Enacting critical hermeneutics in religious education: epistemological tensions, contextual realities, and teachers’ challenges

Abstract

This article investigates Greek-Cypriot primary school teachers' challenges to enact critical hermeneutics in religious education (RE) within a confessional context. Critical hermeneutics combines elements from critical and hermeneutical theories, emphasising the importance of grounding the conceptualisation of religious and secular truth-claims in historical and cultural interpretation. The data comes from a collaborative action research study with six teachers. The findings show how teachers engage with and respond to critical hermeneutics in their teaching practices, particularly their difficulties but also the transformative potential of critical hermeneutics. Finally, the article discusses how this study may inform present knowledge about critical and interpretive approaches of teaching RE at the levels of theory/research, teaching practice, and teacher professional development.

Keywords:

• Critical hermeneutics
• religious education (RE)
• pedagogies
• teachers
• Cyprus

Notes

1. It is important to clarify here that the paper cited by Whately is a review discussion of Aldridge’s A Hermeneutics of Religious Education. We want to avoid the impression that Aldridge’s ideas, because they are discussed in Whately, are being attributed to Whately. For this reason, we provide in parenthesis the page numbers that refer to the arguments in Aldridge’s text. We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting that we make this clarification.

2. We are indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for making this observation which is cited from his/her review.

3. Students can request an exemption from RE, if their parents declare a different religion or no religion.

4. Cyprus has been and remains deeply divided due to the protracted nature of conflict between the two main communities of the island, Greek Cypriots (the majority of whom are Greek Orthodox) and Turkish Cypriots (most of whom are Sunni Muslim). Cyprus has been a divided society since violent intercommunal clashes in 1963–67; in 1974, Turkey invaded after a failed military coup attempt to unify Cyprus and Greece. The island is since divided in the northern part (in which Turkish Cypriots live) and the southern (government controlled) part (in which Greek Cypriots live). In addition, in recent years there has been increased migration of workers as well as refugees seeking asylum from the Middle East, Africa and East Asia

5. We are indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting these questions.

6. As one of the reviewers correctly points out, the manner in which critical hermeneutics was communicated, expressed or explained to research participants via the workshops was probably influenced by a constellation of factors and variables. It is extremely hard to capture this complexity in a short article, yet an attempt is made here to provide some insights.

7. We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting these ideas.