JCE Religious Education cheat sheet

Religious education in Catholic schools is distinct from catechesis: catechesis forms faith within a believing community, while religious education teaches about religion and develops religious literacy for all students, including non-believers.

The four formal learning outcomes of religious education are knowledge and understanding, knowledge and skills in discerning and interpreting, knowledge and skills in relating to life, and knowledge and skills in responding to religious experience and tradition.

Catholic social teaching rests on principles including human dignity, common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, option for the poor, stewardship of creation, dignity of work, and peace; human dignity is the foundational principle from which the others flow.

Biblical literary forms include myth, legend, saga, parable, poetry, prophecy, gospel, and letter; identifying the form precedes interpretation because form shapes meaning and intention.

The four senses of Scripture in Catholic tradition are literal, allegorical, moral (tropological), and anagogical; the literal sense is the foundation on which the spiritual senses rest.

Sacraments of initiation are Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist; sacraments of healing are Penance and Anointing of the Sick; sacraments of service are Matrimony and Holy Orders.

The liturgical year follows the paschal mystery: Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil), Easter season, and Ordinary Time.

Assessment in religious education should match the outcome type: knowledge outcomes suit recall and explanation tasks, while discernment, relating, and responding outcomes require reflection, discussion, or extended written response.

The shared Christian praxis model moves through five movements: naming present praxis, reflecting on it, accessing the Christian tradition, integrating tradition with present praxis, and responding in new praxis.

The hermeneutical circle in religious education alternates between students' life experience and the religious tradition, treating neither as the sole starting point.

A teacher's role in religious education is to present the tradition faithfully and invite inquiry, not to assess personal faith commitment or require public profession.

Questioning should escalate from recall to analysis to evaluation; higher-order prompts such as 'what would this mean for how a person acts' target the relating and responding outcomes.

Scripture study in schools uses historical-critical and literary methods together with reception history, distinguishing the world behind the text, the world of the text, and the world in front of the text.

Inclusive practice requires providing alternative tasks for students of other faiths or no faith, focusing on understanding and analysis rather than participation in devotional acts.

Dialogue in the classroom follows rules of engagement: listen to understand, suspend judgement, speak for oneself, and distinguish between opinion, belief, and evidence.

Evaluation of religious education programs examines alignment of outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment tasks, plus the degree to which the tradition is presented accurately and in context.

Christianity centres on the Trinity, incarnation, paschal mystery, and resurrection; the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds summarise core doctrine shared across most traditions.

Islam's five pillars are shahada (declaration), salat (prayer), zakat (almsgiving), sawm (fasting in Ramadan), and hajj (pilgrimage); the Qur'an and Hadith are primary sources.

Judaism's central markers are covenant, Torah, Shabbat, and the festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot; the Shema is its central confession of faith.

Hinduism is characterised by dharma, karma, samsara, and moksha, with diverse paths of devotion, knowledge, and action; the Vedas and Upanishads are foundational texts.

Buddhism's Four Noble Truths address suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path; the Eightfold Path is grouped into wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline.

Ethical frameworks in religious education include deontological (duty-based), teleological and consequentialist (outcome-based), virtue ethics (character-based), and natural law reasoning.

Catholic moral reasoning uses the three-source method: the object of the act, the intention, and the circumstances; all three must be good for an act to be morally good.

A religion's internal diversity matters: distinguishing denominations, schools of law, and reform movements prevents presenting any one tradition as monolithic.

The Catholic canon holds 73 books: 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament; deuterocanonical books are accepted by Catholics but not by most Protestant communities.

The synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke because they share substantial material; the two-source hypothesis proposes Mark and a sayings source as their common sources.

Catholic understanding of revelation holds that Scripture and Tradition form one sacred deposit of the word of God, transmitted in the Church and interpreted authentically by the magisterium.

Curriculum planning in religious education begins with outcomes, then selects content and texts, then designs assessment, then sequences skills progressively across year levels.

Text selection criteria include accuracy to the tradition, accessibility of language, cultural sensitivity, and suitability for the students' developmental stage.

A unit plan should state the desired understanding, essential questions, evidence of learning, and learning activities; essential questions should be open and arguable, not factual.

Scripture citation conventions: book, chapter, and verse (e.g., John 3:16); ranges use a hyphen, separate passages use commas, and cross-references use semicolons.

Developmental appropriateness matters: younger students engage with narrative and symbol, while adolescents can handle abstraction, historical context, and critical comparison of traditions.