This volume presents an interdisciplinary and systematic review of Catholic Education Studies across Ireland and Britain. Taken together, the chapters drill down to the foundations, identity and leadership matters in Catholic education and schools. It is in reading the complete volume that a more precise picture of Catholic education in Ireland and Britain develops into sharper focus. This is important because it reflects and crystallises the complexity which has almost organically developed within the field of Catholic Education Studies. It also provides a powerful antidote to the naïve reductionism that would boil Catholic education down to just one or two fundamental issues or principles. Contemporary Catholic education, perhaps globally but certainly in Ireland and Britain, is best depicted in terms of being a colourful kaleidoscope of differing perspectives. However this diversity is ultimately grounded in the underlying unity of purpose, because each of the contributors to this volume is a committed advocate of Catholic education. The volume brings together a rich range of scholars into one place, so that these voices can be listened to as a whole. It includes contributions from leading scholars, blended with a plethora of other voices who are emerging to become the next generation of leading researchers in Catholic education. It also introduces a number of newer voices to the academic context. They present fresh perspectives and thinking about matters relating to Catholic education and each of them confidently stand alongside the other contributors. Moreover, these reflections on Catholic education are important fruits to have emerged from the collaboration made possible through the creation of the Network for Researchers in Catholic Education, which was established in 2016 under the auspices of Heythrop College, University of London.

This book explores in a theoretical and practical sense the challenges and opportunities arising in the initial and ongoing formation processes for teachers in Catholic schools. It showcases a range of international perspectives on how prospective teachers for Catholic schools are prepared both academically and pastorally for their professional role. Divided into two parts, Part 1 of the book focuses on certain countries in the Anglosphere; each country with a dedicated chapter in which the academic and pastoral approaches to teacher formation are examined in the context of its particular cultural, political and religious landscape. Part 2 of the book examines specific areas of interest with particular reference to what it means for the Catholic Church’s mission to offer suitable formation to its corps of teachers. Building on the editors' previous work, this book offers a fresh perspective on this subject by bringing together observations from selected local contexts on what Catholic teacher formation looks like as a set of organised processed and structures. It also shows how the study of educational themes offers challenges to current practices, but also opportunities for fruitful engagement with other educational perspectives.

This book provides a comprehensive and field-defining examination of the study of religions in Ireland. By bringing together some of the foremost experts on religions in an Irish context, it critically traces the development of an important field of study and evaluates the thematic threads that have emerged as significant. It thereby offers an assessment of contemporary religions in Ireland and their relationships to society, culture, economics, politics and the State. Contributors make connections between topics as diverse as Ireland's Revolutionary Period, the formation of the Irish State, the decline of Catholicism, the rise of migrant religions and New Religious Movements and the effects of secularisation on religions and society. This book emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the study of religions whilst illustrating the coherent themes that have shaped the development of the field in Ireland, making it unique.

New Thinking, New Scholarship and New Research in Catholic Education gives a forum to many established and leading scholars to review and critically appraise the research contribution of Gerald Grace to Catholic education. The book demonstrates the way in which the field of Catholic Education Studies has developed under the influence of Grace, to become internationally recognised. This book demonstrates the ways in which Gerald Grace has shaped Catholic education since 1997. This begins with the primacy of empirical study and carefully conducted fieldwork when researching Catholic education. Many contributors focus on the way Grace champions the alignment between Catholic education and what we have come to know as the option for the poor. The collection also reflects Grace's intention to ensure the voices of women are properly represented in the field of Catholic education. The book is based on an inclusive and open principle that seeks to establish dialogue with educators of different faiths and different religious backgrounds, as well as secular and humanist critics. It will be of great interest to academics, scholars and students of religious education, the history of education and all those interested in the developing field of Catholic Education Studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

What does religion mean to modern Ireland and what is its recent social and political history? The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland provides in-depth analysis of the relationships between religion, society, politics, and everyday life on the island of Ireland from 1800 to the twenty-first century. Taking a chronological and all-island approach, it explores the complex and changing role of religion both before and after partition. The handbook's thirty-two chapters address long-standing historical and political debates about religion, identity, and politics, including religion's contributions to division and violence. They also offer perspectives on how religion interacts with education, the media, law, gender and sexuality, science, literature, and memory. Whilst providing insight into how everyday religious practices have intersected with the institutional structures of Catholicism and Protestantism, the book also examines the island's increasing religious diversity, including the rise of those with 'no religion'. Written by leading scholars in the field and emerging researchers with new perspectives, this is an authoritative and up-to-date volume that offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of the enduring significance of religion on the island.

This book offers an account of religious schooling committed to ‘queer-thriving’ and envisions how queer staff and students can live their lives without being ‘accommodated’ within heteronormative religious traditions. Engaging with queer theological perspectives across the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, the book begins by situating queer thriving as a viable part of the work of the religious school, and not just as something reserved for progressive education more broadly. Taking three areas that are typically used to justify religious heteronormativity (religious texts, religious values, religious rituals), it engages queer theologies to showcase how an educational approach committed to queer thriving can be enacted in religious schools in ways that are also theologically sensitive. The book then explores how religious school communities can navigate differences around queerness and religion in ways that are supportive of queer staff and students. It takes desire as an everyday reality in classrooms and applies a queer lens to this to challenge heteronormativity and to imagine alternative modes of relationship between staff, students, and communities that enable queer staff and students to thrive. Showcasing possibilities of resistance for the opposition between religious and queer concerns, it will appeal to researchers, postgraduates and academics in the fields of religion and education, whilst also benefitting those working across philosophy of education and educational theory, sex education, sociology of education, social justice education, queer theologies, religious studies, and sociology of religion.

This collection features different perspectives on how digital tools are changing our understanding of language varieties, language contact, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and dialectology through the lens of different historical contexts. With a clear focus on English, chapters in the volume showcase a broad range of digital methods and approaches that can contribute to advancing the study of historical linguistics. Visualization tools and corpus-linguistic techniques are part of the methodologies included in the volume. The chapters present empirically based research and discuss theoretical aspects that emphasize how digitalization is changing our analysis of different domains of language, going from phonology to specific grammatical/morphosyntactic and lexical features, to discourse-related issues more broadly. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and digital humanities.

This book considers the connection between the world of mental health in the twenty-first century and the traditional concept of desire in Christianity and the Arts. It draws parallels between the desire for rest from anxiety among mental health sufferers with the longing for peace and happiness in Religion and the Arts. The author presents Biblical, philosophical and theological insights alongside artistic ones, arguing that desire for rest remains at the heart of spiritual living as well as mental health recovery. The chapters draw from historical and contemporary voices, including Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Julian of Norwich, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Eric Varden and others. The study demonstrates why longing continues to fascinate and grip individuals, creative endeavour and society at large, not least in the development of the understanding of mental health. It is valuable for scholars and advanced students of Christian theology and those interested in spirituality and the arts in particular.