This book is concerned with re-imagining Religious Education (RE) as this is practiced in schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK and in a wide variety of international educational contexts. On the basis of a critical analysis of current theory and practice in RE the authors argue that this educational framing is no longer plausible in the light of new theoretical developments within the academy. A new educational approach to RE is outlined that challenges students to think and practice differently. This includes a ‘becoming ethnographer’ approach that can acknowledge socio-material relations and engage the broader literacies necessary for such study. Part One examines how RE has been constructed as a discipline in historical and spatial terms that abstract its study from material concerns. Part Two offers some new starting points: Spinoza, Foucault and feminist theory that differently foreground context and relationality, and 'Islam' read as a discursive, located tradition rather than as 'world view'. Finally, Part Three proposes a new trajectory for research and practice in RE, with the aim of re-engaging schools, colleges and universities in a dialogue that promotes thinking and practice that – as educational - is continually in touch with the need to be critical, open-ended and ethically justifiable.

The volume is a collection of articles from scholars who pay particular attention to children and/or adolescents' voices, interpretations, perspectives, and experiences within specific social and cultural contexts. Contributions include research stemming from a broad spectrum of methodological and theoretical orientations.

This study of the development of education in the British West Indian colonies during the last half of the nineteenth century examines the educational policies and curriculum used in schools following the abolition of slavery. During this period the nature and development of the educational system in the region was profoundly affected by the decline of the sugar industry, the emergence of black and coloured middle classes and the threat they posed to the ruling white elite, and the institutionalization of cultural divisions between the black and white populations. Bacchus argues that after 1846 the elite white plantocracy used the educational system to maintain domination following the end of slavery. This is the first book to present an overall picture of educational developments in the British West Indies in this period and pays special attention to the historical context in which they occurred. In Education as and for Legitimacy, the author continues the study of West Indian education he began with his previous book, Utilization, Misuse, and Development of Human Resources in the Early West Indian Colonies.