Translating the Bible: How Children Negotiate Religious Ideology

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seven
  In Roundtable Session: Integrating and Negotiating Religious Identities and Values in the Classroom (Table 13)

Abstract

This study examines how 10 and 11 year old Orthodox Jewish students translate the Bible refracted through their cultural and religious expectations. Use of the Bible to support particular historical ideologies is nothing new, but this study looks at how that happens in young students who don’t mean to engage in any ideology at all. The import of these findings has implications not just for religious education but for text education more broadly, specifically those scholars interested in New Literacy Studies and the pedagogies that emerge from this perspective. The findings from this research reminds us that no literacy practice is sealed. Contexts become transformed by individuals. Nowhere is this more true than when the Bible is the canvas.

Author

• Ziva Reimer Hassenfeld, Brandeis University
  Presenting Author