Positive Images of God
Introducing a short-form Parental Attachment Questionnaire for Muslim Societies (PAQ-MS): A study among young adults in Pakistan
No full textThis paper examines the psychometric properties of Kenny’s 55-item Parental Attachment Questionnaire (PAQ), formatted for online administration, among a sample of 370 young adults between the ages of 18 and 26 who were born in the Punjab and had lived there since their birth, and tested the hypothesis that the negatively-voiced items would detract from the unidimensionality of the scales. The data identified the problematic nature within Muslim societies of many (but not all) of the negatively-voiced items concerning parents. The proposed 30-item short-form Parental Attachment Questionnaire for Muslim Societies (PAQ-MS), containing fewer negatively-voiced items, reported good qualities of internal consistency reliability and construct validity across the three domains of Affective Quality of Relationship with Mother/Father, Mother/Father as Facilitators of Independence, and Mother/Father as Source of Support
Prayer in schools: In search of a new paradigm
No full textPrayer and schools have an uncomfortable history together. Prayer is therefore a useful ‘test’ of various aspects of schooling. Empirical research on prayer in schools is used here to develop a new paradigm—a new way of understanding prayer in school, in terms of particular theories of spirituality, and a new way of understanding schooling, in terms of prayer and spirituality. The paradigm that we present reflects the views of young people studied in various recent research projects, and it also reflects well-established religious and philosophical positions. It proposes a model of ‘mundane’ spirituality inspired by the work of various Jewish and Christian scholars, notably Kook, Buber, Macmurray and Hay. This is exemplified by research on young people in Israel and the UK. Implications of this work for schools are described, noting the value of uncertainty and the as yet unknown, the plural, the open. The chapter does not reject education—or religion—as a search for ‘truth’: it recognises that truth is still emergent, and that there is room for the mysterious, the ineffable
A Teacher's Progress - professional identity development, gender transition and drama praxis
No full textThis portfolio thesis is born out of professional and personal experience, as a teacher, teacher educator, drama specialist and transwoman with lived experience of gender transitioning. A pilot project, Tea with Trans (TwT) explores the creation of literal and metaphorical spaces, through which authentic human encounters can take place with a view to both demystifying transgender people and exploring processes of becoming. The thesis is embedded in scholarly enquiry in the academic disciplinary fields of Trans Studies and Teacher Education and brings these two fields into dialogue through practice research in the setting of UK Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Dialogic practices from TwT are applied in developing drama praxis to support the professional identity development of trainee teachers as a transitional process within a one-year ITE course. This is an annual, iterative process and the thesis identifies one specific cycle (2018-2019) for data collection and analysis. The thesis proposes professional identity development as more than the adoption of a set of prescribed skills and behaviours and instead as a holistic process. Overall, the thesis argues that becoming a professional teacher is an embodied, emotional and psycho-social process of becoming and performing as teacher, and not merely cerebral or indeed instrumental. As part of this, it shows that disciplinary thinking/approaches associated with Trans Studies provide a fruitful as well as robust framework for professional transitioning. A Teacher's Progress offers a proposal for drama-based praxis through which experiences as trainees can be distilled, located and shaped to create self-sustaining identities as teachers
“Was it a cat I saw?”: working with autistic English teachers to support understanding of our pupils’ autism perspectives
No full textAs an Initial Teacher Education lecturer, I am privileged to be able to support autistic trainee teachers on their PGCE journeys. Although traditional conceptualisation of autism understanding in education is around pupils, we know that autistic children grow up into autistic adults and it should not surprise us that some of these adults choose to become teachers. This article explores articulations of autistic experience by English teachers, and discusses how these voices might support - and enhance - our teaching of English with autistic pupils
From flexible to restricted mathematics: 15 years of Ofsted mathematics reports
No full textThe Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the school inspectorate service in England, has a great impact on education through their inspections but also through their subject reports. The authors undertook a document analysis of five mathematics subject reports produced by Ofsted from 2008 to 2023, identifying commonalities and convergence, particularly focusing on problem solving, calculation and the role of talk. The older reports were found to take a more flexible approach to mathematics that continues to be supported by several mathematics education subject organisations. The recent reports took a more restricted view of learning mathematics, seeing it as a set of memorisable procedures
The neurocognition of dreaming: Key questions and foci
No full textUntil recently, understanding the neurobiology of dreaming has relied upon on correlating a subjective dream report with a measure of brain activity or function sampled from a different occasion. As such, most assumptions about dreaming come from the neuroscience of REM sleep from which many, but not all, dream reports are recalled. Core features of REM sleep (intense emotional activation, a reduction in activity in most frontal regions, particularly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, along with increased dopamine, acetylcholine, cholinergic activation) align with typical dream characteristics (characterised by fear, reduced reality monitoring, increased bizarreness and hyperassociativity, respectively). The default mode network offers a way of understanding the nature of dreaming more independently from a REM sleep context, and EEG methods paired with serial awakenings to elicit dream reports demonstrate how high-frequency activity in posterior regions may be associated with dreaming. Nevertheless, all measures of dreaming rely fundamentally on recall processes, so our understanding of dreaming must embrace and address memory’s crucial involvement in dream report production
Psychological type profile of Methodist ministers in Britain: Contributing to the atlas of clergy type tables
No full textBuilding on earlier psychological type profiles of clergy serving in Britain, the present study was designed to clarify the psychological type profile of Methodist circuit ministers, distinguishing between male and female ministers and between superintendent and non-superintendent ministers. Data provided by 619 male ministers demonstrate preferences for introversion (66%), sensing (56%), feeling (59%), and judging (76%). Data provided by 312 female ministers also demonstrated preferences for introversion (67%), sensing (51%), feeling (72%), and judging (78%). Among male ministers, superintendents were significantly more likely to prefer judging (81% compared with 74%) and less likely to include INFPs (4% compared with 9%). Among female ministers there were no significant differences distinguishing the smaller number of superintendents. The implications of these findings are discussed for the expression and experience of ministry within the Methodist Church of Great Britain
God is in his heaven, all’s right with the world: Psychological well-being and belief in divine control during the third COVID-19 lockdown among anglican clergy and laity in England
No full textDrawing on data provided by 1,841 lay or ordained members of the Anglican Church residing in
England during the first half of 2021, this study explores the connection between self-perceived
change in psychological well-being during the pandemic and belief in divine control over the
pandemic. Change in psychological well-being was assessed by The Index of Balanced Affect
Change (TIBACh) that distinguishes between positive affect and negative affect, and divine
control was assessed by the God in Control of the Pandemic Scale (GiCoPS). After controlling for
personal factors (age and sex), psychological factors (psychological type and emotional volatility),
contextual factors (education level and ordination status), and ecclesial factors (conservative
doctrine and charismatic influence), the data demonstrated a positive association between belief
in divine control and change in positive affect, but no association between belief in divine control
and change in negative affect