Representations and concepts of professional ethos among Swiss religious education teacher trainers

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the organisation of religious education classes in Switzerland has undergone profound reforms. Amid the increasing secularisation and pluralisation of the religious landscape, many cantons have introduced a compulsory course that falls under the responsibility of the state and is aimed at teaching basic knowledge about a variety of religions. These reforms have enabled a harmonisation of the syllabi for religious education across the country and have prompted the adaptation of teacher training programmes. Because of the many diverse social expectations surrounding these new courses and the diverse academic traditions in the field of religious education, however, a unified conception of these courses is still absent. In this article, we discuss the ongoing construction of religious education teachers’ professional ethos within this fluid context. In particular, we discuss the perspective of teacher trainers on pragmatic questions concerning religious plurality and the place of teachers’ and pupils’ personal (religious) experiences in the classroom, and pay attention to different representations of ‘religion’ and distinct ideas regarding the purpose of these courses as they have a major impact on the professional attitudes expected from teachers.

Keywords:

• professional ethos
• teacher trainers
• Switzerland
• concepts of religion
• impartiality

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank their interviewees for their time and expertise as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Notes

1. In Switzerland, the term ‘public schools’ is used to refer to publicly funded state-run schools.

2. Speaking of teachers, many authors have used the notion of ‘professional ethos’ with reference to the ethical or moral dimension of their profession (e.g. Oser 1991; Rodríguez-Sedano, Rumayor, and Paris 2011; Tirri 1996). Although this dimension plays an important role in our reflection, in this article, we use the term in a broader way to designate the attitudes and capacities expected from a teacher beyond fundamental technical skills. ‘Impartiality’ can be seen as a desirable part of a teacher’s professional ethos. As an ideal set of practical, social and ethical qualities, the conception of ‘professional ethos’ has a clear normative dimension.

3. The term non-religious is used here to indicate a discourse on religion that is not itself religious. As we demonstrate later in this article, the line between religious and non-religious communication or teaching is a highly contended question.

4. See also Eva Ebel’s article Professionsverständnis der Lehrperson (2015), which echoes Jakobs’ position.

5. After heated debates in post-war Germany over principles and goals in civic education, various experts elaborated in 1976 the so-called Beutelsbacher Konsens. This consensus was based on three principles: the teachers must not overwhelm the pupils, controversies in politics and political science have to be depicted as controversies in the classroom and pupils should analyse specific political situations and bring their interests in the discussion (Sutor 2002).

6. Zeitschrift für Religionskunde – Revue de didactique des sciences des religions (http://www.zfrk-rdsr.ch).

7. On the institutional level, further discussions were recently held during a workshop organised in January 2015 by the Association of Didactics Teachers for Religion, Ethics, and Culture. Drawing on a recent publication (Bietenhard, Schmid, and Bleisch 2015), the discussions focused on four main aspects: the need for a biographical self-reflection, the exemplar role of the teacher for dealing with religious diversity, impartiality and specific antinomies that teachers have to deal with (Bietenhard, Schmid, and Bleisch 2015).

8. Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation of 18 April 1999.

9. However, each canton can choose whether or not to use the intercantonal syllabi for this particular subject. Five out of seven French-speaking cantons use the ECR (Ethique et Cultures Religieuses) syllabus for at least a portion of their religion courses. The final version of the Lehrplan 21 was made publicly available only in September 2014. For this reason, the debate in the German-speaking cantons is still ongoing.

10. All citations from the syllabi were taken from their official websites: http://www.plandetudes.ch and http://lehrplan.ch. All translations from German and French are the author’s.

11. The publishing house was founded at the end of the 1960s with the name ENBIRO. In 2013, it changed its name to AGORA. The name change was meant to underscore its institutional separation from the Protestant and Catholic churches, which participated in its foundation.

12. HimmelsZeichen and FrageZeichen were initially developed for the primary school level in the Canton of Berne. Blickpunkt (three volumes) was initially developed for the Canton of Zurich for both primary and secondary schools.

13. A fourth combination might be theoretically possible, combining an acquisition of knowledge with the understanding of religion as a fundamental dimension of human beings. This combination might describe a classical doctrine-based teaching, like the catechism, and we could not find any plausible reference to it in our sample.