Geir Skeie

Karin Sporre

Jari Ristiniemi

There is an increasing recognition today that young people need to have knowledge about religions and world views in order to live and work in diverse societies. What kind of 'maps' are they provided with through religious, values and ethics education? Does education address the challenging existential questions that children and adolescents ask about life and the world? This volume addresses different aspects of how existential questions have been dealt with in educational research. It especially draws attention to the Swedish research tradition of focusing on life questions and the interpretation of life in education, but with contemporary international research added. It also addresses issues of ethics education and discusses possible options for the future of existential questions as a resource for education.

Challenging Life: Existential Questions as a Resource for Education

Ina ter Avest

Thorsten Knauth

Dan-Paul Jozsa

Javier Rosón

Regarding teaching about religions and worldviews, there is a gap between the ambitions of educational policies and our knowledge about what really happens in the classroom. Research on classroom interaction about religion is not very far developed, either nationally or as international and as comparative research. There is a growing awareness, however, that research on pupils’ perspectives on religion in education is needed in order to develop sustainable approaches for future education, and this book is a contribution to this research. The classroom can be seen as an arena both for learning and for micro-politics. This arena is shaped, and sometimes challenged and restricted, or even curtailed, by the wider societal and political context. In this book we present studies of classroom interaction that focus on the micro-sociological level of research. The studies presented open up a rather unexplored field of international comparative research on religion in education and the role of diversity for classroom interaction, giving deeper insights into what happens in classrooms, displaying varieties of interactive patterns and relating these to their specific contexts.

Dialogue and Conflict on Religion. Studies of Classroom Interaction in European Countries

Siebren Miedema

Judith Everington

The relevance of contextual perspectives in religious education has been growing for the last decade. It has been central to the European Network for Religious Education through Contextual Approaches (ENRECA) - the research network that has produced the present book. Several members of the network have contributed to the theoretical and empirical development of contextual approaches in different publications, but for the first time this has been the focus of an entire collectively produced volume. The history of the book dates back to research seminars in 2009 and 2010 and is based on the discussions in the seminar. The chapters have been developed through a process of critical examination. Through this process we believe to have produced a coherent and also comprehensively rich book, dealing with the issue of context as a challenge, and also a stimulus to religious education research and practice. The chapters are presenting both empirical research and scholarly investigation into methodological and theoretical dimensions. Taken together we hope that this book will contribute to the further development of contextual thinking in religious education research. Or aim has not been to answer all questions, but rather to pose questions and to complicate things in order to enrich the academic field of religion in education.

Empirical, Methodological and Theoretical Perspectives

Exploring Context in Religious Education Research

Martin Rothgangel

Martin Jäggle

The project Religious Education at Schools in Europe (REL-EDU), which is divided up into six volumes (Central Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe), aims to research the situation with regard to religious education in Europe. The third volume outlines the organisational form of religious education in the countries of Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Iceland). This is done on the basis of thirteen key issues, which allows specific points of comparison between different countries in Europe. Thereby the volume focusses the comparative approach and facilitates further research into specific aspects of the comparison.

Northern Europe

Religious Education at Schools in Europe

Hans-Günter Heimbrock

Kerstin von Brömssen

People form attachments to their home, their neighbourhood and environment, to the region and nation to which they belong. They express feelings about space and place, especially so in 'globalized times'. In religious studies, in theology, and in education, there is a growing interest in spatial theories either as constructed within national borders, or within international and transnational spaces. The 'spatial turn' has become an acknowledged term in interdisciplinary discourses. Although every practice of religious education is situated and contextually dependent, religious education (RE) research until now has not systematically paid attention to this fundamental insight. This volume is devoted specifically to clarifying the close relationship between RE practice and spatial and situational conditions. After clarifying the main concepts in Part 1, Part 2 includes chapters related to classroom studies, while Part 3 focuses on studies about teachers of religious education. Part 4 contains studies beyond the classroom, such as school chapels, churches, and 'inner space'. All contributions to this volume were developed in the context of the European Network for Religious Education through Contextual Approaches (ENRECA) which has focused recently on the central issue of space and place.

Location, Space and Place in Religious Education

In the last ten years or so, religious plurality has become higher on the agenda for religious education research in the Nordic countries. This attention to religious plurality partly reflects processes of globalisation that include both physical migration and communication of ideas and is-sues across the world, making it ‘smaller’. It also reflects the preoccupation of governments with social cohesion and, as part of this, intercultural education. In the curricula of the Nordic countries this is manifested in different ways, setting also the agenda for parts of educational research. This book addresses issues related to the increasing religious plurality in the Nordic countries. These issues are a challenge to many religious groups including historically dominant Lutheran national churches, both nationally and locally. They have also led to a reorientation in religious education research in the last decade. A rich variety of research perspectives are presented under three headings: Theoretical and methodical perspectives, The world of the students, Teachers and textbooks. Nordic religious education research here proves to be internationally oriented in terms of theoretical perspectives, whilst also contributing to the debate through important empirical studies. Examples of issues covered in the book are unintended learning, dialogue, gender, life-interpretation, spirituality, identity and values. In different ways all the contributions in this book shed light on the common theme of diversity, and are based on a will to include diverse perspectives both on the actors and the material of the classroom as well as on the life world of young people. The researchers represent different generations and different theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Geir Skeie

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