Volume 7 Issue 1

Christian education is replete with terms and expressions that purportedly describe its character—‘Christ-centred education’, ‘teaching from a Christian perspective’, ‘Biblebased curriculum’, ‘redemptive discipline’, ‘servant ministry’, and so on. They are typically spontaneous expressions. To Christian educators, it seems a reasonable and proper way to describe the enterprise in which they are engaged. While each term or expression has particular connotations, the ideas they represent cluster around the notion of what constitutes ‘ministry’. It is not uncommon to hear Christian education referred to as ‘the ministry of teaching’. But is it just fanciful jargon and cliché? Or is Christian education really ‘ministry’?

Like Department of Education and Communities (DEC) schools, Adventist Schools Australia (ASA) are also facing the pressures of external, societal and internal organisational change, largely due to increased accountability. By gaining an understanding from the teachers’ perspective, one is more likely to be able to help teachers to adjust and deal successfully with the impact of these changes. The following study focused on primary teachers in the system of Adventist Schools Australia (ASA). In order to support teachers working in a significant change environment, it is helpful to understand why there is a difference between those teachers who are dealing successfully with the challenges associated with change in ASA Schools, and those who are not.

The educational system in Australia allows parents to have a choice when it comes to selecting a school for their children. Parents have become consumers in an educational market, and schools, including Christian schools, now find themselves operating in a competitive space. The research reported in this two-part article sought to explore the factors that influence parents’ choice of school for their children using a mixed methods approach. Parents with students attending Christian schools in an Australian urban environment completed a total of 102 School Choice questionnaires, and 17 families with children in schools were interviewed.

There are numerous versions of the Bible in print and e-copy, each of which has been thoughtfully translated by qualified persons using reliable source documents and reference works. Due to the complexities of translation and the backgrounds of readers, no single version ‘tells it all’. Each one, a product of the methods of its translators, and the readers targeted by its publisher, accomplishes some parts of the translation task, and meets some reader needs, better than others. Which Bible translation is best for your school or classroom, and how can you make use of digital versions of the Bible? This article will discuss these issues and help your school make a choice, informed by each school’s heritage and needs of its constituency. It also looks at the use of digital translations, and outlines the clear advantages and disadvantages of e-Bibles.

From 2004 to 2010 I served as a researcher and advisor in the Australian Government’s values education projects. During the task of helping schools implementing and conducting research on values education, I took the opportunity to observe the importance explorative and imaginative modes of teaching and learning might have in the formation of values. In this essay, I argue that imaginative teaching and learning is essential in any type of values education, particularly if a constructivist view of values clarification (as opposed to values imposition) is favoured. As such, a warning is offered about the potentially counterproductive push for ‘character’ education, as seen in some parts of America, as well as the nationalistic approach to values education sometimes emphasised in Australia.

Special Religious Education is a ‘period allowance’ for religious education in public high schools. It is not only for Christian education, but also for other religious persuasions.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a 30-minute physical activity (PA) session on Year Two students’ subsequent classroom behaviour. Forty-eight students from three Year Two classes at a NSW private school participated in the study. The number of disciplinary comments directed by the class teacher to individual students (Individual Disciplinary Corrections, IDC) and the class as a whole (General Disciplinary Corrections, GDC) were recorded during a 30-minute lesson with and without previous PA. Subsequent to PA, there were 40% fewer IDCs (p=0.008) and 59% fewer GDCs (p=0.003), amounting to a 49% overall reduction in disciplinary corrections (p = 0.012). The PA session had a positive effect on the Year Two students’ classroom on-task behaviour, as measured by a reduction in disciplinary corrections directed by the class teacher. These findings highlight the potential value of physical activity as a strategy for increasing student classroom on-task behaviour.

In early 21st century Australia, proponents of Christian faith are in an Acts (Acts 17:6,22 NIV) situation: we contend amidst the smorgasbord of multiple faiths and designer spiritualities, where any sense that Christian faith is privileged by culture, history or exclusive truth claims, is rapidly eroding. In this multi-faith, pluralistic and the increasingly secular environment, we are ironically surrounded, like Paul in ancient Athens, with many Gods, mostly of a secular nature. The Christian church needs to discover effective ways to communicate the unchanging truth of the Gospel into a society which is undergoing rapid change in its belief systems, methods of communication and modes of learning, and amidst a cacophony of messages and sounds which trumpet different world views.