The construction of ‘religions’ during field visits

ABSTRACT

Field visits to churches, mosques, temples or other buildings used by religious groups, are often valued by students of religious education as an opportunity to engage with the ‘reality’ of the subject: religions as they exist in the world. The Council of Europe text Signposts specifies field visits as an important contributor to the religious dimension of intercultural education, but also identifies issues that need to be addressed by researchers and teachers. During an excursion, students interact with representatives who are likely to represent their tradition in one particular way. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the representation of religion and religiosity is constructed during excursions by representatives and visitors. We have developed an analytical tool based on the interpretive approach and the theory of speech genres. Based on our analysis of documentation related to four field visits with students to places of worship, we suggest how the different speech genres in play during an excursion can help in promoting awareness of different levels of religion: individual, group and the whole tradition.

KEYWORDS:

• Field visits
• excursions
• study visits
• speech genre
• interpretive approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although groups of students will always consist of pupils belonging to different cultures, field visits offer an opportunity to draw attention to cultural diversity.

2. Beaven (2013) found 45 RE-related visits in her 2011–12 survey of 17 state grammar schools for boys. Fuglseth (2014) found that among the 280 teachers in the five northernmost regions of Norway answering a questionnaire, about 23% never take their students to churches and about 63% never take their students to ‘other religious buildings’ (‘omvisning i andre gudshus [enn kirker] og forsamlingshus’). Although these samples are relatively small, the findings support the fact that field visits are among the educational approaches available to RE teachers. More comprehensive statistical investigation clearly is desired.

3. In Signposts, study visits to religious places of interest are treated as part of the theme: ‘Linking schools to wider communities and organisations’ (Jackson 2014, 87). Creating opportunities for exchange and dialogue between pupils from different cultural environments is understood as promoting education in democracy. Religious communities are mentioned as a type of institution with which it is desirable for pupils (and therefore teacher students) to establish positive relationships. Advice on how to conduct such field visits successfully was requested frequently by respondents to the questionnaire sent to the 47 education ministries of the Council of Europe (CoE) member states, asking for the identification of issues they would have in adapting the 2008 Recommendation on education about religions and ‘non-religious convictions’ (Council of Europe 2008) to their own education system. The CoE publication Signposts (Jackson 2014) addresses this and other issues raised in the questionnaire returns, and makes reference to recent European research and good practice. In Signposts Jackson also points out that further research is needed in order to support educators in developing good practice.

4. Within a non-confessional RE, as in Norway, Sweden and England, there are also juridical restrictions that prohibit confessional elements in education. The borderline between denominational and non-confessional elements related to excursions is contested (Jørgensen 2017). Within a non-confessional RE, one position discourages field trips as a part of RE, because there is a risk that these excursions will expose students to religious practice and missionary elements (Andreassen 2012). Another position advocates excursions because visits to religious buildings give an important emotive insider-perspective (Eidhamar 2009). Furthermore, previous research indicates that students’ own interpretations of life affect the way they understand and experience study visits and dialogues with representatives (Britton 2014; Kindermann and Riegel 2018). Thus, the varying prejudices and understandings of the students are probable challenges for RE teachers to handle.

5. Though groups of students will always consist of pupils belonging to different cultures, the field visit offers an opportunity to draw attention to cultural diversity.

6. While the students in a group may belong to several different religious groups, it is also likely that some do not belong to any religious group. Although some may belong to an organized secular life view (such as the International Humanist and Ethical Union), others may be ‘nones’ (believing or not believing in a god or universal spirit, but not belonging to a defined group). However, as ‘inter-life-view-encounters’ is not an established term, we use the term ‘interreligious’.

7. In addition to the ones listed here, we identified «opening» and «closure» as speech genres with didactical potential. Due to the wordage limit for the present article, we do not discuss them here.

8. Before building the Ganesha temple, the community of Tamils running it had temporary temples devoted to Skanda.

9. Ayyappa is worshipped mainly in South India. The temple also has murtis of Vishnu and Lakshmi, but Ayyappa is the one introduced by the representative as reaching out beyond the Tamil community.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thérèse Halvarson Britton

Thérèse Halvarson Britton is a PhD student at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Education, HSD, at Stockholm University. Her academic work in religious education deal with teaching and learning related to field visits and lived religion as a perspective in religious education. Her licentiate thesis about educational challenges and possibilities generated by field visits was published in 2014.

Camilla Stabel Jørgensen

Camilla Stabel Jørgensen works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Her academic work in religious education deal with literacy, field visits and democracy. She leads a project on educational resources related to Oslo/Utøya 22. July 2011, and will be the editor of Nordidactica – a Nordic journal of Humanities and Social Science Education 2019–2020.