The relationship between religious education and intercultural education

ABSTRACT

Religious education and intercultural education are seen by some to be in tension with each other, and by others as two sides of the same coin. The explanations for this unsettled relationship may be found in the different histories of the two fields. Intercultural education has become a cross curricular priority, resulting from rather recent developments marked by cultural complexity, following globalisation and migration processes of the last 50 years or so. Religious education has a long history of being a distinct school subject, much influenced by differing national and religious cultural heritages and which, during the last half century, has begun to address the issues of religious and world view diversity. In several countries today, religious education in the publicly funded school is conceived as non-confessional and deals with a diversity of religions and world views. Religious education may be the subject where socio-cultural differences are most visible and where the challenges of diversity are put to the test. This raises a series of challenges to curriculum designers and teachers in classrooms; the article will address some of them and suggest ways forward for teacher education and school practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious education (RE)
• intercultural education
• world views
• multiculturalism
• secularism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Overviews of different national systems confirm this (Davis and Miroshnikova 2013; de Souza et al. 2006).

2. http://tif.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/audio/Taylor.mp3 .

3. The symposium lectures later have been published: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. NY: Columbia University Press,2011.

4. The terminology refers to Grimmitt (1987).

5. For the REDCo project see special issue of British Journal of Religious Education Vol 33, 2011, no2; https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?AllField=redco&SeriesKey=cbre20. For the ReDi project, see Religion and Dialogue in the City. Case Studies on Interreligious Encounter in Urban Community and Education, edited by Julia Ipgrave, Thorsten Knauth, Köhrs Anna, Vieregge Dörthe and Marie von der Lippe, Münster: Waxmann Verlag.

6. Regarding the ‘safe space’ discussion, see also the article by von der Lippe and Kittelmann Flensner in the present volume.

7. See the special issue of British Journal of Religious Education, Volume 39, 2017 – Issue 1: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cbre20/39/1?nav=tocList .

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Øystein Lund Johannessen

Øystein Lund Johannessen (PhD) is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Intercultural Communication at VID Specialized University, Norway. He has long experience as researcher and project leader in diverse collaborative research and practice development projects, particularly with teachers in schools and kindergartens. His main field of research over the years has been intercultural competence and diversity awareness in education.

Geir Skeie

Geir Skeie is Professor of Religious Education at University of Stavanger. Norway and holds positions also at Stockholm University, Sweden and NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. His research includes both empirical and theoretical contributions with a particular interest in questions about religious education in a diverse socio-cultural context. He has had a leading role in several national and international research projects.