ED2618 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Focusing
Reading Guide Week 3 - Chapter: 2 and 3
Text: Grajczonek, J., & Ryan, M. (2014). Growing in Wisdom: Religious Education in Catholic Primary Schools and Early
Childhood. Hamilton, Qld: Lumino Press.
Title: The Child and Childhood in Church documents – Chapter 2
Author: Grajczonek, J.
1. Two key images of the child in official Church documents are “children of God” and “created in the image of God”.
What implications do these images demand of the educator?
o The ‘image of the child’ directly shapes how educators understand childhood, which in turn shapes and
maps approaches to teaching and learning
o Before educators think about curriculum planning, preparation, and implementation, Rinaldi (2007)
suggests that the following key questions should be considered by all educators:
• Who is the child?
• What is childhood?
• Does childhood exist or do we simply create it?
• Does each society create its image of childhood, and of it’s child?
• How does a child learn?
o Religious educators invite children, rather than demand
• Respect children’s decisions when they opt not to pray or respond during shared prayer
sessions
• Seek their genuine input into decisions about when they would like to pray
• Scaffold students in their emerging critiquing skills
▪ Talking about positive and negatives
o USE IN ESSAY! Second dot point
2. How do the documents emphasise children’s “being”?
o Place emphasis on children’s development rather than their being
• Children are viewed universally
▪ Not one child can represent all children who develop through a series of stages
(physical, cognitive, social, and moral)
3. How can an educator enable and activate children’s resilience?
o Encourage children to deal with challenges
o Children cannot be cocooned from life’s challenges and it is essential that young children are
encouraged and shown how to deal with challenges and frustrations, to explore fresh approaches,
and to persevere and persist.
o Students should be assisted and scaffolded to appreciate that they can enact that hope, they can
enact that change.
• Problem solve
• Children’s literature
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Growing in wisdom: religious education in catholic primary schools and early. Title: the child and childhood in church documents chapter 2. Author: grajczonek, j: two key images of the child in official church documents are children of god and created in the image of god . Talking about positive and negatives: use in essay! Title: the spiritual and religious development of children chapter 3. In adolescence, experience moves beyond the family to work, peers, school: faith is a way to make meaning and synthesise values and information. Individual faith: adults take responsibility for their own commitments, beliefs, and attitudes, people can live with ambiguity and the tension between competing claims, conjunctive faith. Includes aspects such as here and now, tuning, flow and focusing: mystery sensing, sense of awe and wonder, trying to respond to various complex issues, events, or phenomena. Do you agree: it is through play that children become adept at imagining.
