This paper explores the scope of the short-term mission movement and calls on missiologists to place this movement at the center of research, missiological reflection, and classroom instruction. It reviews research related to two questions: What has been the impact of short-term missions on the recruitment and support of career missionaries? How does participation in short-term missions abroad affect short-term mission participants' relations inter-ethnically at home? he short-term mission (STM) movement is rapidly transforming the ways in which churches from wealthier regions of the world are engaging in global T mission. This merits careful attention.'
The Size of the Short-Term Missions MovementThe latest Protestant Mission Handbook (Welliver and Northcutt 2004: 13) tracks data on the U.S. personnel of 690 mission agencies. The chart on the following page employs this data to compare the numbers of long-term missionaries (defined as being "overseas" more than 4 years) with the numbers of short-term missionaries (overseas from 2 weeks to 1 year). These numbers show the trend, but d o not document the full scope of the phenomenon. Catholics are not included and scores of organizations specializing in short-term Robert J. Priest (PhD, Anthropology) is professor of mission and intercultural studies and director of the PhD program in intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is co-editor of the book This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith (Oxford, 2006). His published work appears in various volumes and journals, such as "Missionary Positions: Christian, Modernist, Postmodernist" in Current Anthropology 42:29-68. He is currently researching Peruvian experiences and perspectives on visiting short-term missionaries.Terry Dischinger (PhD student) formerly served for seven years as country director for the Evangelical Free Church of America International Mission in Ukraine, where he hosted and worked with scores of visiting short-term missionaries. Terry is currently the pastor of equipping at Winnetka Bible Church. His dissertation research is focused on the impact of short-term missions on the acquisition of intercultural skills and on ethnocentrism.Rev. Steven Rasmussen (PhD candidate) has trained ministers at Lake Victoria Christian College, Mwanza, Tanzania since 1995. He is founding director of Training East African Ministers. He has been a pastor and a short-term missionary.C. M. Brown has extensive cross-cultural experience in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and is conducting dissertation research on partnerships between congregations in the Ukraine and congregations in the USA.
Educationalists have been concerned with the labelling and treatment of children with mental health difficulties in the education system in England for some time (Timimi 2002;Jull 2008;Harwood and Allan 2014;Cole 2015). These concerns have centred on the role of policy in 'othering' such students as deviant learners.The unprecedented number of children suffering from mental illnesses, has forced policymakers to address children's mental health difficulties. This has involved the identification of a sub-set of the school population experiencing 'less-severe' mental health issues, to be addressed through a suite of policy interventions delivered by whole-school approaches, but targeted towards children situated as mentally 'weak'. Drawing upon a Foucauldian theory of governmentality that addresses children's behavioural motivations (Rose 1989
Child mental health is a growing concern for policymakers across the global north. Schools have become a key site for mental health interventions, with new programmes aimed at promoting ‘resilience’, through which children may maintain or regain mental health during adversity. As one of the first studies to explore the early impact of intensive mental health promotion in schools from children’s perspectives, we adopt a governmentality approach to consider the logic and techniques of such programmes with a specific focus on England. An innovative visual methodology was used to focus on student perspectives of mental health interventions in school. Young peoples’ photo representations of mental health were collected and used to stimulate focus group discussions with 65 students aged 12–14, across seven schools. ‘Resilience’ was seen to be the key organising concept for mental health interventions in schools. The concept was viewed as narrowly focused on attitude towards—and performance in—school work, with individuals being encouraged to ‘push on through’ difficulties to achieve success. Young people were critical of this approach, suggesting several alternatives. These included increased access to independent mental health professionals, safe spaces within schools and mental health education that addressed the social and affective dimensions of mental health difficulties.
This paper explores schools’ new role in promoting children’s mental health, as a key focus for policy makers across the global north. An education policy analysis is conducted for England and Australia, two nations advocating a ‘bottom‐up’ approach to mental health promotion, granting flexibility to schools and municipal authorities. Here it is argued that a common policy lexicon is evident where key concepts—wellbeing, resilience, character—are constructed on taken‐for‐granted assumptions. These are argued to be limited by an emphasis upon the individual constituents of mental health, which is contrasted against a broader conception of wellbeing, evident in recent non‐governmental international policy. Empirical data is then presented from two separate studies in England and Australia, where young peoples’ perspectives are used to arbitrate the efficacy of the policy construction of wellbeing, in canvassing a relational and social identity approach as a viable alternative. Both studies privilege the voices of young people on wellbeing and identity, with findings from England highlighting that the dominant schooling narrative of resilience perceived by students, misses the ontological and social dimensions of their wellbeing. Research with Indigenous young people in Australia is then evaluated for the affordances generated by identity building and affirming programmes in schools. Notwithstanding cultural differences, common aspects were evident across both datasets, revealing the centrality to young people of self‐authenticity, relatedness, and connectedness to nature, as key to their wellbeing. The paper concludes in advancing a set of principles to underpin a relational and social identity approach to schools’ wellbeing promotion strategy.
This paper contributes to the recent turn within Children's Geographies concerned with understanding and illuminating educational inequalities. The focus is upon pupils assigned to lower 'ability' groupings, in a school under pressure to raise attainment. The objective of the paper is twofold, firstly to consider how school grouping practices affect children's sense of belonging in lessons, and secondly, to contextualise these findings against children's spatial orientations within the broader school environment. It is argued that a spatial focus may shed light upon the educational policy drivers that contribute to the exclusion of disadvantaged children. Neo-liberal imperatives of accountability and performance can be seen to shape hierarchies of belonging, where pupils' positioning in 'ability' groupings enables/limits the spatial agency that they can exert. Macro policy concerns are mapped onto micro school processes concerning the construction and governance of school spaces, using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and R.D Sack.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.