Religious education

About: Religious education is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9554 publications have been published within this topic receiving 65331 citations. The topic is also known as: faith-based education & RE.

Aporism and Critical Mathematics Education

Abstract: A thought experiment Imagine yourself back in the Middle Ages joining a conference on religious education. In the dim light of the conference centre, we are listening to many interesting lectures. One lecturer, who happens to come from France, makes an exegesis of the teaching of the Holy Trinity. He has investigated the sources of the Holy Writ and has arrived at new conclusions concerning the basic structure of the Trinity. He suggests that the curriculum in religious education, including the teaching of how to pray, should be changed in accordance with his findings. Instead of relating to a patchwork of information about the Trinity, the prayers can be categorised into simple structures, and a few basic prayers can serve as 'mother structures' in the development of all sorts of advanced praying. To change the curriculum in accordance with this insight would mean that children become better equipped for further education, which naturally means further praying. Another lecturer has found it possible to interpret the basic concepts expressing the structure of the Trinity in a way comprehensible to every child, independent of the stage of the child's intellectual development. This lecturer has obviously already been listening to the first one. Other lecturers announce that they have produced textbooks in accordance with these new ideas about how to teach the Holy Trinity. However, critical opinions are voiced. Why not listen to the way children already produce their own simple prayers? Children are already preoccupied with praying! The only thing needed is to push the children smoothly in the direction of praying for the real Trinity. In this way, the teaching of the Holy Trinity can be based on children's own prayers with which they are familiar. This suggestion is supported by scholars not living in the metropolis hosting the conference. They explain that in their country they have observed many sorts of old and wellestablished prayers. Long before praying for the Holy Trinity was institutionalised people have been praying, and in many respects these old prayers anticipate praying for the Holy Trinity. The foreign scholars suggest that the religious curriculum should take into consideration these ethnoprayers. Using these as the basis, learning can be directed towards the paradigmatic prayers for the Holy Trinity. But why, in fact, prefer some prayers to others? Why stick to the old paradigm? All prayers might be equal. During the happy hour of the conference somebody raises the following questions. Why this concern for religious education? Why teach children to memorise prayers? What are the social and political functions of teaching everybody to pray? What is the purpose? Why not discuss the social function of religious education? These questions might show the voice of critical religious education. [2]

Professor Ninian Smart, phenomenology and religious education

Abstract: I reply to L. Philip Barnes’ assessment of the contributions of Ninian Smart and phenomenology to religious education. My argument is that Barnes first misconceives and then underestimates Smart’s legacy. I sketch Smart’s relevance to some current issues in religious education, suggesting that his thought helps us to avoid potentially damaging polarisations (of language and concepts to experience, and of learning about religion to learning from religion). I conclude that Smart may have little to say about classroom practice, but should still be a reference point for any practitioner.

From religious education to worldview education and beyond: The strength of a transformative pedagogical paradigm

Abstract: Varieties of Paradigm ShiftsCrucial in Cornelia Roux's writings is a strong awareness of tensions, contradictions and challenges in education and schooling in South Africa and abroad. Already before the abolition of the Apartheid system in 1994 and also reinforced by this tremendous change and based on an academic hermeneutical understanding of education and religion in education as well as a personal-hermeneutical understanding of religion (Roux & Van der Walt 2011; Roux 2012; Roux 2013: 245), her plea has been for paradigm shifts with an eye on how to teach religion, how to deal with the multicultural situation, and how to concretize citizenship education. Finally her plea is for a paradigm shift in pedagogy for human rights education as the inclusive concept that can embrace cultural, religious and gender differences and diversity. The question behind this seems always to be: What need to be changed in theory and practice in order to be able to deal in an adequate pedagogical, political and practical way with the challenges in new or changing educational, political and religious constellations? Here I will briefly pay attention to some of Roux's paradigm shifts and especially focus on the role and place of religious education.In her recent 2013 essay Roux clearly describes the paradigm shifts she has proposed before and after 1994, the date of the abolishment of the Apartheid regime, as being embedded in a developing hermeneutical and social constructionist view in respect to education and religion in education (Roux 2013). First there was the need to really replace the former preferential status of the mono-religious (read Christian) and the mono-cultural (read Afrikaner) school curricula, in order to promote the official South African policy of inclusiveness after 1994 also in the schools. Already in 1998 and based on her theoretical as well as empirical research and on her knowledge of developments in for instance Hamburg in Germany launched by Wolfram Weisse, Roux proposed a paradigm shift from mono-cultural to multi-cultural and from mono-religious to multi-religious or even interreligious curricula in both private and public schools and dealt with the consequences for the teaching and the teachers (Roux 1998a; 1998b). Her conclusion was that students 'in mono- and multi-cultural schools were able to deal with multireligious and multi-cultural religion education classes' (Roux 1998a: 88)But focusing on a second paradigm shift in respect to the teaching of religion she stated: 'However ... the need for a paradigm shift by educators, teachers and school communities is of the utmost importance before any religious education can be implemented in a multi-cultural school' (Roux 1998a: 88), because teachers mainly based their aims of religious education on Christianity: 'To gain knowledge about the bible and to make people 'better' human beings by knowing the Bible ... and also to convert learners to Christianity, or to nurture the religious growth of Christian children' (Roux 1998b: 128). In 2013 she concludes thateven today there are still many teachers and parents romanticizing the previous dispensation's power (religiously and politically). They argue that the influences of mono-religious and mono-cultural schools' curricula are the only means to support the moral fiber of a society (Roux 2013: 246-247; the results of Ntho-Ntho 2013 unfortunately strongly support Roux's conclusions).Roux concluded around 2005 that 'in a developing democracy, which still needs to come to grips with its own inhumane past, religion will not be the core denominator to infuse a culture of humaneness, respect for diversity, and cohesion toward a social just society' (Roux 2013: 247), but that human rights education in diversity and a focus on human rights values could provide a helpful new paradigm. To that end she developed a human rights values theory (see Roux, du Preez and Ferguson 2009) and a human rights education theory applicable in diverse contexts (see Roux 2012). …

Issues in the Delivery of Religious Education to Muslim Pupils: Perspectives from the Classroom

Abstract: This article is based on experience of teaching RE in a multi‐faith class, and on ethnographic research among Muslim children in Leicester (Ipgrave 1996). It recognises the existence of tension bet...